Fossil Fuel Quotes - Page 7

• Fossil fuel is very seductive stuff. [John Maynard] Keynes once said that, as far as he could tell, the average standard of living from the beginning of human history to the middle of the eighteenth century had perhaps doubled. Not much had changed, and then we found coal and gas and oil and everything changed. We're reaping the result of that, both ecologically and socially.

  Bill McKibben

  Average, Oil, Seductive

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• The real requirement, if we are to avoid runaway global warming, is probably 80% by 2030, and almost no burning whatever of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) by 2050.

  Gwynne Dyer

  Real, Oil, Environmental

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• I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendents - those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America's youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women.

  Hyman Rickover

  Teacher, Responsibility, Men

  "Energy Resources and Our Future". Remarks at a Banquet of the Annual Scientific Assembly of the Minnesota State Medical Association, www.resilience.org. May 14, 1957.

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• The burning of fossil fuels has altered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so rapidly and so abundantly that now, we are driving not just the warming trend, not just the sea level rise that is a consequence of the warming trend that is melting polar ice and alpine ice, but also [ocean acidification].

  Sylvia Earle

  Ocean, Ice, Sea

  "Her Majesty Of The Deep Blue Sea: An Interview With Dr. Sylvia Earle, Part One". Interview with Dan Linehan, www.mission-blue.org. January 23, 2013.

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• The hardest problem of all is to appreciate the facts that the poor nations are - quite reasonably - not going to forgo their development, and that they can only afford to develop by consuming fossil fuels.

  Philip Kitcher

  Appreciate, Poor Nations, Development

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Today, our incentives aren't set up well - you can make a lot of money burning fossil fuels, digging up wetlands, pumping fossil water out of aquifers that will take 10,000 years to recharge, overfishing species in international waters that are close to collapse, and so on.

  Ramez Naam

  Aquifers, Years, Water

  "Q&A with Ramez Naam: Dialogues on the Environment". Interview with Mark Tercek, bigthink.com.

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• I'm passionate about restoring the efficacy of American democracy, making capitalism sustainable, prioritizing advances in technology, and seizing the opportunities to use that kind of innovation to help usher in a new economy that doesn't rely on carbon-spewing fossil fuels.

  Al Gore

  Technology, Opportunity, Innovation

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• Most Republicans are not prepared to stand up to the fossil fuel industry because they get a lot of their campaign funds from the Koch brothers and other people in the fossil fuel industry. That tells me why we have to reform our campaign finance system.

  Bernie Sanders

  Brother, People, Campaign Finance

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• As long as a handful of U.S. scientists, most receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry, get equal time with hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists, the public inevitably ends up with a misimpression about the state of our scientific understanding.

  Joseph J. Romm

  Long, Understanding, Receiving

  Joseph J. Romm (2007). “Hell and high water: global warming - the solution and the politics - and what we should do”, William Morrow & Co

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• We only gain collectively by acting now. We gain by one day not having to pay a thing for fuel. We gain by having cleaner air, water, and food so that we are healthier and our health care costs come down. We gain by deflating the global fossil fuel markets that drive much of the conflict around the world.

  Mark Ruffalo

  Air, Water, One Day

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• The sooner we get started with alternative energy sources and recognize that fossil fuels makes us less secure as a nation, and more dangerous as a planet, the better off we'll be.

  Lindsey Graham

  Fossils, Energy, Alternatives

  "McCain Collects Alaskan Stories of Global Warming", www.foxnews.com. August 18, 2005.

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• 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

  Rajendra K. Pachauri

  Carbon Emissions, Littles, Fossils

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• The 20th century was the time when the world turned to use of fossil fuels and the 21st century will be the century of the renewables.

  Lester R. Brown

  Use, Fuel, World

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• Yet now the industrialized world is moving away from fossil fuels and moving towards renewable sources of energy. And because we have not invested so much into education, we don't have the technology and sometimes we don't even have the capital to buy this technology.

  Wangari Maathai

  Moving, Technology, Energy

  Source: kenvironews.wordpress.com

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• Human needs are served by a sustainable lifestyle, almost by definition, if humans include coming generations. And a shift to such technologies as high-speed rail instead of maximizing fossil fuel use, and solar energy, is not "relentless resource extraction."

  Noam Chomsky

  Technology, Energy, Needs

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• 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

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• Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production - only to produce a race of bed-wetters!

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Business, Ocean, Race

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• I know we need more nuclear power in order - nuclear power, after all, is not dependent on fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. I believe we're going to be able to have coal-fired plants that have zero emissions. We need to work on carbon sequestration technologies. I mean, there's a lot we can do together and achieve the objective, which a lot of people want, which is the reduction of greenhouse gases, and at the same time, have viable economic growth.

  George W. Bush

  Believe, Mean, Technology

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• A revolution in humanity's use of fossil fuel-based energy would be necessary sooner or later to sustain and to extend modern standards of living. It will be required sooner if we are to hold the risks of climate change to acceptable levels. The costs that we bear in making an early adjustment will bring forward, and reduce for future times, the costs of the inevitable eventual adjustment away from fossil fuels.

  Ross Garnaut

  Change, Humanity, Risk

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• Some molecules - ammonia, carbon dioxide, water - show up everywhere in the universe, whether life is present or not. But others pop up especially in the presence of life itself. Among the biomarkers in Earth's atmosphere are ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons from aerosol sprays, vapor from mineral solvents, escaped coolants from refrigerators and air conditioners, and smog from the burning of fossil fuels. No other way to read that list: sure signs of the absence of intelligence.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Ozone, Air, Water

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• It took me a bit to realize how big the changes have been in the last decade. In so many places - electricity from solar and wind is cheaper than electricity from fossil fuels, and now the batteries are coming down in costs very quickly. So it's very exciting news that needed to be told.

  Al Gore

  Realizing, Electricity, Exciting

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• Solar and wind are now cheaper in many places than some fossil fuels and within the next two years, three, four, five years at the most. What the exponential curve does isn't going to go away. It is totally over for fossil fuels and nuclear. Nuclear's actually gone out.

  Jeremy Rifkin

  Going Away

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• We make movies about remarkable people like President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives in "The Island President" and Al Gore in the film, who get up every day and are driven in an almost inhuman way to make a change in a problem that they see in the world and shine truth into a very dark arena where bad actors try to lie to the American public to gain profits for fossil fuel companies. To us, that's a natural drama. And that's primarily where we work - character-based films that we hope will bring issues to life through their stories.

  Jon Shenk

  Drama, Lying, Dark

  Source: www.rogerebert.com

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• Right now, American government has stepped back from offering any kinds of protection for human rights and public health. And the fossil fuel industry thinks that they have just absolute free rein to go for it. The one thing in the way is public opposition. It's civil society. It's activism.

  Annie Leonard

  Thinking, Human Rights, Kind

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• One problem is that we are heavily dependent upon fossil fuels. And that's where the greenhouse gases come from, by and large, some deforestation, as well. But we have not yet come to grips with how to change that. So that's where we are right now.

  Richard Harris

  Problem

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