"They have poisoned oceans and rivers and contaminated the air; they have weakened and opened holes in the ozone layer and saturated the atmosphere with gases that impair climate conditions with catastrophic effects that we are starting to feel".
Quotes
"Let’s put an end to the transfer of lifestyles and consumer habits to the Third World that ruin the environment. Let human life be more rational. Let a just international economic order be implemented. Let science work toward a sustainable development without contamination".
"(...) that everything that today contributes to underdevelopment and poverty is tantamount to a flagrant attack on the ecology. As a result, tens of millions of men, women and children perish every year in the Third World, far more than in each of the two world wars. The unequal terms of trade, protectionism and the foreign debt are also an assault on the ecology and facilitate the destruction of the environment".
"(...) that everything that today contributes to underdevelopment and poverty is tantamount to a flagrant attack on the ecology".
"Let the ecologic debt be paid and not the foreign debt. Let hunger disappear and not man."
“We should proclaim with all of our energies that we have the right to breath pure air, to drink uncontaminated water, to feed ourselves with healthy food….we have the right to be educated, to receive medical assistance, to be less poor when others are ever richer.”
“We trust in humanity; we trust in man. And humanity won't let itself be annihilated. It won't let its nature, its waters, its seas, its resources be annihilated.”
"I believe that, rather than weapons the peoples need ideas. They need a change from an inhumane, unsustainable global world that threatens life on the planet, to a just and humanitarian social order that offers humanity an opportunity to survive. The peoples need a world with a bit of drinking water and air to breathe where the necessary food is available and advanced technology can be used to produce housing, schools to educate the children, medicines to preserve human health and medical care indispensable to all, children, adolescents and the elderly".
"World politics and economics moved forward at such a blind and chaotic pace that concepts like the environment, biological diversity, the preservation of nature, dessertification, holes in the ozone layer and climatic changes were barely known or even mentioned a few decades ago. Under a system of anarchic and chaotic production, which eventually gave rise to the current state of imperial, hegemonic and unipolar control, enormous amounts of resources were squandered, nature was significantly damaged, and absurd and unsustainable models of consumption were established, which constitute really unattainable dreams for the immense majority of those who living on the planet today and those who will live on it tomorrow".
“The world’s population was several hundred million, a far cry from the 6.2 billion human beings who now inhabit the planet Earth, the vast majority of them living in the Third World where the deserts keep expanding, the soils are downgraded, the climate changes and harrowing poverty and disease have become a pervasive scourge”.
"The developed countries and their consumer societies, presently responsible for the accelerated and almost unstoppable destruction of the environment, have been the main beneficiaries of the conquest and colonization, of slavery, of the ruthless exploitation and the extermination of hundreds of millions of people born in the countries that today constitute the Third World".
"The crisis will have an especially negative impact on the struggle for sustainable development, the preservation of the environment and the protection of nature from the merciless destruction to which it is being subjected, and which is causing the poisoning of the waters and the atmosphere, the destruction of the ozone layer, deforestation, desertification, and the extinction of animals and plants. How could this possibly not be taken into the slightest account?"