About Climate Change Quotes & Sayings

It is pretty damn obvious that there are positive impacts of climate change, even though we are not always allowed to talk about them. — Richard Tol

We, the present generation, have the responsibility to act as a trustee of the rich natural wealth for the future generations. The issue is not merely about climate change; it is about climate justice. — Narendra Modi

Just a little climate change. Nothing to worry about. — Bill Nye

In 2007, I received a National Geographic Expeditions Council grant to go around the top of the world and talk to Arctic people about how they've been impacted by climate change. — Gretel Ehrlich

But this raises the question of what happens when the mosaic of faith shatters into a thousand, a million jagged pieces. When the quest for common good devolves into bespoke kindness designed to advance a particular cause for a particular person. Or when citizens forsake all the news that's fit to print for only the news they want to hear. All of these amount to a challenge to efforts at collective action. And from climate change to rising inequality, the enormous challenges that we face demand collective action and a new shared way of thinking about the accretion and use of power. — Moises Naim

In Bangladesh alone, tens of millions are expected to have to flee from low-lying plains in coming years because of sea level rise and more severe weather, creating a migrant crisis that will make today's pale in significance. With considerable justice, Bangladesh's leading climate scientist says that "These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States." And to the other rich countries that have grown wealthy while bringing about a new geological era, the Anthropocene, marked by radical human transformation of the environment. — Chomsky Noam

I am very good at finding snow when there's very little snow. From a day in, day out perspective, I'm fine. I see resorts that are closed because they no longer have snow. It's not my home resort. There are signs all over the place. I'm very passionate about climate change, which is why I created Protect Our Winters. — Jeremy Jones

Part of what's unique about climate change, though, is the nature of some of the opposition to action. It's pretty rare that you'll encounter somebody who says the problem you're trying to solve simply doesn't exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course for the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn't be worth it; it was going to be too expensive, it was going to be too hard, it would take too long. But nobody ignored the science. I don't remember anybody saying that the moon wasn't there or that it was made of cheese. — Barack Obama

Thinking about the world writ large, I am more optimistic than not that we will tackle our most pressing challenges, whether poverty or equality for women and girls or climate change; but I also know we'll only tackle them if people are really informed about the challenge and what's proven to work. — Chelsea Clinton

These people who bang on about saving the planet, it's not the planet they want to save, the planet doesn't need saving. They're concerned solely with preserving the planet so the human race lives on and on, a massive distinction people fail to make — Robert Breeze

Disinformation about the state of climate change science is extraordinarily if not criminally irresponsible ... — Donald Brown

Any objective look at what science has to say about climate change ought to be sufficient to persuade reasonable people that the climate is changing and that humans are responsible for a substantial part of that - and that these changes are doing harm and will continue to do more harm unless we start to reduce our emissions. — John Holdren

Climate change knows no borders. It will not stop before the Pacific islands and the whole of the international community here has to shoulder a responsibility to bring about a sustainable development. — Angela Merkel

This is an opportunity for the port and all of us to make a bold statement about how oil companies contribute to climate change, oil spills and other environmental disasters - and reject this short-term lease. — Ed Murray

Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction; we are already feeling the effects. — Desmond Tutu

What to do about climate change is political, it's social, and it's moral, which is one of the reasons the scientific community reached out to the Pope, to ask for his involvement in this issue. — Naomi Oreskes

I am broadly concerned about the slow death of free speech, but particularly in universities and also with regards to the climate change debate. — Judith Curry

Think about this: terrorism, epidemics, poverty, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction-all challenges that know no borders-the reality is that climate change ranks right up there with every single one of them. — John F. Kerry

We need policy change, and the most important thing people can do is to contribute and participate in the political process. We have to vote climate change deniers and people who will create subsidies for the fossil fuel industry out of office. We have to protest when bad decisions are being made about fracking or tar sands. — Josh Fox

It's absolutely not acceptable for people to argue that, if we are going to do anything about climate change at all, well, the responsibility lies solely with the individual. — Peter Garrett

