“Let the case for the destruction of the earth rest. We are smothered with facts. They are both depressing and endless. What is unsettling is that we are all so apathetic.
The social reasons for our apathy are numerous: religious traditions such as Christianity and Buddhism that glorify acceptance and condemn emotion (particularly anger) and judgment; a liberal ideology that extols relativism, pluralism, tolerance, and pragmatism in internal affairs; the inertia of any social structure; a claustrophobic conformity behind a mask of individualism; and a shortsighted and self-serving love of expediency. The most readily accepted social criticism in our society is cloaked in humor—the political cartoons of Gary Trudeau and Gary Larson, for example. Most of us don’t talk of normal and abnormal or good and evil; we talk about what we like and dislike, as if discussing ice cream. Perhaps what I fear most is that the destruction of the natural world to serve human needs and ideals will become an issue decided by opinion polls and surveys that track the gentle undulations of the true, the good, and the beautiful among a people now ignorant of what was once their wild and beautiful home.”

— Jack Turner. The Abstract Wild (1996)