What did they say?

Project Survival Event Program

Quotes from Project Survival Speakers
January 23, 1970
Northwestern University

"There is something very wrong about the way we're living on this earth....It is the fundamental violence in the world in which we live that divides us. We compete among ourselves, as individuals, and as nations, for the earth's goods, unaware that each of us in our own way is contributing thereby to the destruction of the whole that supports all of us."
~ Dr. Barry Commoner, Washington University

"Our affluence is based on what we take from the underdeveloped countries of the world. Don't kid yourself about it. All you have to do is look where the resources come from and the answer is abundantly clear. As Kenneth Golding has pointed out, we must get away from an economy which focuses on production, consumption and waste. We must drop the idea that you foul your own nest and then move on west.  We must get into an economy where everything is recycled and where everything is built to last. Then we must turn around, once we've started to clean up our own mess, and try to help the other people of the world to some sort of limited development which will give them a decent life without attempting to emulate our mistakes."
~ Dr. Paul Erlich, Stanford University

"A non-humanistic and wholly irreligious view might suggest that the earth has a skin disease. The earth's surface is swarming with a variety of bacteria. Some of them feed on each other and others draw sustenance from the earth itself. One of the most virulent of these infectious agents is man. He feeds on other life forms and also upon the corpus of the earth.  He represents a rather recent stage in the life disease.  It has initiated a major attack on the host itself, burrowing deep into the skin of the earth, electively consuming large volumes of skin for energy, materials, and crop nutrients. And in this consumption, it is irritating an alteration of the composition of the gaseous envelope around the earth and the waters and the land of its surface."
~ Dr. Peter Flawn, University of Texas

"The air we breathe, the water we drink, and our natural resource treasures must have their day in court.  And I say to you all, as students, don't just sit here and bitch; sue somebody!"
~ Victor Yannacone, Esq., Co-founder of Environmental Defense Fund

"Changing the law, I think, means going much further then the President (Nixon) suggested yesterday. Presidents' proposals result basically in headlines, rather then in results. The ten billion dollar program over a period of years is a woefully timid program when we need a courageous, imaginative bold program."
~Paul Simon, Lt. Governor of Illinois

"Politics is the cutting edge. All that we discuss this evening is as nothing unless the national budget is altered, unless our priorities are reordered, unless federal legislation is enacted, unless national, state and local governments act. And the question is, will they?"
~ Hon. Adlai Stevenson, III., Treasurer, State of Illinois

"There is a space station orbiting the world over the heads of people in Africa who don't know whether they are going to have enough food to feed their children tomorrow. It is orbiting over the heads of people in our own nation and state who don't know how to get along with someone of a different shade or a different religion. We are living in a society that has the technological know-how to send a rocket to the moon and to land a man there. Yet we haven't been able to lick the problem of preserving the very air and water that we depend on for our own health and for the very lives of future generations. Then I realize how important it is that you people become part of what is going to be one of the most important struggles facing our nation."
~ Hon. William J. Scott, Attorney General of Illinois

All quotes taken from speeches given January 23, 1970 at Project Survival, Northwestern University; transcribed for the Project's book, "Project Survival," edited by Robert C. Gestleand and John B. Putnam

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