We're adding a billion people every decade. We're just spin doctors. Whatever we do is supposedly great, and yet it's always at the expense of diversity and nature. We're like elephants. The ecology of the elephant is more similar to human than any other.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the impact of human growth on diversity and nature, likening humans to elephants in ecological terms.
Peter Beard's quote highlights the rapid increase in the human population and critiques the superficiality of our accomplishments, which often come at the cost of ecological balance and diversity. By comparing humans to elephants, Beard suggests that our ecological footprint and interdependence with nature are profound, urging a deeper reflection on our role in the world and the consequences of our actions for both the environment and ourselves.
In practice
In a discussion on environmental policies, one might quote Beard to emphasize the need for sustainable practices.
The carbon emissions from tar shale and tar sands would initiate a continual unfolding of climate disasters over the course of this century. We would be miserable stewards of creation. We would rob our own children and grandchildren.
We cannot interfere in one area of the ecosystem without paying due attention to both the consequences of such interference in other areas and to the well-being of future generations.
You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that we have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is vital not only for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself - a point that seems to escape many people.
Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.
Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.
When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold, Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold; When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!
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