We understand it, but we do not respect it. This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself. Autumn 1990 Filthy water cannot be washed. If you could tomorrow morning make water clean in the world, you would have done, in one fell swoop, the best thing you could have done for improving human health by improving environmental quality. Living systems cleanse water and make it fit, among other things, for human consumption.
Many estuaries produce more harvestable human food per acre than the best midwestern farmland.
Life originated in the sea, and about eighty percent of it is still there. The oceans are the plant's last great living wilderness, man's only remaining frontier on earth, and perhaps his last chance to produce himself a rational species. The marsh, to him who enters it in a receptive mood, holds, besides mosquitoes and stagnation, melody, the mystery of unknown waters, and the sweetness of Nature undisturbed by man. 1906 Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free, Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea.