Quotes on Climate Change

It drives me crazy to see so much of this planet's life so casually endangered. The first steps are so easy (drive smaller cars, for instance) that it's very hard to understand why we haven't taken them. But I know that this is the issue our generation will be judged by.

You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.

If we use our fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful, and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations. The heat of the sun's rays represents an immense amount of energy vastly in excess of waterpower...The sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land.

For the economy itself will die if our ecosystems collapse.

We the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency-a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential...the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising...Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on earth itself.

Unless a price can be put on carbon emissions that is high enough to force power companies and manufacturers to reduce their fossil-fuel use, there seems to be little chance of avoiding hugely damaging temperature increases

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?

We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.

We cannot interfere in one area of the ecosystem without paying due attention to both the consequences of such interference in other areas and to the well-being of future generations.

We can't negotiate the facts. We can't negotiate the truth about the situation. And for those who are too fearful to finish, it can be done and must be done. Make sure we succeed, . . . It is wrong for this generation to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every future generation.

I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that's beyond fixing.

A good friend who points out mistakes is to be respected, as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure.

The last few months have seen a welcome race to the top. Consumers have sent companies a clear signal that they do not want their purchasing habits to drive deforestation and companies are responding. Better still, companies are committing to working in partnership with suppliers, governments and NGOs to strengthen forest governance and economic incentives. It can be done and this Declaration signals a real intention to accelerate action.

The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing.

Climate change: It's here. If we don't react, war, pestilence and famine will follow close behind

There is, even today, a Flat Earth Society that meets every year to say the Earth is flat. The science about climate change is very clear. There really is no room for doubt at this point.

If this really is true, then greed really isn't good, after all. It really isn't the way to maximize the best possible outcome. We really do need to come together and act collectively. Government isn't always the problem. It's sometimes the solution. And, so their whole intellectual scaffolding collapses. So, they'd rather deny the science.

Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.

We have embarked globally on a path of unsustainable development. Our lifestyles, the way we produce goods and services, are all part of a system that is completely unsustainable. I see solutions to climate change leading to a much larger philosophical shift in the way human society develops. We need a new matrix to define what human progress is.

Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.