Carbon Quotes

“Lopez counseled, “If you are afraid of what might happen in the future, find a person you respect who does not act out of fear.” If you feel overwhelmed, read the biography of Sojourner Truth or Cesar Chavez. If you think being kind, respectful, and polite is ineffective, listen to Jane Goodall and Robin Wall Kimmerer. If”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“The unraveling of our home planet is a mental disorder in which thoughs and feelings are so impaired they have no relationship to external reality. Wild is the opposite. It is when our thoughts, feelings, and actions are exquisitely sensity to our relationship with the living world and each other.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“There are things we must do, sayings we must say, thoughts we must think, that look nothing like the images of success that have so thoroughly possessed our visions of justice. Báyò Akómoláfé”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“A bow to Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, who constantly remind me that while personal, social, and global dilemmas arise because human desires are endless, the human capacity for compassion, kindness, and selflessness is also endless.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“human history. Renewal results from disturbance. There are astonishing breakthroughs arising from breakdowns, ways of seeing and acting in the world that bring swaths of humanity back to life. The gift that rests at the heart of the myriad crises is newfound purpose.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“you feel ineffective, mentor a child, heal a wounded animal, feed the hungry. If you are weary of chasing hope, read Original Instructions, written and edited by Melissa Nelson, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa. To stop the mind from caving in on itself, go outside. Replace digitized awareness with direct experience. Touch things. Mend and revive a verge, some sullied land, a habitat, your backyard, a relationship. While we storm the Bastille of corporate ignorance and political corruption, introduce native plants to your environment that provide food and sanctuary for pollinators and birds. Learn their names and stories. Wendell Berry counsels us to be joyous though we know all the facts. Although humanity faces what appears to be an insurmountable endgame brought about by ignorance, aggression, and greed, we also live in the most brilliant period”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Protecting megaforests is five to seven times less costly than reducing emissions or planting new forests. In other words, being effective regarding the atmosphere and living world is the least expensive.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“farmers are addicted to an insecticide that will eventually destroy farming.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Previously unthinkable conclusions are commonplace. Insects have cognitive capabilities once reserved for higher primates. Bees count with numbers, remember human faces, have dialects, and only see green when flying but full color when they land on blossoms. Wasps can recognize individual wasp faces. Sleeping jumping spiders might be dreaming when they hang upside down on a thread, curl their legs, and twitch.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“If every US household with an electric clothes drier air-dried their wash six or seven times a year, it would reduce more greenhouse emissions than the Ector County plant and save households $3 billion in electricity bills.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Fungal carbon capture is almost entirely ignored while mechanical methods of direct air capture (DAC) of carbon make for breathless headlines.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“plants direct the equivalent of 13.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually into mycorrhizal mycelia. This is a conservative estimate, not far from the combined annual carbon emissions of China and the United States, the world’s two largest emitters. This is a key entryway for carbon, much of which is taken up by organisms in the soil.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“It is estimated that 90 percent of the Earth’s soils will be heavily degraded by the middle of the century.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Our relationship to the biosphere will determine what lies ahead for humanity. Bending the arc away from blatant degeneration toward ecological recovery depends upon knowledge and respect for the world of plants.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Over 160 countries in the world have chosen to ban American bread, corn, candy, beef, pork, and other foodstuffs because they contain ingredients considered toxic.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“For tribal cultures in the world, the task was always straightforward. When a society is responsible for its health, it will be vigilant about what it eats and consumes, especially when food is seen as deserving of reverence, respect, and gratitude.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“The hormones estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, cortisol, insulin, and melatonin, which determine our mood, weight, libido, sexuality, sleep, and metabolic health, amount to no more than one hundredth of a drop of water in our body.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“When we choose the foods we eat, we either better the world or worsen it, sustain life or dishonor it, improve our health or degrade it. What we eat and how it is grown significantly affects climate and global warming, surpassing all cars, ships, planes, trucks, and railroads in its impact. The food industry severely degrades biodiversity, oceans, rivers, pollinators, grasslands, and animal health.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Today, twelve plants and five animals provide 75 percent of the human diet.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“The unraveling of our home planet is a mental disorder in which thoughts and feelings are so impaired they have no relationship to external reality. Wild is the opposite. It is when our thoughts, feelings, and actions are exquisitely sensitive to our relationship with the living world and each other.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Tallgrass prairies that covered one third of the United States are reduced to less than 4 percent of their range. The shifting baseline syndrome means people see gradual changes only over their lifetime. Unless it is a recent event no one sees a missing wetland. The Earth we inhabit is accepted as normal because we lack a historical perspective.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Atomism is the belief that the world can be understood by studying its most minuscule particles, cells or atoms.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“There are 2.5 million ants for each human being, and the dominant, no-questions-asked majority are female.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Forests capture the most carbon dioxide on land, and existing mature, primary forests are responsible for the great majority...Protecting existing forests would have far more impact between now and 2100 than newly planted forests.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“We have a cognitive bias, dismissing plants and trees as inferior to other life-forms.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“...more than 90 percent of birds feed upon them (moths).”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“US trucks and automobiles kill more than one million vertebrates daily.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“In New York City, more than 700 languages are spoken...There are more languages per square mile in Queens than anyplace in the world.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“Clark's Nutcrackers remember where they buried thousands of pine nuts in up to ten thousand caches within a fifteen-mile range.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life

“French chemist Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth was warmer than it should be given the heat hitting the planet. In 1824, he theorized that gases in the atmosphere must trap heat. In 1837, he predicted that overall levels of warming could change depending on human behavior and activity.”
― Paul Hawken, Carbon: The Book of Life