A publication of Work On Waste USA, Inc., 82 Judson, Canton, NY 13617 315-379-9200 January 2, 1992
For those working to stop the poisoning of our lands today, you are weaving precious memories for those you love. Thank you for letting us get to know you.
Even if you could make incineration safe, you could never make
it sensible. It just doesn’t make sense to perfect the art
of destroying resources we should be sharing with future generations.
Paul Connett.
If we don’t change our direction, we’ll end up where
we’re headed.
Old Chinese Proverb.
The care of life and happiness, and not their destruction,
is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
Thomas Jefferson
We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent
on its vulnerable
reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to
its security and peace; preserved
from annihilation only by the care, the work, and,
I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
Adlai Stevenson.
For the first time in the history of the world, every human
being is now
subjected to dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception
until death.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962.
To throw away, by habitat destruction, the tropical forest,
the coral reefs,
and other habitats around the world, literally millions of
species, is a crime.
It is akin to burning renaissance paintings in order to cook
dinner.
E.O. Wilson, PBS-TV Rush to Save the Planet, Part 5, Remnants
of Eden.
Because everything we do and everything we are is in jeopardy,
and because the
peril is immediate and unremitting, every person is the right
person to act
and every moment is the right moment to begin.
Jonathan
Schell.
We are the first species ever to be able to look upon nature’s
work and decide
whether we should consciously eliminate it or leave much of
it untouched.
Norman Myers.
I am utterly convinced that the great environmental struggles
will be either won or lost
in the 1990s, and that by the next century it will be too late
to act.
Thomas E. Lovejoy.
When it is asked how much it will cost to protect the environment,
one more
question should be asked: how much will it cost our civilization
if we do not?
Gaylord Nelson.
Unless we change very quickly, we are not going to make it
as humanity...
It doesn’t matter whether you are in the United States, the
Soviet Union, Costa Rica or
Nicaragua, we are becoming aware that our presence is a threat
to life on this planet.
Minister of the Environment, Costa Rica, PBS-TV, Rush to Save
the Planet, Part 5.
We are, supposedly, creating a technological wonderworld...
But our supposed progress toward an ever improving human situation
is
bringing us to a wasteworld instead of a wonderworld....We
need not a human answer to an earth problem, but an earth answer
to an earth problem...We need only listen to what the earth is
telling us...The time has come when we will listen, or we will
die.
Thomas Berry.
The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in
moments
of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of
challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King.
Plutonian Ode by Allen Ginsberg.
... O most
Ignorant matter ever created unnatural to Earth! Delusion
of metal empires!
Destroyer of lying Scientists!
Devourer of covetous
Generals, Incinerator of Armies & Melter of Wars!
Judgement of judgements, Divine Wind over vengeful
nations, Molester of Presidents, Death-Scandal of
Capital politics! Ah civilizations stupidly industrious! ...
(The Pocket Poets Series #40, published 1982 by City Lights Books,
San Francisco.)
Waiting Room at the Rocky Flats Plutonium Plant, by Allen
Ginsberg, 8-17-78.
A green-letter’d shield on the pressboard wall!
“Life is fragile. Handle with care” -
My goodness! here’s where they make the nuclear bomb-triggers.
Mother to Son by Langston Hughes.
&#...Don't you set down on the steps.
Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now -
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
You who harmed a simple man, do not feel secure: for a poet remembers. Czeslaw Milosz.