It's been encouraging to hear the pope talking about climate change and take it away from being a political issue to being one of survival. — Joy Bryant

If we're concerned about climate change as a country, we should have policies that make sure our great-grandchildren have a planet that's healthy and strong. — Cory Booker

Most people bestow tremendous power onto those human beings we consider evil, who cause of threaten harm to others, even though we know they are acting from their own pain or fear. Would ignoring evil disarm it? Don't dismiss the idea. As we have declared War on Terror, a War on Drugs, a War on Poverty, a War on Crime, the problems only seem to have gotten bigger. We cling tthe notion of evil as detrimental, unpredictable force in our world and refuse any suggestion that it is not real. We argue for our fear about terrorism or climate change or economic instability, heatedly trying to prove that things are only getting worse. And in doing so, we reinforce the principle that what we focus on grows. We create our experience by where we place our attention. What we resist, persists. — Ellen Debenport

If we deny climate change and don't care about environmental degradation; we are no more than those people who are willing to be stupid because someone else was stupid in the past. — M.F. Moonzajer

I have not made any suggestions about climate change. This is more about blending or shifting the conversation about the environment versus the economy. It's just such an old, outdated conversation. — Jennifer Granholm

Society has to get a grip and put a tax on carbon. Of course, there is much that flows from that, and it is a complex situation. The small details of something such as climate change are political and social, and they are a lot about fairness and how we rebalance towards a fairer society. — Richard Rogers

I sometimes wish we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening-you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth-that would get people very concerned about climate change. — Thomas Schelling

The four horsemen of the human apocalypse, which cause the most premature and avoidable death in poor countries, are and will be for many years the same: hunger, dirty water, indoor smoke and malaria, which kill respectively about seven, three, three and two people per minute. If you want to do your fellow human beings good, spend your effort on combating those so that people can prosper, ready to meet climate challenges as they arrive. Economists estimate that a dollar spent on mitigating climate change brings ninety cents of benefits compared with $20 benefits per dollar spent on healthcare and $16 per dollar spent on hunger. Keeping climate at 1990 levels, assuming it could be done, would leave more than 90 per cent of human mortality causes untouched. — Matt Ridley

A child born today will experience an increase to sea level of about three to six feet. The rate of change is so remarkable and so dramatic. We are already seeing the consequences of man-made climate change. — Jeff Orlowski

I've obviously come from a health background. I was a doctor before I became a pollie and one of the things I'd like to do is to really build on the world-class health system we've got. I'm passionate about climate change because it's also a health issue. Things like extreme weather impact on people's health, the ability of our hospitals to cope, the impact on mental health, on farmers in regional areas - they're all serious health concerns. — Richard Di Natale

Politicians have responsibility to act if the public opinion changes. Flooding, storms, droughts are all getting people talking about climate change. I wonder if someday Atlanta will run out of water? — David Titley

Ah, to be a conservative climate change denier. While real scientists must do all the research and engage in heated debates about just how bad things are going to be, the deniers can rest easy in the bliss of willful ignorance. — David Horsey

The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge, but all economies know that the only sensible long term way of developing is to do it on a sustainable basis. — Tony Blair

The debate about climate change in many ways is tied to the petroleum industry. If the value of petroleum was considerably less than it is, and the value of coal was considerably less than it is, there would be much less debate about this. — Chuck Klosterman

It is a turn of events that highlights a certain human arrogance about our destructive powers. It is only hubris to imagine that we can destroy nature, or the world. It is the mirror image of the industrialist's egotistical desire to exploit and control it. And it is true that we can kill off continents of forest and destroy species by the thousands, and even wreak climate change. But once we're gone, the rest of nature will rush on, as it has after so many other cataclysms, growing over and through and out of us. The apocalypse we can create is for ourselves and for our cousins, but not for life on Earth. — Andrew Blackwell

The senior British economic thinker on climate, Sir Nicholas Stern, has estimated that if we don't reverse climate change, the costs of dealing with the resulting catastrophe would be as much as twenty percent of the world's Gross Domestic Product. He's saying that if we do nothing about climate change, then we will have to spend a full fifth of our planet's economic energy on dealing with the floods, hurricanes, droughts, food shortages, and epidemics that will result. — Colin Beavan

