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Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.

I always saw pollution as theft, and I always thought, 'Why should somebody be able to pollute the air, which belongs to all of us, or destroy a river or a waterway, which is supposed to belong to the whole community?'

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.

Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs.

I think today we recognize that economic activity needs to search for ways to protect the environment.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of really bringing pollution under control.

Pollution is a serious one. Water pollution, air pollution, and then solid hazardous waste pollution. And then beyond that, we also have the resources issue. Not just water resources but other natural resources, the mining resources being consumed, and the destruction of our ecosystem.

Why not pool your resources? And so we broke into the concept of the sacredness of private property.

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.