Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds, and mammals—not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people were awakening. Many leading men, Americans and Canadians, are doing all they can for the Conservation movement.

I respect the secrets and magic of nature. That's why it makes me so angry when I see these things that are happening, that every second, I hear, the size of a football field is torn down in the Amazon. I mean, that kind of stuff really bothers me. That's why I write these kinds of songs, you know. It gives some sense of awareness and awakening and hope to people. I love the Planet, I love the trees. I have this thing for trees - the colors and changing of leaves. I love it. I respect those kind of things. I really feel that nature is trying so hard to compensate for man's mismanagement of the planet. Because the planet is sick, like a fever. If we don't fix it now, it's at the point of no return. This is our last chance to fix this problem that we have, where it's like a runway train. And the times has come, This Is It. People are always saying,'They'll take care of it. The government'll--Don't worry, they'll--' 'They' who? It starts with us. It's us. Or else it'll never be done... We have four years to get it right. After that it would be irreversible. Let's take care of the planet.

Here's the thing: I'm not in politics to play games. I try to be thoughtful about when, where, how I express myself, but I'm obstinate on some issues; even recalcitrant at times. So I want to be up front to whoever becomes our new leader about what they can expect from me. When I envision a hopeful future, I see a sunset to the fossil fuel industry; complete, walkable & bikable communities connected by mass transit throughout the province; universal housing for everyone who needs it; families who don’t have to worry about their kids’ futures. For a future everyone can thrive in, we need to act on #ClimateChange as a Grand Challenge of our time. As important as it is to cool people down, put out fires, rebuild infrastructure, it's also not enough. We have to prevent these catastrophes from occurring to begin with. I want a leader who believes that addressing the #ClimateEmergency is a moral imperative; who will take an unambiguous stance against the expansion of fossil fuel extraction, including LNG, and end measures designed to incentivize the industry. I'm really worried about the serious environmental, social, and economic impacts of car dependency and believe that we can't afford to further entrench it. I’ll be pushing you for legislative reform and increased investments to make 🚍🚶🚴🧑‍🦽 truly viable choices for people. Expect me to be outspoken at the tables you appoint me to. Know that I hate bullshit and being pushed around. We need to be unafraid of facing down established power, especially when the stakes are high. Let's challenge the failures of capitalism with public solutions.

"We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the "real world" works. The will pride themselves on their sacrifices for "our standard of living." They will call themselves "practical men" and "hardheaded realists." And they will have their justifications in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as "part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the "realism" of millions of modern adults.

There is no use pretending that the contradiction between what we think or say and what we do is a limited phenomenon. There is no group of the extra-intelligent or extra-concerned or extra-virtuous that is exempt. I cannot think of any American whom I know or have heard of, who is not contributing in some way to destruction. The reason is simple: to live undestructively in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive would require of any one of us, or of any small group of us, a great deal more work than we have yet been able to do. How could we divorce ourselves completely and yet responsibly from the technologies and powers that are destroying our planet? The answer is not yet thinkable, and it will not be thinkable for some time — even though there are now groups and families and persons everywhere in the country who have begun the labor of thinking it.

And so we are by no means divided, or readily divisible, into environmental saints and sinners. But there are

While the Trump Administration’s environmental policies are abhorrent, it has been inspiring to see the leadership from so many other cities, local communities, businesses and everyday people stepping in to take up the slack.

We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: "save the planet." What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet! We don't care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet? I'm getting tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day. I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract, they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles ... hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages ... And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn't going anywhere. WE are!
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam ... The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?"
"Plastic... asshole."

Yeah. 'Environment' was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce...Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring...
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world's most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill...never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power. We'll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we'll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we'll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence...As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker. At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they'll feel inadequate. Finally they'll turn apathetic. After all, they'll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.

We've been talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of poverty. But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left? Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet. (Speech at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, June 2012)

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own Government to save the environment.

Over the last fifty years,” the tall man declared, “our sins against Mother Nature have grown exponentially.” He paused. “I fear for the soul of humankind.

"The notion that we are products of our environment is our greatest sin; we are products of our choices."
Margaret Mead
(this may not be her exact wording, but it's close enough).

The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future.