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. — Freeman Dyson

Climate change was a point of division between Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney. The president declared climate change a global threat, acknowledged that the actions of humanity were deepening the crisis, and pledged to do something about it if elected. — Ron Fournier

This isn't about 'causality' but about 'influence'. The evidence is clear that human-induced climate change is influencing the drought, no matter the cause. — Peter Gleick

I care about climate change because of our children. I want to safeguard their future. — Cate Blanchett

The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe. — Barack Obama

As long as scepticism is based on a sound understanding of science it is invaluable, for that is how science progresses. But poor criticism can lead those who are unfamiliar with the science involved into doubting everything about climate change predictions. — Tim Flannery

It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today. — Jeremy Jackson

As we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony [Abbott] and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world. — Nick Minchin

If we return abruptly to a Miocene-like climate, it's reasonable to think that we would experience a lot of extinctions, and maybe even a mass extinction in the long term. Would the life on Earth be radically different? Of course we can't say for sure, but I think a lot of it would look familiar. Like a lot of people, I worry a lot about whether marine mammals would survive, especially whales. Ocean acidification is one of the major killers in climate change events, and that makes the ocean a very inhospitable place. — Annalee Newitz

We can combat climate change effectively. What we are lacking now is not the brain power, not the knowledge, not the technology. What we are lacking is the political will power, and we need your help by the millions to tell Congress to stop worrying about their fossil fuel contributors to their campaigns and worry about their kids and grandchildren. — Bernie Sanders

The number of hypotheses and theories about climate change are numerous. Quite naturally they have caught the public attention, as any proof of past climactic change points to the possibility of future climate change, which inevitably will have significant implications for global economics. — Eduard Bruckner

One thing we do know about the threat of climate change is that the cost of adjustment only grows the longer it's left unaddressed. — Jay Weatherill

There is oppression that shouldn't exist. There is a struggle for freedom all the time. There are very serious dangers: the species may be heading toward extinction. I can't see how anybody can fail to have an interest in trying to help people become more engaged in thinking about these problems and doing something about them. — Noam Chomsky

The whole new layer on top of what I was thinking about in the nineteen-seventies is climate change," Lovejoy told me. He has written that "in the face of climatic change, even natural climatic change, human activity has created an obstacle course for the dispersal of biodiversity," the result of which could be "one of the greatest biotic crises of all time. — Elizabeth Kolbert

George W. cares as much about climate change as you would expect from a Texas oilman. — Donella Meadows

People are spending way too much time thinking about climate change, way too little thinking about AI. — Peter Thiel

The Yale professor Dan Kahan has done much research showing that our judgments about risks - Does gun control make us safer or put us in danger? - are driven less by a careful weighing of evidence than by our identities, which is why people's views on gun control often correlate with their views on climate change, even though the two issues have no logical connection to each other. Psycho-logic trumps logic. And when Kahan asks people who feel strongly that gun control increases risk, or diminishes it, to imagine conclusive evidence that shows they are wrong, and then asks if they would change their position if that evidence were handed to them, they typically say no. That belief block is holding up a lot of others. Take it out and you risk chaos, so many people refuse to even imagine it. — Philip E. Tetlock

I talk to fashion designers and say I want some money to save the rainforest, and they say, 'Oh, I agree with you completely Vivienne. Yes, climate change, it's definitely happening,' but they don't feel that they can do anything about it; they don't even think 'Well let's stop it!' — Vivienne Westwood

Social movements throughout history take place in people's minds. If we got 5,000 Americans who were talking about climate change to their neighbors and to their coworkers, and talking about this pledge, that would change the political and social landscape so much more than if 5,000 people got arrested for protesting a pipeline. — Margaret D. Klein

Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody's existence on this planet? Clearly we don't really think they should be blown up, that's just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?" [] "We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure - a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change — Franny Armstrong

We've known for some time that we have to worry about the impacts of climate change on our children's and grandchildren's generations. But we now have to worry about ourselves as well. — Margaret Beckett

