To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. – Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3 December 1907

The victory of Christianity over paganism was the greatest psychic revolution in the history of our culture. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. – Lynn I. White, Jr., Science, 10 March 1967

We have met the enemy and he is us. – Walt Kelly, Pogo, April 1970