We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.
Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Hydraulic fracturing risks water contamination and poses health hazards due to its use of large water volumes and toxic wastewater.
This quote by David Suzuki highlights the environmental and health risks associated with hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. By emphasizing the massive water requirements for the process, alongside the dangers posed by wastewater disposal and potential spills, it raises awareness about the serious implications for drinking water safety and public health, urging society to consider the broader consequences of such energy extraction methods.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in an environmental awareness campaign to discuss the impacts of fracking.
More from David Suzuki
All quotes βAs parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts we need to start getting out into nature with the young people in our lives. Families play a key role in getting kids outside.
One of the joys of being a grandparent is getting to see the world again through the eyes of a child.
The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work.
Do you know how much land is under ice, rock and snow? Do you know why 90 percent of us live within 100 kilometres of the U.S. border? We have this idea we're a vast country. But the reality is that a lot of it, a huge amount, is uninhabitable.
We no longer see the world as a single entity. We've moved to cities and we think the economy is what gives us our life, that if the economy is strong we can afford garbage collection and sewage disposal and fresh food and water and electricity. We go through life thinking that money is the key to having whatever we want, without regard to what it does to the rest of the world.
Similar quotes
Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.
What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point - the exclusive right to govern the systems of production.
We subsidize the disposal of waste in all its myriad forms β from landfills, to Superfund cleanups, to deep-well injection, to storage of nuclear waste. In the process, we encourage an economy where 80 percent of what we consume gets thrown away after one use.
We need a new environmental consciousness on a global basis. To do this, we need to educate people.
I am working to make sure we don't only protect the environment, we also improve governance.
Now, as the world's largest economy and as the world's second largest emitter, America bears our responsibility to address climate change, and we intend to meet that responsibility.