A Quote by Jay Parini

A proper respect for nature means that you can't pollute the air, poison the rivers and chop down the forests indiscriminately without suffering greatly. — © Jay Parini
A proper respect for nature means that you can't pollute the air, poison the rivers and chop down the forests indiscriminately without suffering greatly.
We've had a century in which we've allowed some industries to basically pollute the air, pollute the water, pollute the ground, pollute the rivers, and we've been trying sporadically to clean air acts and ways of regulating them. But we now are sitting in a world that's filled with all sorts of materials that we don't really know the impact of. It's not like they're necessarily all poisonous but it's odd to put all these materials into our environment and watch.
Nature is out there, and we can do what we like to it. We can cut down the rain forest. We can put animals in factory farms and slaughter them as we like. We can over-fish the oceans. We can pollute the rivers. We can pollute the water and change climate. We are somehow superior to nature. We are somehow rulers of nature.
My engagement with mountains, rivers, and forests has been right from my childhood. I have lived in the jungles by myself; I have floated down rivers. So, I didn't experience these rivers, mountains, forests as some mythological figures but as thriving, living entities.
We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throw-away paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning.
Most people don't realize that when we violate the natural order of things when we pollute the air, when we pollute the water, we are destroying mother nature and that's a violent act. If we don't first and foremost come to some peaceful terms, none of us are going to be able to survive.
The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art or sat slothfully by while they destroyed. We have passed this stage.... Here in the U.S. we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy our forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals - not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at best it looks as if our people were awakening.
Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.
I want to do the right things - I want to plant trees, I want to make sure that the indigenous forests are protected because I know, whatever happens, these are the forests that contain biodiversity, these are the forests that help us retain water when it rains and keep our rivers flowing, these are the forests that many future generations will need.
It is a fact that our fresh water is becoming more scarce and that the new ways we are getting energy in America - fracking, mountaintop removal, cyclic steam extraction, deep-sea drilling - all pollute water, pollute the air, and pollute our soil and food.
Our air, water, soil, forests, oceans, rivers, lakes, scenic beauty, wildlife habitat, minerals, that is the wealth of the country.
You can't have force structure without proper training, without proper equipment, without proper leadership, without proper funding to conduct exercises and perform maintenance.
Do you speak Chopnese huh? Do ya? Chop chop chop chop chop. Aha you don't.
Nature … is, as it were, a continual circulation. Water is rais'd in Vapour into the Air by one Quality and precipitated down in drops by another, the Rivers run into the Sea, and the Sea again supplies them.
Without the land, the rivers, the oceans, the forests, the sunshine, the minerals and thousands of natural resources we would have no economy whatsoever
Listen to the air. You can hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it. Woniya wakan, the holy air, which renews all by its breath. Woniya wakan, spirit, life, breath, renewal, it means all that. We sit together, don’t touch, but something is there, we feel it between us as a presence. A good way to start thinking about nature is to talk to it, talk to the rivers, to the lakes, to the winds, as to our relatives.
It is impossible for any culture to be sound and healthy without a proper respect and proper regard for the soil.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!