Climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth. — Ottmar Edenhofer
We learned that economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand. — Christopher Dodd
Why has it seemed that the only way to protect the environment is with heavy-handed government regulation? — Gale Norton
Plans to protect air and water, wilderness and wildlife are in fact plans to protect man. — Stewart Udall
A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmental damaging consumption patterns. — Maurice Strong
It is our collective and individual responsibility to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live. — Dalai Lama
The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. — Lady Bird Johnson
The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. Ecopopulism. To change our laws and culture, the green movement justice, political solutions and social change. — Van Jones
A sound eco-environment is the most basic public good that benefits all. — Xi Jinping
Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge, it's common sense. — Ronald Reagan
We try to make earth-friendly decisions whenever we can, as it's part of our brand DNA. — Stella McCartney
If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases. — David Suzuki
Short Environmental Policy Quotes
Raising awareness on the most pressing environmental issues of our time is more important than ever. — Leonardo DiCaprio
The most important issue of the 21st century will be the condition of the global environment. — Ian McHarg
If the environment were a bank, it would have been saved by now — Bernie Sanders
Environmentally friendly cars will soon cease to be an option...they will become a necessity. — Fujio Cho
The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. — Van Jones
If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. The he becomes your partner.
Environmental Issues Quotes
Today, scientists sound the alarm on other environmental dangers. Vested interests still hire their own scientists to confuse the issue. But in the end, nature, will not be fooled. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
The most important environmental issue is one that is rarely mentioned, and that is the lack of a conservation ethic in our culture. — Gaylord Nelson
The fate of the living planet is the most important issue facing mankind. — Gaylord Nelson
People in Slow Food understand that food is an environmental issue. — Michael Pollan
When future generations judge those who came before them on environmental issues, they may conclude "they didn't know": let us not go down in history as the generations who knew, but didn't care — Mikhail Gorbachev
Do not listen to those who say there is nothing you can do to the very real and large social and environmental issues of our time. — Maude Barlow
Honesty is the best policy.
When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands. — Margaret Thatcher
You cannot achieve environmental security and human development without addressing the basic issues of health and nutrition. — Gro Harlem Brundtland
Real security, in other words, is inseparable from issues of energy policy; education; public health; preservation of soils, forests, and waters; and broadly based, sustainable prosperity. — David W. Orr
It is extremely important to me that the social and environmental issues associated with the production of fashion clothing are addressed. — Bonnie Wright
Energy Policy Quotes
But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy...One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy any more. — Ottmar Edenhofer
We must shift the energy policy debate in America with an increased focus on alternative and renewable fuels and Congress must pass meaningful alternative fuels and incentive programs to help move the U.S. away from dependence on foreign oil. — Rick Renzi
As we get closer to the end of this Congress, we should be addressing the urgent needs of the American people - the war in Iraq, affordable health care, a sensible energy policy, quality education for our children, retirement security, and a sound and fair fiscal policy. — Chris Van Hollen
Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
The people see that Wall Street is running our economic policy, that big oil is running our energy policy and the military industrial complex is determining our foreign policy. — Alan Grayson
We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy. — Wendell Berry
The policies being promoted are insane... If you believe energy poverty is a good thing, you should support controls on carbon emissions. But most of the world disagrees with that. — Myron Ebell
For too long, our country's version of an energy policy has consisted of Americans waking up every day and wondering how much it will cost to drive to work, how much it will cost to keep their business running, how much it will cost to heat or cool their homes. — Bob Beauprez
In a world of increasing interdependence, energy security will depend much on how countries manage their relations with one another. That is why energy security will be one of the main challenges of foreign policy in the years ahead. Oil and gas have always been political commodities. — Daniel Yergin
I came here to help make America more competitive and prosperous by developing an energy policy that increases conservation, promotes cleaner technologies, encourages development of renewables and enhances domestic production of gas and oil. — Greg Walden
The White House again refused to turn over discussions Vice President Cheney had with Enron officials over energy policy. Cheney said if he had to disclose every time some business donated a ton of money then came in to write its own policy to govern itself, he wouldn't get any work done. — Dennis Miller
Environmental Protection Quotes
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children — Chief Seattle
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. — Wallace Stegner
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed. — Mahatma Gandhi
Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated. — Ottmar Edenhofer
There can be no lasting prosperity for our people if we do not protect our planet. — Rishi Sunak
Despite Arizona's remarkable growth in recent years, we have met the current federal health standards for ozone pollution and the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved our dust control plan. — Jane D. Hull
The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment. — Ralph Nader
The Long Island Sound is an environmentally unique estuary that needs to be protected. — Tim Bishop
We do not face a choice between protecting our environment or protecting our economy. We face a choice between protecting our economy by protecting our environment - or allowing environmental havoc to create economic havoc. — Robert Rubin
