We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.
Paul HawkenRead
When you pollute a river, it's a supreme injustice to those who are downstream and those who live in the river who are not human beings.
Interpretation
Polluting natural resources is unfair to all living beings affected by it.
This quote emphasizes the moral responsibility humans have towards the environment and other living beings. It highlights that pollution is not just an act that harms the environment directly, but it also creates injustice for other life forms and future generations that rely on clean waterways.
In practice
During an environmental conference to emphasize the importance of clean waterways.
We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.
Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider.
We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.
At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.
How much harm does a company have to do before we question its right to exist?
We have the capacity to create a remarkably different economy: one that can restore ecosystems and protect the environment while bringing forth innovation, prosperity, meaningful work, and true security.
The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.
Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation alter nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.
Ahead and to the west was our ranger station - and the mountains of Idaho, poems of geology stretching beyond any boundaries and seemingly even beyond the world.
You have a whole life in the outdoors, you realize you have a sense of responsibility to protect these wild places.
Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he's gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone.
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