John Muir 18381914

1
John Muir (1838-1914)

• "No temple made with hands can compare with
  Yosemite.
• Unless reserved or protected the whole region
  will soon or late be devastated by lumbermen and
  sheepmen, and so of course be made unfit for use
  as a pleasure ground. Already it is with great
  difficulty that campers, even in the most remote
  parts of the proposed reservation and in those
  difficult of access, can find grass enough to
  keep their animals from starving the ground is
  already being gnawed and trampled into a desert
  condition, and when the region shall be stripped
  of its forests the ruin will be complete.

2
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948)

• A Sand County Almanac
• The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of
  the community to include soils, waters, plants,
  and animals, or collectively the land.
• What and whom do we love? Certainly not the
  soil, which we are sending helter-skelter
  downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we
  assume have no function except to turn turbines,
  float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not
  the plants, of which we exterminate whole
  communities without batting an eye. Certainly not
  the animals, of which we have already extirpated
  many of the largest and most beautiful species. A
  land ethic of course cannot prevent the
  alteration, management, and use of these
  'resources,' but it does affirm their right to
  continued existence, and, at least in spots,
  their continued existence in a natural state.

3
Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
The earth provides enough to satisfy every mans
need but not every mans greed. God forbid
that India should ever take to industrialization
after the manner of the West. The economic
imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom
England is today keeping the world in chains.
If an entire nation of 300 million took to
similar economic exploitation, it would strip the
world bare like locusts.
4
Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

• Silent Spring (1962)
• Mankind has gone very far into an artificial
  world of his own creation. He has sought to
  insulate himself, in his cities of steel and
  concrete, from the realities of earth and water
  and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of
  his own power, he seems to be going farther and
  farther into more experiments for the destruction
  of himself and his world.

5
E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977)

• Small Is Beautiful (1973)
• The system of nature, of which man is a part,
  tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting,
  self-cleansing. Not so with technology.
• An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in
  the single-minded pursuit of wealth--in short,
  materialism--does not fit into this world,
  because it contains within itself no limiting
  principle, while the environment in which it is
  placed is strictly limited.
• Any intelligent fool can make things bigger,
  more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch
  of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in
  the opposite direction.

6
Arne Naess (1912-2009)

• The supporters of shallow ecology think that
  reforming human relations toward nature can be
  done within the existing structure of society.
  They propose to make small changes here and there
  within the institutions they suggest technical
  development to reduce pollution. They dont get
  down to the basics because they think that
  business can continue as usual.
• For us it is the ecosphere, the whole planet,
  Gaia, that is the basic unit, and every living
  being has an intrinsic value.

7
Garret Hardin (1915-2003)

• The Tragedy of the Commons
• The rational man finds that his share of the
  cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons
  is less than the cost of purifying his wastes
  before releasing them. Since this is true for
  everyone, we are locked into a system of fouling
  our own nest, so long as we behave only as
  independent, rational, free-enterprisers.
• The social arrangements that produce
  responsibility are arrangements that create
  coercion, of some sort.

8
Murray Bookchin (1921-2006)

• The Ecology of Freedom (1982)
• A mythic "Humanity" is created--irrespective of
  whether we are talking about oppressed ethnic
  minorities, women, Third World people, or people
  in the First World--in which everyone is brought
  into complicity with powerful corporate elites in
  producing environmental dislocations. In this
  way, the social roots of ecological problems are
  shrewdly obscured. A new kind of biological
  "original sin" is created in which a vague group
  of animals called "Humanity" is turned into a
  destructive force that threatens the survival of
  the living world.

9
Ynestra King

• Ecofeminism advocates a people, culture and
  place-specific strategy of "nature friendly" and
  "woman respectful" political, social, and
  economic development.
• The primary splits are now best understood as
  embodied in the divisions between north and south
  and the ownership of not only capital, but
  nature.
• "Nature-hating and woman-hating are particularly
  related and associated, and are mutually
  reinforcing."

10
Vandana Shiva
"Agriculture systems which are women-centered and
earth-centered are also more productive. 300
units of inputs produce 100 units of output in
industrial agriculture, while ecological systems
in which women participate use only 5 units of
input to produce 100 units of output."
11
Petra Kelly (1947-1992)

• If there is a future, it will be Green.

• "The vision I see is not only a movement of
  direct democracy, of self- and co-determination
  and non-violence, but a movement in which
  politics means the power to love and the power to
  feel united on the spaceship Earth... In a world
  struggling in violence and dishonesty, the
  further development of non-violence - not only as
  a philosophy but as a way of life, as a force on
  the streets, in the market squares, outside the
  missile bases, inside the chemical plants and
  inside the war industry - becomes one of the most
  urgent priorities."

12
Christopher Stone

• Should Trees Have Standing? (1972)

It occurred to me that if standing were the
barrier, why not designate Mineral King, the
wilderness area, as the plaintiff adversely
affected? Indeed, that seemed a more
straightforward way to get at the real issue,
which was not what all that gouging of roadbeds
would do to the Club or its members, but what it
would do to the valley.