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. — Wangari Maathai
We have to strike a balance of responsibility between our duty to update other sources of energy, protecting the environment, protecting our environment and ensuring a proper legacy for the next generations. — Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan
There is much the government can do and should do to improve the environment. But even more important is the individual who plants a tree or cleans a corner of neglect. For it is the individual who himself benefits, and also protects a heritage of beauty for his children and future generations. — Lady Bird Johnson
We're a part of nature. As we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. It's a selfish thing to want to protect nature. — Yvon Chouinard
Simple, easy actions can protect the health of our water resources and help save drinking water supplies. There is not one individual who cannot help to make a difference to the health of the environment — Ian Kiernan
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that a man's heart away from nature becomes hard. — Luther Standing Bear
To be human is to care for your fellow human beings and protecting the environment. — Jacque Fresco
In fact, because of their connection to the land, farmers do more to protect and preserve our environment than almost anyone else. They are some of the best environmentalists around. — Ike Skelton
You cannot, for instance, sustainably protect the environment if the majority of the people are still in primitive agriculture leading to the encroachment of forest reserves. — Yoweri Museveni
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. — Aldo Leopold
Environment Conservation Quotes
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. — Thomas Fuller
Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom - and lakes die. — Gil Scott-Heron
At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rain forest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity — Chico Mendes
While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment. — Barry Goldwater
The best friend on earth of man is the tree: When we use the tree respectfully and economically, we have one of the greatest resources of the earth. — Frank Lloyd Wright
When you defile the pleasant streams,
And the wild bird's abiding place,
You massacre a million dreams,
And cast your spittle in God's face — John Drinkwater
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. — Paul Brooks
Once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price — Ansel Adams
Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea. — George Carlin
Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them — Aldo Leopold
Environmental Responsibility Quotes
Just like a single cell, the character of our lives is determined not by our genes but by our responses to the environmental signals that propel life. — Bruce H. Lipton
The body is incredibly adaptable and responsive to the environment we put it in. — Rhonda Patrick
As I became more interested in behavior from the standpoint of neurobiology, the stress-response became really interesting. What stress physiology is about is - when there is a new environmental challenge, how does an individual adapt? It seemed like a natural transition. — Robert M. Sapolsky
Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf. — Yvon Chouinard
Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into His face, as if they were of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. — Wendell Berry
Our stewardship of the Earth is brief. We owe it to those who follow to keep that in perspective, to be responsible passengers along the way. — George H. W. Bush
Nuclear power will help provide the electricity that our growing economy needs without increasing emissions. This is truly an environmentally responsible source of energy. — Michael Burgess
Nuclear power will help provide the electricity that our growing economy needs without increasing emissions. This is truly an environmentally responsible source of energy. — Michael C. Burgess
White males are the most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. — Robin Morgan
For nearly 11 years, now, we have been on this mission; we call it, "climbing Mt. Sustainability", a mountain higher than Everest, to meet at that point at the top that symbolizes zero footprint-zero environmental impact. Sustainable: taking nothing, doing no harm. — Ray Anderson
Environmental Problems Quotes
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think. — Gregory Bateson
Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today — Jacques Yves Cousteau
There are nuclear weapons in China, Iran, Korea and Pakistan. It wouldn't take much to send a couple of warheads off on this planet somewhere that would cause a lot of environmental damage, then if you have got someone who wants to retaliate you have real problems. — Edward James Olmos
The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental. — Ingrid Newkirk
The young generation can influence their elders and can make them understand the environmental problems that are faced by us today. The youth can make them see that our environment is deteriorating day by day. — Oren Lyons
Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with people as the cause and end with people as the victims — Edmund Hillary
Most Americans don't know about environmental problems, because we have in our country a negligent and indolent press. The biggest lie that the right wing holds in our country is that there is such a thing as a liberal media. Americans are getting their news from the right-wing media. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are a cancer on nature. — David Foreman
Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don't stop at a nation's borders. — Warren Christopher
Industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems — Cyril Connolly
Environmental Change Quotes
One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew i would never see it again? — Rachel Carson
You become what you do. How and what you become depends on environmental influence so you become who you hang around. Raise the standard your peers must meet and you'll raise your expectations of yourself. If your environment is not making you better, change it. — Mark Twight
Quite frankly, there is no answer to climate change without substantially, dramatically, increasing the amount of renewable energy in the global energy system. — Christiana Figueres
Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change. — Rajendra K. Pachauri
