Environmental Quotes

Environmental activism against the resource industry is widespread all over the world, but at the same time we have to realise that these are basic materials on which civilisation depends. We need to tap natural resources in a sustainable manner.

People who run environmental groups and things like that, who have to listen to all kinds of nonsense and keep their tempers, are very diplomatic and very inclusive.

A social impact bond is a new way of bringing financing into social and environmental support issues.

I think environmentalists do no service to their cause by taking fundamentalist stances. I am not defending corporate India's track record, but for many environmental problems, there are technological solutions.

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.

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.

Lady Bird Johnson did more than plant flowers in public places. She served the country superbly by planting environmental values in the minds of the nation's leaders and citizens.

The environmental effects of the automobile are well known: motor vehicles cause, for example, as much as 75 percent of the noise and 80 percent of the air pollution in our cities, and the industry must face mounting pressure from environmentalists.

Climate change is not a discrete issue; it's a symptom of larger problems. Fundamentally, our society as currently designed has no future. We're chewing up the planet so fast, in so many different ways, that we could solve the climate problem tomorrow and still find that environmental collapse is imminent.

The problem with holistic management is it's so profoundly simple, but it's not easy. And it's profoundly simple. You're almost insulting people's intelligence to explain it twice, just about making better decisions of where you want to go in your life, bringing in environmental, social, economic issues simultaneously.

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.

The planet's environmental woes tend to be overlooked as we scramble for the latest high-tech gizmos - and conveniently ignore their energy consumption.

We always hear from newspapers that while people understand the environmental challenge, they are unwilling to stomach the solutions. The trouble is, we only ever hear about the solutions from the media, and for whatever reason, they are almost always caricatured beyond recognition. If there's no appetite for green, it's not surprising.

Politicians usually get the blame for dragging their feet on environmental issues. And fair enough. Most of them do just that. But the blame isn't theirs alone. For politicians afraid of losing votes, a bristling media waiting to transform good green ideas into monsters is a colossal disincentive.

Politics colours everything, and anyone who wants change is necessarily political. As an environmental campaigner more or less since I left school in the early '90s, I have always been involved in lobbying, campaigning and pushing for changes.

Environmental spending creates jobs in engineering, manufacturing, construction, materials, operations and maintenance.

The environmental movement's focus on the Keystone XL pipeline issue really used to baffle me.

'Green' is likely to be a big issue in the 2008 U.S. presidential election - largely in response to George Bush's suicidal refusal to engage with environmental issues.

For the U.S., I think we should have a carbon tax, for environmental reasons.

The way to make the world a better place, through your eating, is simply to eat a bit less meat. Local is sometimes good, sometimes bad. But even when it's good, its environmental impact is relatively small compared to other possible improvements.