- Derrick Jensen: [from trailer] You may not see any smoke come out of smoke stacks. But that doesn't mean it is not happening.
- Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson: Since 1950 there has been a 40% diminishment of the phytoplankton population of the world. And when you couple that with the fact that we're destroying the world's forest, then what we really have is: this planet has two lungs: one is blue, and one is green; and we are destroying both the green and the blue lungs.
- Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson: The Anthropocene has the potential to wipe out 90% of life on this planet. It won't wipe out everything. But we will go along with these 90%. We won't survive.
- Julia Barnes: Bright green environmentalism has gained popularity because it tells a lot of people what they want to hear: that you can have industrial civilization and a planet, too. It allows people to feel good while maintaining this destructive way of living, and to avoid asking hard questions about the depth of what must be changed.
- Max Wilbert: People think that Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world. But that's only because the tallest Douglas Firs, which were quite a bit taller, have all been cut down.
- Julia Barnes: I spent three years making a film about the Ocean. It is only now that I've learned that the production of so-called 'green' technology represents one of the largest upcoming threats to the Ocean. They want to mine the deep sea, to provide the materials necessary for the proliferation of so-called 'green' energy.
- Julia Barnes: The Ocean, which is the source of all life, has become the next sacrifice zone in the name of 'green' technology.
- Lierre Keith: What I don't understand is why so many are not fighting back. Because what I do know is that anybody alive in a hundred years and looking back on now, they are going to wonder what the fuck was wrong with us, why we didn't fight when the planet was going down. Now you love something, or you wouldn't be listening to this. And whatever you love, it's under assault. But love is a verb. We've got to let our love call us to action.
- Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson: [from trailer] We are in the midst of a sixth major extinction of life on this planet.
- Derrick Jensen: I love the one by John Livingstone, "There is no surplus in Nature." Every tree that's taken out was a home for someone else, was food for someone else.
- David Suzuki: Why don't we do what the forest does? Take this *clean* *free* energy and... and use it, and that for me is the opportunity. Every bit of our clothing should be a solar panel; you know, I've got a backpack that has a solar panel on it, and I can charge my laptop and my cellphone right from the uhm my uhm backpack. I think that hats and everything, uhm... You know in France now they are building a thousand kilometers of highway, and the highway is a solar panel. And that highway, a thousand kilometers, will service I don't know how many hundred thousand homes. And the same thing with concrete sidewalks. Our buildings should be wrapped in solar panels. Not just have them up at the roofs, but everywhere the sunlight hits, let's grab it and use it, the way that a forest does.
- Derrick Jensen: We in this culture have come to conflate life in this culture with all life on Earth. When I say, "I want to end civilization," they go, "Oh, you want t o end life." But the problem is that this culture is ending life. And some people accuse me of being cruel because I want to bring down civilization and that will make it so that people who are reliant on modern medicines will die. I have Crohn's disease and coronary disease and without modern medicines I will die. I am one of these people. But I realize that the world is more important than I am.
- [last lines]
- Julia Barnes: Evidently, this culture doesn't care if the Ocean has a future. It's more interested in justifying continued exploitation under the banner of 'green' consumerism. What we desperately need is an environmental movement that's willing to put Nature first, that's willing to put life on this planet above our way of life. We need people who look honestly at the problems and have the courage to ask the right questions. Most importantly, we need to get to work, stop the destruction, and allow life to come back.
- closing title card: Based on the book: Bright Green Lies by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Max Wilbert