The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.
Interpretation
The environmental crisis is urgent and affects future generations.
Al Gore emphasizes the seriousness of the global environmental crisis, arguing that it is undeniable and compares its reality to a common saying in Tennessee. He expresses a deep concern for the future of his children, highlighting the moral responsibility to address environmental degradation to ensure a better planet for them.
In practice
During a lecture on sustainability, this quote can be used to emphasize the urgency of environmental protection.
Global warming is real and human activity is the main cause. The consequences are mainly negative and headed toward catastrophic, unless we act. However, the good news is that we can meet this challenge. It is not too late, and we have everything we need to get started.
The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.
I think it's harder for people than it should be. But as more and more of us become carbon neutral and change the patterns in our lives to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, we are now beginning to see the changes in policy that are needed.
We have a planetary emergency. We have to find a way to create, in the generation of those alive today, a sense of generational mission.
CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally... Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.
Well-established theories collapse under the weight of new facts and observations which cannot be explained, and then accumulate to the point where the once useful theory is clearly obsolete.
The earth is like a beautiful bride who needs no manmade jewels to heighten her loveliness.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
We are blessed with a magnificent and miraculous world ocean on this planet. But we are also stressing it in ways that we are not even close to bringing under control.
...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
Why this cult of wilderness?... because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.
But the golden-rod is one of the fairy, magical flowers; it grows not up to seek human love amid the light of day, but to mark to the discerning what wealth lies hid in the secret caves of earth.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.