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We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature.

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
Frighteningly
Altering
Effective
Disaster
Loss
Environment
Nature
Become

More quotes by Sylvia Earle

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The opportunity that is unique [to our] time is what inspires me to do everything I can to move things forward. This is the first time that we have the capacity to understand our place in the greater scheme of things to the extent that we do.
Sylvia Earle
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Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.
Sylvia Earle
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We are not only warming the ocean and the planet as a whole, but we are also acidifying the ocean and changing its chemistry.
Sylvia Earle
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I've spent thousands of hours under water. And even in the deepest dive I have ever made, 2.5 miles (about 4 kilometers) down, I saw trash and other tangible evidence of our presence.
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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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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Look at a child and realize that their future is in your hands. It's not just those who will be here fifty years from now. The decisions we make in the next ten years will shape the next 10,000 years.
Sylvia Earle
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The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.
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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When I arrived on the planet, there were only two billion. Wildlife was more abundant, we were less so now the situation is reversed.
Sylvia Earle
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The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids! They ask question and have a sense of wonder. They have curiosity. 'Who, what, where, why, when, and how!' They never stop asking questions, and I never stop asking questions, just like a five year old.
Sylvia Earle
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We have the capacity to alter the nature of nature. No, we don't have just the capacity - we are altering the nature of nature, the natural systems that cause the planet to function in our favor.
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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Only two percent of the ocean is fully protected right now.
Sylvia Earle
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Globally sharks have been killed for their fins, for their cartilage, for their livers, for their meat. But mostly what has driven some species of sharks to near extinction - including the hammerhead shark - is the new luxury taste for shark fin soup.
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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Most of life on Earth has a deep past, much deeper than ours. And we have benefited from the distillation of all preceding history, call it evolutionary history if you will.
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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If we have a hope of really understanding our place in nature and of carving out a place for ourselves that is sustainable, it's primarily because of the new level of communication. It used to be, 'What you don't have in your mind, you have on your shelf.' But now we have the Web.
Sylvia Earle
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In the past few decades, Earth's natural systems have endured more pressure than in all preceding human history.
Sylvia Earle