Share an inspirational Green quote – CONTEST WINNER!

Congratulations Michelle on winning this week’s Green Books Giveaway:

1. Obsessive Consumption by Kate Bingaman-Burt
2. The Self-Sufficient Life by John Seymour
3. Terracide by Hubert Reeves

We asked our readers to share “An Inspirational Environmental Quote”
Our winning contestants submission:

“When we walk like (we are running), we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth… Be aware of the contact between your feet and the earth…Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.”  – Thich Nhat Hanh

Thank you to all of our contestants for sharing suck great quotes. Here are just a few of the other inspirational environmental quotes our readers shared:

“The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”
– Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani (former Saudi petroleum minister)
submitted by Steve

“The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.”
– Native American Proverb
submitted by Debbie

“Now is the time to get the future right.”
– Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress”
submitted by Cathy

“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”
– Gandhi
submitted by Chris

“Every person is the right person to act. Every moment is the right moment to begin.”
– Jonathan Schell
submitted by Heather

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
– Dr. Seuss, from The Lorax
submitted by Sue & Laurie

“Only after the last tree has been cut down, the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught, only then you will find that money cannot be eaten.”
– Cree Indian Prophecy
submitted by Anum

“When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.”
– John Muir
submitted by Steven

“Plant a tree today, so we can breathe tomorrow.”
– C. Donaldson
submitted by Chris

“If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.”
– Rachael Carson
submitted by Jamai

“The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.”
– Gaylord Nelson, Co-Founder of Earth Day
submitted by Nikki

“I am going to show you why it is suicidal to think we can keep growing forever. Let me give you a test tube full of food for bacteria, that represents our world. I am going to put one bacterial cell into that test tube (representing us), and it is going to divide every minute; that is exponential growth. So at time zero you have one cell; one minute you have two; two minutes you have four; three minutes you have eight; four minutes you have 16. That is exponential growth and at 60 minutes the test tube is completely full of bacteria and there is no food left, a sixty minute cycle.

When is the test tube only half full? Well the answer of course is at 59 minutes; but a minute later it is filled. So at 58 minutes it is 25% full; 57 minutes 12½ % full. At 55 minutes of the 60 minute cycle it is only 3% full. So, if at 55 minutes one of the bacteria said to its companions that they had a population problem, the other bacteria would be incredulous because 97% of the test tube would be empty and they had been around for 55 minutes. Yet they would have only 5 minutes left. So bacteria are no smarter than humans and at 59 minutes they realize they only have a minute left. So they give massive amounts of money to scientists, and in less than a minute those bacterial scientists invent three test tubes full of food. That would be like adding three more planets for our use. So it would seem that they (and we) would be saved.

What actually happens is this – at 60 minutes the first tube is full; at 61 minutes the second is full; and at 62 minutes all four are full. By quadrupling the amount of food and space, you buy two extra minutes! How do we add even a fraction of 1% more of air, water, soil or biodiversity? We cannot. The biosphere is fixed and finite and every biologist I have talked to agrees with me, we are past the 59th minute. So all those leaders saying that we have to keep the economy growing are saying we have to accelerate down what is a suicidal path.”
– David Suzuki
submitted by Rose

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
– Albert Einstein
Einstein is my favourite, but I especially like his use of the word “evolution”-he is not disparaging our current state, but imploring us to improve, or evolve.
submitted by Alexander

“…in the early years, we are not to teach nature as science…we are to teach it for loving.”
– Liberty Hyde Bailey
submitted by Theresa

“Q: What’s the difference between an environmentalist and a developer?
A: The environmentalist already has his cottage on the lake.”
submitted by Richard

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”
– Galileo Galilei
submitted by Phillip

found in ‘Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future’ by Peter Senge, C.Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers.

“It’s common to say that trees come from seeds. But how could a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or environment within which the tree grows. But the seed does provide something that is crucial: a place where the whole of the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges.”
– Found in ‘Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future’ by Peter Senge, C.Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, & Betty Sue Flowers.
submitted by Marena

“There is little point devising elaborate systems for getting heat from natural sources until you have plugged the leaks in the system you have already got.”
– The Guide is an earlier (North American) edition of: The Self-Sufficient Life. And how to live it. P 211 (section on Saving Energy)
submitted by Geb

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