We pull out of the ground death, we burn death in our power plants, and then we act shocked when we get death in the form of oil spills and global warming.
Interpretation
The quote critiques humanity's disregard for environmental consequences while exploiting natural resources.
Van Jones highlights a paradox in human behavior: we extract and utilize natural resources, particularly fossil fuels, leading to harmful environmental impacts, yet we express surprise and dismay at the resulting issues such as oil spills and global warming. This reflects a deeper disconnect between our actions and their repercussions on the planet, urging us to take responsibility for the consequences of our choices regarding energy consumption and environmental stewardship.
In practice
In a discussion about climate change during a conference, this quote can effectively convey the irony of our environmental impact.
The surest path to safe streets and peaceful communities is not more police and prisons, but ecologically sounds economic development. And that same path can lift us to a new, green economy - one with the power to lift people out of poverty while respecting and repairing the environment.
Government-mandated and -subsidized ethanol from corn will go down in history as the "Iraq War" of environmental solutions: ill-considered, costly, and disastrous.
We have the chance to build this new energy economy in ways that reflect our deepest values of inclusion, diversity, and equal opportunity for everyone.
Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing?
Our point of view is, lets not be so elitist that we can't honor good, hard, dignified, ennobling work: people working with their hands, building things, putting up solar panels, weatherizing homes, working on organic agriculture, building wind farms. We don't have robots in society, so somebody has to do that work. Lets make sure that the people who can use that work get a chance to do it. I see that as a first step toward bigger and better things.
When you take the people who most need work and connect them with the work that most needs doing, you save. You save that young person’s life, you save a whole bunch of money, and you save the soul of this country when you invest and give people a chance, give people hope, give people opportunity.
I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,_x000D_ Of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains._x000D_ I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,_x000D_ Her beauty and her terror - the wide brown land for me!
Remember...this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas...This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.
I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.
When April winds_x000D_ Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush_x000D_ Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up,_x000D_ Opened in airs of June her multitude_x000D_ Of golden chalices to humming-birds_x000D_ And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.
The tropical rain forests are a telling example. Once cut down, they rarely recover. Rainfall drops, deserts spread, the climate warms.
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