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We've got to somehow stabilize our connection to nature so that in 50 years from now, 500 years, 5,000 years from now there will still be a wild system and respect for what it takes to sustain us.

Sylvia Earle

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Sylvia Earle
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: August 30
Biologist
Botanist
Explorer
Marine Biologist
Oceanographer
Gibbstown
New Jersey
Sylvia Alice Earle
S.A.Earle
Years
Somehow
Connections
Respect
System
Takes
Stabilize
Nature
Sustain
Stills
Connection
Still
Wild

More quotes by Sylvia Earle

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When you think about the real cost of so-called cheap energy that has driven our prosperity to unprecedented levels, for some of us, to our horror, we've realized that this has the potential for burning brightly and then snuffing out.
Sylvia Earle
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America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.
Sylvia Earle
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We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently.
Sylvia Earle
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The burning of fossil fuels has altered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so rapidly and so abundantly that now, we are driving not just the warming trend, not just the sea level rise that is a consequence of the warming trend that is melting polar ice and alpine ice, but also [ocean acidification].
Sylvia Earle
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Forty percent of the United States drains into the Mississippi. It's agriculture. It's golf courses. It's domestic runoff from our lawns and roads. Ultimately, where does it go? Downstream into the gulf.
Sylvia Earle
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It's taken us a short time to change the nature of nature. In my lifetime, more change than during all preceding human history put together.
Sylvia Earle
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By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing.
Sylvia Earle
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If the sea is sick, we'll feel it. If it dies, we die. Our future and the state of the oceans are one.
Sylvia Earle
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The ocean is our life support system. No blue, no green. It's really a miracle that we have got a place that works in our favor.
Sylvia Earle
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We have found ways to capture, kill and market ocean wildlife on an unprecedented scale. It's an absolute catastrophe.
Sylvia Earle
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Knowledge is the key to making a difference.
Sylvia Earle
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We are blessed with a place that is open to the universe and, despite this, supports this very thin envelope of air we call atmosphere, which holds just the right amount of oxygen for us to breathe.
Sylvia Earle
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There are now more than 4,000 places in the sea around the world that have some kind of protection. The bad news: You have to look hard to find them. What you find instead is destructive fishing, mining, gas and oil exploration.
Sylvia Earle
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Protecting vital sources of renewal - unscathed marshes, healthy reefs, and deep-sea gardens - will provide hope for the future of the Gulf, and for all of us.
Sylvia Earle
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The very energy sources that have gotten us to where we are now are also, if we continue doing what we're doing, a shortcut to the end of all that we hold near and dear.
Sylvia Earle
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It's baffling why the issues relating to climate change - [which] have far more obvious and tangible and much more clear-cut evidence about the cause - have been slower for people to accept as a given.
Sylvia Earle
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Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you're lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you're in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don't see sharks.
Sylvia Earle
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I find the lure of the unknown irresistible.
Sylvia Earle
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Even our rules and regulations, our laws, our policies, favor the destructive nature of taking too much from the ocean and using techniques that are horribly destructive. We know they don't work. We know it's not sustainable.
Sylvia Earle
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No creature on Earth ever has organized themselves in ways that we have, with the capacity to alter the nature of nature the way we have.
Sylvia Earle