Delmonico

THE ENVIRONMENT: NARRATED

written by Lexi Delmonico

This next piece composites a collection of perspectives from the Dictionary of Political Quotes edited by Lewis D. Eigen and Jonathon P. Siegel. The different views represent how over the course of history our relationship with environmentalism and natural resources has changed little. The book where these quotes were acquired from was published in 1994, making the content dated in some ways but painfully present in others.

When reading these quotes you will come to understand how climate inaction transcends across party lines, and how environmental hopes and fears are universal across time. This is an eternal element of the human condition. It is a part of us.

There is something humbling, sanguine, and almost breathtaking about this fact. It enlightens us to the fallibility of not only our future, but maybe even ourselves. You will find anger in some quotes, agreement with others, and a few that are so preposterous you have to laugh at them.

I invite you to join me on this narrated epic that has led to the modern environmental conservation movement. Thank you.

“The real owners of the land are not yet born. ” -Canadian Indian saying

In response to a drought that threatened New York’s water supply “It’ll go away only if we make it go away-- by not using water. ” -Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York (D). Quoted in The New York Times, Mar. 18. 1989

“The common people who marched for the right to vote must now march for the right to breathe” -Jesse L. Jackson, Shadow Senator (D-DC). Mar. 29, 1990.

“Drink seltzer.

” -Edward I. Koch, US Congressman and Mayor of New York City (D). Comment when told by a woman that the water in her sink was coming out brown. How’m I Doing, 1981.

I think that I shall never see / A billboard lovely as a tree / Indeed, unless the billboards fall / I’ll never see a tree at all. -Ogden Nash, American poet. 1937.

“Everything is good when it leaves the hands of the Creator; everything degenerates in the hands of man. ” -Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher. Emile, 1762

“We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and therefor is certain to be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in dealing with it today means that our descendants will feel the exhaustion a generation or two before they otherwise would. ” -Theodore Roosevelt. Annual message to Congress, Mar. 4, 1907

“Man was not made for the world, but the world made for man. ” -Apocrypha, Baruch 14:18

“The only way to protect areas that are economically and ecologically valuable is to keep oil out. ” -Lisa Speer, National Resources Defense Council. Comment on the danger of oil spills at sea and difficulty in mounting emergency cleanups. New York Times, April 2, 1989.

“Has the white man become a child that he should slay and not eat?” -Santana, Chief of Kiowa Native Americans. Observation on white people hunting for sport. Statement to the Medicine Lodge Grand Council, Oct. 1867.