Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who so survive.

Men and their works have been a disease on the surface of their planets before now. Nature tends to compensate for diseases, to remove or encapsulate them, to incorporate them into the system in her own way.

You must cultivate ecological literacy among the people.

The thing the ecologically illiterate don't realise about an ecosystem is that it's a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, flowing from point to point. If something dams that flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That's why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t understand about an ecosystems is that it is a system…that’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.

There is enough water! But Kynes doesn't wish it to be known.

Life improves the capacity to sustain life [...] Life makes needed nutrients more readily available. It binds more energy into the system through the tremendous chemical interplay from organism to organism.