We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

Categorized in : Two Roots Population Problem

For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realize that, in order to survive, he must protect it.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

ocean nature travel

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

ocean nature beach

The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

ocean sea men

The future is in the hands of those who explore... and from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for nature and for humankind an infinite love.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

ocean sea hands

From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

free-diving ocean men

The reason I love the sea I cannot explain - it's physical. When you dive you begin to feel like an angel. It's a liberation of your weight.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

angel nature travel

The best way to observe a fish is to become a fish.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

marine sea lakes

When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

leadership opportunity men

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

aquariums ocean air

We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

myopic logic thinking

I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

serious-things play thinking

In the deep space of the sea I have found my moon

Jacques Yves Cousteau

space moon sea

Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

damage-is-done century earth

Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course

Jacques Yves Cousteau

change running life

It is fashionable nowadays to talk about the endless riches of the sea. The ocean is regarded as a sort of bargain basement, but I don't agree with that estimate. People don't realize that water in the liquid state is very rare in the universe. Away from earth it is usually a gas. This moisture is a blessed treasure, and it is our basic duty, if we don't want to commit suicide, to preserve it.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

ocean suicide blessed

No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

marine ocean sea

People protect what they love.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

protect people

Man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

free-diving ocean men

There are no boundaries in the real Planet Earth. No United States, no Soviet Union, no China, no Taiwan...Rivers flow unimpeded across the swaths of continents. The persistent tides - the pulse of the sea - do not discriminate; they push against all the varied shores on Earth.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

real sea rivers

The sea is the universal sewer.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

conservation ocean sea