If ordinary people really knew that consciousness and not matter is the link that connects us with each other and the world, then their views about war and peace, environmental pollution, social justice, religous values, and all other human endeavors would change radically. — Amit Goswami
We've polluted the stratosphere with these chlorine and bromine compounds, and because it's now colder, and because we have this change in the climate, we're getting more ozone loss than we would have gotten in a normal year. — Paul Newman
Society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy. — John C. Sawhill
All is connected ... no one thing can change by itself. — Paul Hawken
Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose. — Rajendra K. Pachauri
Real change will only happen when we fall in love with our planet. Only love can show us how to live in harmony with nature and with each other and save us from the devastating effects of environmental destruction and climate change — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Environmental Sustainability Quotes
The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves. — Rachel Carson
Sustainable development is the pathway to the future we want for all. It offers a framework to generate economic growth, achieve social justice, exercise environmental stewardship and strengthen governance. — Ban Ki-moon
The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right — Donella Meadows
Global markets must be balanced by global values such as respect for human rights and international law, democracy, security and sustainable economic and environmental development. — Anna Lindh
This planet might be able to support perhaps as many as half a billion people who could live a sustainable life in relative comfort. Human populations must be greatly diminished, and as quickly as possible to limit further environmental damage. — Eric Pianka
Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours. — Denis Hayes
Where the quality of life goes down for the environment, the quality of life goes down for humans. — George Holland
The future belongs to those who understand that doing more with less is compassionate, prosperous, and enduring, and thus more intelligent, even competitive. — Paul Hawken
No institutions in modern society are better equipped to catalyze the necessary transition to a sustainable world than colleges and universities. They have access to the leaders of tomorrow and the leaders of today. What they do matters to the wider public. — David W. Orr
Our presence on this planet does not seem to be sustainable. Our technical civilization makes up particularly vulnerable. There is talk all over the scientific community about climate change. Many of them [scientists] agree, the end of human life on earth is assured. — Werner Herzog
Environmental Pollution Quotes
We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care is to say in the most literal sense that "we choose death." — Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth
Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you. — Wendell Berry
We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. — Albert Einstein
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us. — Henrik Tikkanen
The sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away. — Stephanie Mills
When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible.... To heal ourselves we must heal our planet, and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves. — Bobby McLeod
Even in the most beautiful music, there are some silences, which are there so we can witness the importance of silence. Silence is more important than ever, as life today is full of noise. We speak a lot about environmental pollution but not enough about noise pollution. — Andrea Bocelli
Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death. — Ayn Rand
All things are bound together. All things connect. — Chief Seattle
Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship. — Ernest Becker
In 100% of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy. If we want to measure our economy, this is how we ought to be measuring - based upon how it produces jobs and the dignity of jobs over the generations and how it preserves the value of the assets of our community. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
I believe in a sound, strong environmental policy that protects the health of our people and a wise stewardship of our nation's natural resources. — Ronald Reagan
We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. — Tim Wirth
This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. — Barack Obama
If the U.S. wants to help people in tsunami-hit countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia - not to mention other poor countries in Africa - there's one step that would cost us nothing and would save hundreds of thousands of lives. It would be to allow DDT in malaria-ravaged countries. — Nicholas D. Kristof
We know taxes slow down economic growth, so if you add a carbon tax you have to also minus other taxes. You can't take more money out of people's pockets. I don't think you can build a consensus in this country about environmental policy if you're going to make people poor. — Christy Clark
...Environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public. — Nicholas D. Kristof
Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbaninzation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. — Stewart Brand
Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs — Jim Clyburn
Environmental policies are not just about good publicity; they are about responding to the moral imperative to address both climate change and resource depletion...A company culture that is based on measuring everything in purely financial terms will be crippled by a high turnover of staff, customers and suppliers — Toby Robins
We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation. — Andrew Weil
We had some major successes and we did so because the country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have to have forward-looking, visionary environmental policy and energy policy in this country. — Jay Inslee
The unmistakable lesson is that such is the myopic zealotry of environmentalists like Obama that they would implement policies virtually guaranteed to harm our economy significantly, even when they offer no promise of appreciable environmental benefits. — David Limbaugh
Sometimes I feel like there isn't enough Prozac in the world to make Environmental Protection Agency people feel better about their jobs. They're going out there, they're trying to protect Americans and then time and time and time again they get their knees cut off at the policy level. — Josh Fox
