Frightening Eco-Freak Quotes
from the Sussman Files
KSFO 560 Talk Radio
[San Francisco, CA]
Brian Sussman is a conservative commentator on the San Francisco radio station KSFO. He hosts his own show, “Right Thinking from the Left Coast,” weekdays from 6pm to 8pm.
"We already have too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."
Paul Elrich, Stanford University biologist and Advisor to Albert Gore
"I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism."
Judi Barri of Earth First!
"Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere."
Dave Foreman, Founder, Earth First!
"The northern spotted owl is the wildlife species of choice to act as a surrogate for old-growth forest protection," explained Andy Stahl, staff forester for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, at a 1988 law clinic for other environmentalists. "Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Pacific Northwest," he joked, "for if it hadn't, we'd have to genetically engineer it."
Andy Stahl at a 1988 law clinic for environmentalists, staff forester, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
"Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real."
Jonathan Shell, author of Our Fragile Earth
"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect."
Richard Benedict, an employee for the State Department working on assignment for the Conservation Foundation
"[W]e have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Stephen Schneider, Stanford University Professor and author Quoted by Dixey Lee Ray in Trashing the Planet (1990)
"I honor Earth First for having the guts to do the things they do. It's not for me, but I understand why they do what they do. And, ultimately, we all help each other."
Brock Adams, VP, Audubon Society, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.
"If we seek only personal redemption we could become solitary ecological saints among the masses of those we might classify as 'sinners' who continue to pollute."
Bill Devall & George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living As If Nature Mattered Layton
"More science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecological crises until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one."
Lynn White, Jr. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science, (Mar. 10 1967), p 1206
"Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.... All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing."
David Brower, Friends of the Earth
"The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state."
Keith Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept
"If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS. It [AIDS] has the potential to end industrialism, which is the main force behind the environmental crises."
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