The climate change debate is basically not about science; it is about ideology. It is not about global temperature; it is about the concept of human society. It is not about nature or scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, about one - recently born - dirigistic and collectivistic ideology, which goes against freedom and free markets. — Vaclav Klaus

But here's the ugly truth: nature doesn't care about democracy, or who's right, or what's fair. And because of the slow-change aspect of climate, we can't wait until the worst effects are upon us to make a decision
by then, it would be far, far too late. The scenario we may be faced with is one where doing something for the wrong reasons, run by the wrong people, may still save more lives than holding out for a more appealing option. — Jamais Cascio

We need to start by having a conversation about climate change. It would be irresponsible to avoid the issue just because it's uncomfortable to talk about. — Al Franken

What do we do about climate change bearing down upon us? — Ken Livingstone

We are launching a campaign called Wind, Not War, which is about the alternatives to a fossil-fuels-based economy and looking at wind, an alternative energy, as key to that in terms of issues of global climate change as well as issues of democracy. — Winona LaDuke

If you love someone, you will want to understand them and accept them as they grow and change; similarly, loving yourself involves a never-ending process of self-understanding and self-acceptance through life's ups and downs...we are finally coming to understand that love for neighbor and love for self naturally lead to love for the earth...if you love your neighbor as yourself, you want both them and you to be able to breathe, so you need to love clean fresh air...you want them and you to be able to drink, so you need to love pure water in all its forms...you want them and you to be be able to eat, so you need to care about the climate...." (p. 59-60) — Brian McLaren

The Republican Party today has a catechism. If you want to be a candidate, with very rare exceptions, you have to repeat the catechism in lockstep uniformity: global warming isn't happening, no taxes on the rich. There are about ten things that you have to repeat, whether you believe them or not. Anybody who departs from them is in trouble. — Noam Chomsky

The doomsayers of the 1970s were wrong about how quickly the world would run out of oil, but not about the dangers that hydrocarbon consumption posed to the global environment, especially with respect to climate change. — Timothy Noah

So while this is a book about fighting back, in the end this is a book about love. The songbirds and the salmon need your heart, no matter how weary, because even a broken heart is still made of love. They need your heart because they are disappearing, slipping into that longest night of extinction, and the resistance is nowhere in sight. We will have to build that resistance from whatever comes to hand: whispers and prayers, history and dreams, from our bravest words and braver actions. It will be hard, there will be a cost, and in too many implacable dawns it will seem impossible. But we will have to do it anyway. So gather your heart and join with every living being. With love as our First Cause, how can we fail? — Derrick Jensen

We loved our homeland for thousands of years which cost us climate change and environmental degradation because we were too selfish to care about the nature, now it is time that we must love our world at least for a little time. — M.F. Moonzajer

Climate change is a controversial subject, right? People will debate whether there is climate change ... that's a whole political debate that I don't want to get into. I want to talk about the frequency of extreme weather situations, which is not political. — Andrew Cuomo

Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis. — Richard Lindzen

We're the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.' — Jay Inslee

I don't feel passionately about politics, i'm not a political person. Is it easy for me to get fired up about someone's position on climate change? No, it's not. On most of these issues, I can see both sides. — Rachel Maddow

This isn't about keeping mountains looking pretty. Ending mountaintop removal is about keeping humanity alive. — Rivera Sun

I think it's very important to invite and encourage people to talk about climate change who have a lay understanding. In general, there is a lot of confusion among climate activists about the role of science, that scientists should be social and political leaders of this movement. — Margaret D. Klein

For Christians, doing something about climate change is about living out our faith - caring for those who need help, our neighbors here at home or on the other side of the world, and taking responsibility for this planet that God created and entrusted to us. — Katharine Hayhoe

I don't know much about climate change. But I'm pretty sure we better figure out what to do to lessen its impact - at least its health impact - and that's not going to happen unless you have a lot of young talent interested in these topics. — Paul Farmer