I thought I was gonna be an attorney, so I went to Dartmouth and I was a government major and I minored in environmental policy, and I didn't do anything academically around the arts. — Aisha Tyler
Climate change is so big that people who study it.. and many do.. need to speak to it. They must present scientific papers, they must appear in public, they must speak to the media and we must hear their voices. In order to get policy right, policymakers.. governments.. need to make decisions based on sound science. — Peter Garrett
Liberals in Congress have spent the past three decades pandering to environmental extremists. The policies they have put in place are in large part responsible for the energy crunch we are seeing today. We have not built a refinery in this country for 30 years. — Marsha Blackburn
We must set an example now and move environmentalism from being the philosophy of a passionate minority ... to a way of life that automatically integrates ecology into governmental policy and normal living standards. — Leonardo DiCaprio
Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, to halt the destruction of the environment. — Al Gore
Contemporary nations such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland, where women are half of the national legislatures, have more caring policies, less violence, and more environmentally sustainable policies. These are connections we must pay attention to if we are to build a better future for us all. — Riane Eisler
The US needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. The revenues from these auctions can be used to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the stagnation. — George Soros
Every concerned citizen and policy maker should read this book. The environmentalists will hate it. The world's destitute masses will love it. And everyone will be challenged by it to reexamine their beliefs and the environmental establishment's claims. — Niger Innis
The strategy behind the Kyoto Protocol has no grounding in economics or environmental policy. — William Nordhaus
Lack of accountability weakens the environmental and health rights of citizens; it damages peace- building and reconciliation initiatives; impedes the implementation of global health policies; leads to the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity; and weakens democracy, justice, human rights, and international security. — Widad Akrawi
This Bush administration has a growing credibility gap, maybe even a credibility chasm, on environmental policy. The President has lost the trust of the American people when it comes to the environment. — Jim Jeffords
All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies. — David Attenborough
I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes. — Jay Inslee
The only way major change in environmental policy is going to happen, the only way, is if there is a very strong, very active popular movement that demands it and such a movement would be unparalleled because it would be a popular movement that says, "Raise our taxes so that we change our behavior." — Dale Jamieson
There are too many bad policy choices to go into that are being pushed by the Trump Administration, but the relaxation of environmental regulations and corporate and banking regulations alone are enough to keep me busy and should be a big concern for every citizen who isn't a billionaire and likes to breathe air. — Shepard Fairey
Climate change hype has grave real world consequences. It gets rich countries to adopt silly policies and to impose devastating eco-imperialism on poor countries. The world's rich millions can afford environmental extremism; its poor billions can't. Climate change pseudo-science about human causality has been exposed repeatedly. What's less appreciated is that there aren't more natural disasters in need of an explanation. — Leon Louw
We need to be rid of the insane policy of environmentalism. No more 'green', anti-growth, anti-science environmental policy. — Kesha Rogers
The people who benefit from this state of affairs have been at pains to convince us that the agricultural practices and policies that have almost annihilated the farming population have greatly benefited the population of food consumers. But more and more consumers are now becoming aware that our supposed abundance of cheap and healthful food is to a considerable extent illusory. — Wendell Berry
In the past we could afford a long gestation period before undertaking major environmental policy initiatives. Today the time for a well-planned transition to a sustainable system is running out. We may be moving in the right direction, but we are moving too slowly. We are failing in our responsibility to future generations and even the present one. — Kofi Annan
What is the environmental policy of the Republican Party? When I ask that question, I get a blank stare, if I'm president of the United States, we're going to address climate change and CO2 emissions in a business-friendly way. — Lindsey Graham
First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore. — Ottmar Edenhofer
Economic growth and environmental preservation are two sides of the same coin. There's no better illustration of that point than the California Clean Tech Open, which challenges California entrepreneurs to bring new, clean technologies to market. I encourage business leaders, policy makers, and environmental advocates to support this innovative, exciting competition. — Terry Tamminen
Ecosystems are holy. The word "environmental" is a deadly compromise itself. It's a policy word that lives only in the head, and barely there. — David James Duncan
But no matter how big the effort to push a propaganda line might be, climate change is bigger. This, undoubtedly and regrettably, is the biggest immediate long-term environmental challenge we face. A failure to concretely come to some policy outcome on climate change has not only a negative environmental impact but also social and economic consequences for us. — Peter Garrett
We need to make growth greener, to make our economic and environmental policies more compatible and even mutually-reinforcing. This is not just a matter of new technologies or new sources of renewable, safe energy. It is about how we all behave every day of our lives, what we eat, what we drink, what we recycle, re-use, repair, how we produce and how we consume — Jose Angel Gurria
Hillary Brown understands that?for our grandchildren's sake?we must rebuild America and, in doing so, re-imagine our interconnected infrastructure systems to make them more efficient, environmentally safe, and resilient in this age of global urbanization. This fascinating and important book should be required reading for our elected officials and policy-makers. — Felix Rohatyn
In Conclusion
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