Aquifers Quotes

• What people don't understand is like when water gets polluted, it's an entire aquifer. There's a whole fascinating world that exists underneath our feet that we don't see, therefore we don't relate.

  Erin Brockovich

  Feet, People, Water

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain. As water becomes scarce and countries are forced to divert irrigation water to cities and industry, they will import more grain. As they do so, water scarcity will be transmitted across national borders via the grain trade. Aquifer depletion is a largely invisible threat, but that does not make it any less real.

  Lester R. Brown

  Country, Real, Cities

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• We must keep these waters for wild rice, these trees for maple syrup, our lakes for fish, and our land and aquifers for all of our relatives - whether they have fins, roots, wings, or paws.

  Winona LaDuke

  Lakes, Land, Wings

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• The aquifer [is] the water table people need to keep secure. Nature has this incredible system of water purification under the ground. Ground water is much better to drink than surface water because it filters out the bacteria that can cause all sorts of problems.

  Josh Fox

  Water, People, Tables

  "Gasland: The Fracking of America Josh Fox, Part I". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. December 6, 2012.

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• Just as with other great words, the word environment means different things. You might say that a cave woman twenty thousand years ago sweeping out the cave was improving the environment. Many people improving the environment think only in terms of the air they breathe in their hometown and the water in the aquifer under their hometown. My guess is very few are thinking centuries ahead or thousand of years ahead, but that's what we have to do.

  Pete Seeger

  Mean, Thinking, Air

  "Possibility and Hope". Interview with Linda C. Forbes, monthlyreview.org. January 1, 2015.

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• Our early 21st century civilization is in trouble. We need not go beyond the world food economy to see this. Over the last few decades we have created a food production bubble-one based on environmental trends that cannot be sustained, including overpumping aquifers, overplowing land, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.

  Lester R. Brown

  Land, Civilization, Atmosphere

  6 Copy quote

• I fracked over 3,000 wells in my life and never had a problem with an aquifer.

  T. Boone Pickens

  Problem, Wells

  "An alternative to alternative energy: T. Boone Pickens at TED2012". Interview with Chris Anderson, blog.ted.com. February 29, 2012.

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• Today, our incentives aren't set up well - you can make a lot of money burning fossil fuels, digging up wetlands, pumping fossil water out of aquifers that will take 10,000 years to recharge, overfishing species in international waters that are close to collapse, and so on.

  Ramez Naam

  Years, Water, Digging

  "Q&A with Ramez Naam: Dialogues on the Environment". Interview with Mark Tercek, bigthink.com.

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• From the industry's point of view, the problem is not that coal companies blast the top off mountains, turning the area into a moonscape and polluting the air and releasing toxic chemical into what's left of the local streams and aquifers. It's that the people who live near the mines are too cozy with their cousins.

  Jeff Goodell

  Cousin, Air, Views

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• I look at it this way... For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse.

  George Carlin

  Ocean, Cutting, Men

  "George Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing". TV Special, www.imdb.com. 2005.

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• Capitalism rules worldwide, and a society whose economic fabric depends on constant growth requires that its citizens have ever-expanding needs and wants... In the West, it will take one with soul force equal to Gandhi's to change the prevailing dogma of ever increasing GNP. We may be forced to change our profligate ways some day, when the soil is depleted, the aquifers drained, the icecaps melted, and all the oil wells pumped dry. But the crisis will wait another fifty years or so; we'll leave those problems to a generation yet unborn.

  Philip Yancey

  Years, Oil, Waiting

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• There have been over a million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry, and there is not one, not one, reported case of a freshwater aquifer having ever been contaminated from hydraulic fracturing. Not one.

  Rex W. Tillerson

  Hydraulic Fracturing, Cases, Wells

  "Burning Love" by Elizabeth Kolbert, www.newyorker.com. December 5, 2011.

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• ... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

  Adrienne Rich

  Spiritual, Voice, Poetry

  Adrienne Rich (2003). “What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)”, p.104, W. W. Norton & Company

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