It is impossible to talk about slowing climate change without talking about reducing CO2 emissions. Equally, it is impossible to talk about adapting to climate change without considering how we will feed ourselves. And it is out of the question that we can adapt agriculture without conserving crop diversity. — Cary Fowler

Maybe more climate activists will think about the climate change not as an international problem to be resolved in an air-conditioned meeting hall, but as a guerilla war to be fought in the streets. — Jeff Goodell

First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible. — William J. Clinton

There is, even today, a Flat Earth Society that meets every year to say the Earth is flat. The science about climate change is very clear. There really is no room for doubt at this point. — Rajendra K. Pachauri

For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric CO2 has continued to accumulate - up about 4 percent in the last 10 years - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That should raise obvious questions about CO2 being the cause of climate change. — Walter Cunningham

Climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world's wealth. — Ottmar Edenhofer

Talk about science with everyone you meet. Especially talk about climate change. It needs to become a part of our everyday conversation (the way it is everywhere else in the world). — Bill Nye

It's hardly surprising that the corporate aliens lie when it comes to the relationship between doing something about climate change and the economy. — Rebecca Solnit

You always have to be worried about something that is considered a so-called 'scientific theory' that fits every scenario. Climate change, as they've defined it, can never be disproved. — Ted Cruz

Being told about the effects of climate change is an appeal to our reason and to our desire to bring about change. But to see that Africans are the hardest hit by climate change, even though they generate almost no greenhouse gas, is a glaring injustice, which also triggers anger and outrage over those who seek to ignore it. — Sigmar Gabriel

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. — Ramez Naam

Those people on the other side, they will answer any question about climate change by saying, 'I'm not a scientist.' Well, I'm not a scientist either. I'm just a grandmother with two eyes and a brain. — Hillary Clinton

We are sliding back into a dark era, and there seems little we can do about it. I am profoundly depressed at just how difficult it has become merely to get a realistic conversation started on issues such as climate change or genetically modified organisms. — Nina Fedoroff

I have often spoken about the importance of intentionality in philanthropy: that it has to stir the soul. This is true whether you are feeding the homeless, mentoring a child or working on climate change. — Charles Bronfman

Psychologically speaking, the rational, healthy response to climate change is to say to oneself, "What can I do about this?" But that question is often answered through individual action. — Margaret D. Klein

Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings. It is a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine what will be different when we are dead. We live out our three score and ten, and tie our knots and lines only to ourselves. We take solace in pictures, and we wipe the hills of history. — Helen Macdonald

On Earth Day I made a commitment to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. And I asked for a blueprint on how to achieve this goal. In concert with all other nations, we simply must halt global warming. It is a threat to our health, to our ecology, and to our economy. I know that the precise magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted. But global warming clearly is a growing, long-term threat with profound consequences. And make no mistake about it, it will take decades to reverse. — William J. Clinton

I think you're never going to get somewhere ambitious if you don't start out with great ambitions. What I would say is: we got a start. That to me is a very significant thing. Here we were, a historic meeting to talk about climate change. — Christy Clark

The most effective solution is to vote! Vote the climate-change-deniers out of office. Then, for John Q. Public, it's all about energy conservation: use less, because most of what we're consuming is from fossilized carbon! — Wesley K. Wark

There are a lot of reasons people don't talk about climate change. One of them has to do with the language of science, and people feeling not competent about this issue. — Margaret D. Klein

A diet that relies heavily on meat production results in higher emissions than a typical vegetarian diet. Different individuals will make different choices. However, the debate about climate change should not be dumbed down to a single slogan, such as 'give up meat to save the planet.' — Nicholas Stern

A person of faith who shares conservative values and who says very clearly that climate change is real - and here's why we have to care about it - I think that we "unicorns" do pose a threat to people who want to muddy the waters and keep others in the dark. — Katharine Hayhoe

The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject. — Ian McEwan

Al Gore completely lied about climate change in an effort to make a lot of money. — Greg Gutfeld

Film 'This Changes Everything' is not a sad story. It's not a slit-your-wrists climate film. It's a story about people who are making change happen. — Avi Lewis