Denis Hayes Quotes

Quotes about:

• Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours.

  Denis Hayes

  Running, Fun, Beer

  51 Copy quote

• I feel more confident than ever that the power to save the planet rests with the individual consumer.

  Denis Hayes

  Environmental, Economy, Individual

  34 Copy quote

• We shouldn't fuel the future with the polluting methods of the past, ... We have the technology to power our future in ways that don't threaten our health or poison our planet. Let's choose to use it.

  Denis Hayes

  Past, Technology, Poison

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• By the year 2000, such renewable energy sources could provide 40 percent of the global energy budget; by 2025, humanity could obtain 75 percent of its energy from solar resources.

  Denis Hayes

  Years, Wind, Humanity

  Denis Hayes (1977). “Energy: The Solar Prospect”, Worldwatch Inst

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• When civilization stands at the edge of a cliff, a step forward doesn't make much sense.

  Denis Hayes

  Civilization, Environmental, Cliffs

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• We got everyone's attention, but we didn't solve any environmental problems.

  Denis Hayes

  Environmental, Attention, Problem

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• Whether you are buying a car or casting a ballot, choosing a job or planning a family, follow your moral compass. Don't let others define you. Don't let advertisers mold you; don't let zealots ensnare you; don't let conventional wisdom trap you....you are part of a much larger whole.

  Denis Hayes

  Jobs, Car, Casting

  7 Copy quote

• Earth Day gathered up those strands, and dozens more, and knitted them together in the public consciousness as "environmental" issues. The nation was pretty startled when 20 million people hit the streets. Congress, which had adjourned for the day to go back to its districts, was blown away.

  Denis Hayes

  Issues, People, Earth Day

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Pric, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

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• Under communism, prices were not allowed to reflect economic reality. Under capitalism, prices don't reflect ecological reality. In the long run, the capitalist flaw -- if uncorrected -- may prove to be the more catastrophic.

  Denis Hayes

  Running, Reality, Long

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• We presently have the technology ... fuel cells, solar cells, hydrogen ... the opportunities are amazing for clean energy.

  Denis Hayes

  Technology, Opportunity, Cells

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• Make Earth Day Every Day.” While we might not always live up to this ideal, I try to keep this quote from Denis Hayes, founder of the Earth Day Network and president of Seattle’s Bullitt Foundation, in mind when I need a little extra motivation to be a better environmentalist: “Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours.

  Denis Hayes

  Running, Motivation, Beer

  9 Copy quote

• As a student of conservation biology, I believe that characteristics with survival value will ultimately prevail. There is no survival value in pessimism. If you think failure is inevitable, that view will probably become self-fulfilling.

  Denis Hayes

  Believe, Thinking, Self

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Price, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

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• With time environmental issues got much more complicated. It is pretty easy, if you know what you are doing, to stop a company from pouring poison into a lake where kids swim. It is much harder to address all the myriad greenhouse gases emitted by different sources - from petrochemical refineries to hundreds of millions of peasants cutting down trees for their incredibly inefficient cook stoves.

  Denis Hayes

  Kids, Cutting, Lakes

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• Environmentally, business in America in 1970 was very similar to business in China today. Even if a CEO wanted to be a responsible corporate citizen, he (and they were all "he's" then) simply couldn't invest a billion dollars in pollution controls to produce a product that was indistinguishable from those of his competitors. His products would be priced out of the market. Passing laws that created a clean, level playing field for whole industries had to be a core focus of the 1970s.

  Denis Hayes

  Law, Pollution Control, America

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Price, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

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• By 1975 - and continuing to today - all Americans came to believe that they had a "right" to a safe, clean, healthy environment. When I grew up, no one seriously criticized the steel mills and paper mills for the deadly stench they produced - that was the smell of prosperity. In the modern society, no one would tolerate such conditions in an American city.

  Denis Hayes

  Believe, Cities, Smell

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Price, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• Politicians had always viewed environmental issues as narrow things of no great political consequence. Sort of NIMBY issues. A big part of the reason was that the groups that cared about wilderness didn't talk with the groups that were trying to stop freeways from cutting through inner cities, and neither of them talked to the folks who wanted to stop the military from dumping Agent Orange on Vietnam.

  Denis Hayes

  Military, Cutting, Cities

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Price, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• The sunshine that strikes American roads each year contains more energy than all the fossil fuels used by the entire world.

  Denis Hayes

  Sunshine, Years, Energy

  Denis Hayes (2000). “The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair”, p.37, Island Press

  4 Copy quote

• We've made some heroic efforts, but the Earth as a whole is in worse shape today than 30 years ago, ... There's been 30 more years of greenhouses gases, species extinctions and population growth.

  Denis Hayes

  Years, Effort, Growth

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• The more subtle thing is more speculative. The world is well past its long-term carrying capacity for human beings living a European, much less an American, lifestyle predicated on planned obsolescence. International economic growth is largely a matter of accelerated movement of materials from mines and forests to the dump. Instead of saving and buying decent furniture we can pass on to our children, we charge our credit cards for shaped heaps of sawdust and glue that fall apart in less than three or four years.

  Denis Hayes

  Children, Fall, Past

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Price, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

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• An acre of windy prairie could produce between $4,000 and 10,000 worth of electricity per year - which is far more than the value of the land's crop of corn or wheat.

  Denis Hayes

  Years, Land, Energy

  Denis Hayes (2000). “The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair”, p.40, Island Press

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• Sustainability requires that we demand enduring quality. Steve Strong has a slide presentation pointing out that much of Oxford was built 800 years ago. What are we building today that will be here 800 years from now? If something like that emerged from this recession, it would help justify the hardship so many people are currently experiencing.

  Denis Hayes

  Strong, Years, Oxford

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Price, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.

  Denis Hayes

  Earth Day, Too Late, Mass

  "Apocalypse Not: Here's Why You Shouldn't Worry About End Times" by Matt Ridley, www.wired.com. August 17, 2012.

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• These are not exhortations from overwrought extremists, but carefully phrased warnings from some of the world's finest scientists.

  Denis Hayes

  Warning, World, Finest

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• That said, I'm embarrassed and furious that so many coal-state Democrats in the U.S. Senate are paralyzing international progress to protect the short term interests of a dying industry that ravages the environment from mine to slag heap.

  Denis Hayes

  Progress, Dying, Coal

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Price, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

• Our goal is to turn solar electric technologies into a commodity business like computer chips, and make them ubiquitous in the built environment. I'd couple this with a huge commitment to fundamental research in nanostructure to goose the next generation of more efficient, cheaper, dematerialized cells. And if I'm truly czar, I'd emphasize silicon technologies, as that approach is the one least likely to encounter material constraints in supplying an explosive global demand.

  Denis Hayes

  Couple, Commitment, Technology

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

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