Notable Ecologists, Environmentalists, & Conservationists Posters “E...-”
for science & social studies classrooms, home schoolers, offices.

Rosalie Edge
Paul Ehrlich

Loren Eiseley

Rosalie Edge
b. 11-3-1877; NYC
d. 11-30-1962

Socialite Rosalie Edge began her activism in the women's suffrage movement and then took her energy to the “widespread and monumental accomplishments in species protection, national park creation and expansion and toxin opposition”.

She has been described as the Al Gore, Jr. of her day and the link between John Muir and Rachel Carson.

Paul R. Ehrlich
b. 5-29-1932; Philadelphia, PA

Biologist and educator Paul R. Ehrlich is best known as an ecologist and a demographer warning about unchecked population growth and limited resources. His equation I = P x A x T refers to the key factors that determing sustainability: Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology.

Paul Ehrlich quotes ~
• “Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism… of sexism… of religious intolerance… of war… of gross economic inequality—But if you don’t solve the population problem, you’re not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem. Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause without population control.”
• “Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water.”
• “The idea that we can just keep growing forever on a finite planet is totally imbecilic.... Julian Simon, a professor of junkmail marketing, and his kind, think technology will solve everything.... We can use up the Earth then we can just jump into spaceships and fly somewhere else.... Technology does nothing to solve problems of biodiversity or living space or arable cropland.... Fresh water and arable cropland are finite resources.... We are already far beyond what we can support sustainably.... The provincial view you get from someone living in some wealthy American East Coast city is wildly different from reality. Most of the world is tropical, hungry and poor. Visit the developing world and southern hemisphere and you get a very different view of reality.”
• “Actually, the problem in the world is that there are too many rich people.”

• Thomas Malthus

Loren Eiseley
b. 9-3-1907; Lincoln, NE
b. 7-9-1977; Philadelphia

Loren Eiseley, an anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, was referred to as “the modern Thoreau”.

Loren Eiseley quotes ~
• “It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.”
• “It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes. This is the final paradox, which men call evolution.”
• “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”
• “If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure.”
• “The creative element in the mind of man . . . emerges in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts.”
• “Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.”

Jacques Ellul
b. 1-6-1912; France
b. 5-19-1994

Jacques Ellul, a philosopher, law professor, sociologist, lay theologian, and Christian anarchist, wrote about the threat to human freedom and Christian faith by modern technology that creates an artificial system which “eliminates or subordinates the natural world.”

Jacques Ellul quotes ~
• “It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.”

The fact that this web site is part of mass media is not lost on me ...