Some thoughts on Earth Day

SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2012

Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth it loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.

- Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), English novelist and poet
From Let me Enjoy [1910]


Today is Earth Day and for those who care about the environment, these are discouraging time.  Right wing governments such as Stephen Harper's here in Canada and rabid Republicans in the United States are doing  their best to scuttle most of the protective measures on the environment.  Yet, we have to keep trying to protect our home planet.  We owe it to ourselves and to future generations.  Every day should be Earth Day.  

I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use our natural resources, but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or rob by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.

- Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States


Why should I care about future generations?  What have they ever done for me?

- Groucho Marx  (1890- 1977), American comedian and film star?


There would be very little point in my exhausting myself and other conservationists themselves in trying to protect animals and habitats if we weren't at the same time raising young people to be better stewards.

-Dr. Jane Goodall, ethologist and anthropologist


We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors.  We borrow it from our children.

- Native American proverb

I wish the term "tree hugger" didn't have such a negative connotation.  It is often used in a derogatory, condescending and patronizing way.  Why should caring about the environment be ridiculed?  It should be lauded.  Being called a "tree hugger" should be regarded as a badge of honour.


When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

- John Muir (April 21, 1838 - December 24, 1914), Scottish-born American naturalist, conservationist and author


Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

- R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 -1983), American designer and architect
From Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth [1969]


And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything

- William Shakespeare
From Ass You Like It, Act 2, Scene 1


The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade,
threaten, promise,
Makes no discrimination, has no
conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing,
shuts none out.

- Walt Whitman (1819-1892), American poet
From A Song of the Rolling Earth [1881]


Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names streets after them.

- William E. "Bill" Vaughan (1915-1977), American columnist and author



- Joanne