Environment Quotes

"I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn't realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left."

"People in Slow Food understand that food is an environmental issue."

"Hydrogen holds great promise to meet many of our future energy needs, and it addresses national security and our environmental concerns. Hydrogen is the simplest, most abundant element in the universe."

"Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost."

"Over and over, we hear politicians say they can't spend our tax dollars on environmental protection when the economy is so fragile."

"From year to year, environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives, but from evolutionary or geological perspectives, what is happening is explosive change."

"When people align around shared political, social, economic or environmental values, and take collective action, thinking and behavior that compromises the lives of millions of people around the world can truly change."

"The root cause of the looming energy problem - and the key to easing environmental, economic and religious tensions while improving public health - is to address the unending, and unequal, growth of the human population. And the one proven way to reduce fertility rates is to empower young women by educating them."

"Beyond reducing individual use, one of our top priorities must be to move from fossil fuels to energy that has fewer detrimental effects on water supplies and fewer environmental impacts overall."

"We now see numerous examples of brands working together to address issues such as environmental degradations, climate control, pollution, poverty and disease."

"Peace should be understood in a human way - in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights."

"I'd been making music that was intended to be like painting, in the sense that it's environmental, without the customary narrative and episodic quality that music normally has. I called this 'ambient music.' But at the same time I was trying to make visual art become more like music, in that it changed the way that music changes."

"I always felt that if someone shot me, it would be great for the environmental movement, because they would make me a martyr. Our biggest fear was our children, because there was a tremendous amount of threat and intimidation, and my wife was terrified that the children might be grabbed or assaulted in some way. That was the real fear."

"Congressional Republicans are dismantling the limited environmental protections initiated by Richard Nixon, who would be something of a dangerous radical in today's political scene."

"What's it like to envision the ten-thousand-year environmental impact of tossing a plastic bottle into the trash bin, all in the single second it takes to actually toss it? Or the ten-thousand-year history of the fossil fuel being burned to drive to work or iron a shirt? It may be environmentally progressive, but it's not altogether pleasant."

"Unprecedented technological capabilities combined with unlimited human creativity have given us tremendous power to take on intractable problems like poverty, unemployment, disease, and environmental degradation. Our challenge is to translate this extraordinary potential into meaningful change."

"The Moon stabilizes Earth's obliquity. Well, almost. The tilt actually varies between 22 and 24.5 degrees - and the variation is enough to induce such environmental inconveniences as the occasional ice age. Without the Moon, it might be much worse."

"Grave security concerns can arise as a result of demographic trends, chronic poverty, economic inequality, environmental degradation, pandemic diseases, organized crime, repressive governance and other developments no state can control alone. Arms can't address such concerns."

"Over the past several decades, a growing number of investors have been choosing to put their money in funds that screen companies for their environmental and labor records. Some socially responsible investors are starting to add free expression and privacy to their list of criteria."

"If you look at the history of other movements, whether Civil Rights or environmental rights, these are all decades-long undertakings."

"Environmental concern is a phenomena that tends to rise in a nation after a certain level of wealth."

"It took a generation for companies to recognise their responsibilities in terms of labour practices and another generation for them to recognise their environmental obligations."

"Without global human rights, labor and environmental movements, companies would still be hiring 12-year-olds as a matter of course and poisoning our groundwater without batting an eyelid."

"On almost every environmental issue I care about, in fact, I've been wrong at one point or another. I used to think that climate change was no big deal, that most environmental problems were massive exaggerations, that oil reserves were effectively unlimited, and more."

"We know that childhood and adolescence are the most crucial times for environmental stimuli to affect breast cancer risk, but changes made during adulthood and even after diagnosis still have the potential to create positive changes in the body."

"We copied laws and regulations from western countries, but enforcement remains weak, and environmental litigation is still quite near impossible."

"Brands who come to China, often they just care about price - so they actually drive the suppliers to cut corners on environmental standards to win a contract."

"In America, you complain about job losses because of China, but here, we carry all of the environmental costs."

"On April 16, 2010, 34 Chinese environmental organizations, including Friends of Nature, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, and Green Beagle, questioned heavy metal pollution in a letter sent to CEO Steve Jobs."

"It has been shown that public participation can limit powerful interest groups, while competing interests can help find a reasonable balance between development and environmental protection."

"Environmental agencies in China are hamstrung by local officials who put economic growth ahead of environmental protection; even the courts are beholden to local officials, and they are not open to environmental litigation."

"Environmental groups are not completely against dams. We approve of appropriate development."

"China is bearing the environmental cost for much of the world because China is the factory of the world."

"We firmly believe the environmental issues cannot be addressed without extensive public participation, but people need to be informed before they can get involved."

"China has leapfrogged into this information age, and Web users have grown very significantly, which knocked down the cost of doing the environmental transparency."

"The motivation should come from regulatory enforcement, but enforcement is weak, and environmental litigation is near to impossible. So there's an urgent need for extensive public participation to generate another kind of motivation."

"If major companies sourcing in developing countries care only about price and quality, local suppliers will be lured to cut corners on environmental standards to win contracts."

"China leads the world in energy consumption, carbon emissions, and the release of major air and water pollutants, and the environmental impact is felt both regionally and globally."

"China's environmental conundrums will not be solved by changes within government alone. New mechanisms are needed to allow the communities which may be affected by a given plan, and citizens concerned about the environment, to join in."

"We must strictly enforce the Environmental Law, closing down the polluters that fail to meet the standards."

"Urban residents, most of them middle class, have a much better sense of their environmental rights, and they're willing to take to the streets."

"Clinton understands that climate change is real, is caused by human activity and is one of the great environmental crises facing our planet. She knows that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move aggressively to energy efficiency and sustainable energy."

"Meat is a mighty contributor to climate change and other environmental problems. The amount of meat we're eating is one of the leading causes of climate change. It's as important as the kind of car you drive - whether you eat meat a lot or how much meat you eat."

"The goal must be to expand ourselves beyond one field of focus and use our improved access to information to solve the very real and extreme economic, environmental, and resource challenges we face as an interconnected, global society."

"If the U.S. fails to set the rules for global trade, then other countries with records of environmental and labor abuses, like China, will step in to fill the void."

"The world faces enormous human development and environmental challenges, from poverty and disease to food security and climate change."

"Land is a great example of how we can manage and invest in sustainable infrastructure for economic, social, and environmental gains. Its use - and misuse - is at the heart of the challenge for food, fuel, and fibre."

"It is not rational, never mind 'appropriate,' to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits."

"Producing food to eat is the single most destructive environmental activity humans engage in."

"Design our world so that we have positive social and environmental side effects."