Quotes & Sayings About Environmental Policy

The strategy behind the Kyoto Protocol has no grounding in economics or environmental policy. — William Nordhaus

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side. — Eric Hobsbawm

We know taxes slow down economic growth, so if you add a carbon tax you have to also minus other taxes. You can't take more money out of people's pockets. I don't think you can build a consensus in this country about environmental policy if you're going to make people poor. — Christy Clark

We need to be rid of the insane policy of environmentalism. No more 'green', anti-growth, anti-science environmental policy. — Kesha Rogers

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an achievement that much of the Republican Party has been trying to undo over the past several decades. Richard Nixon signed into law four landmark federal bills: the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Environmental Pesticide Control Act, and the Endangered Species Act. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, and made many strong environmental appointments in his administration. As we saw in Section 2.2, it was when the Reagan administration came to power in 1980 that environmental concern began to become a partisan issue. — Dale Jamieson

Energy Policy will be and should be driven by environmental policy in the future. — Tim Wirth

We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation. — Andrew Weil

But no matter how big the effort to push a propaganda line might be, climate change is bigger. This, undoubtedly and regrettably, is the biggest immediate long-term environmental challenge we face. A failure to concretely come to some policy outcome on climate change has not only a negative environmental impact but also social and economic consequences for us. — Peter Garrett

We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. — Tim Wirth

Environmental policy must strike a balance between the earth's best interests and our citizen's pressing needs. — Jim Clyburn

I believe in a sound, strong environmental policy that protects the health of our people and a wise stewardship of our nation's natural resources. — Ronald Reagan

Good environmental policy is good economic policy. — Bernie Sanders

But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy ... One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy any more. — Ottmar Edenhofer

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore ... — Ottmar Edenhofer

It's Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. Promoted affirmative action. One could go on and on with Nixon as a New Deal liberal on domestic policy and a hawk, but one with great geo-political skills. — Douglas Brinkley

If the long arc of history bends toward social justice, it also bends toward environmental justice and ecological sanity. — David Jaber

Energy and environmental regulation, transportation, and broadband policy all benefit when legislators have a basic grounding in the technical concepts behind business models, products, and innovation. — John Sununu

In recent years, academics, policy-makers, and experts have raised the question of the applicability of peacetime environmental law in times of armed conflict. — Widad Akreyi

Ecosystems are holy. The word "environmental" is a deadly compromise itself. It's a policy word that lives only in the head, and barely there. — David James Duncan

Fracking is doable if there's full disclosure of all chemicals used. Secondly, science dictates the policy rather than politics. Third, there's collaboration between environmental groups and the natural gas industry. — Bill Richardson

We had some major successes and we did so because the country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have to have forward-looking, visionary environmental policy and energy policy in this country. — Jay Inslee

What is the environmental policy of the Republican Party? When I ask that question, I get a blank stare, if I'm president of the United States, we're going to address climate change and CO2 emissions in a business-friendly way. — Lindsey Graham

A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with. I would rather go before the government with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied.
But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living. — Wendell Berry

This Bush administration has a growing credibility gap, maybe even a credibility chasm, on environmental policy. The President has lost the trust of the American people when it comes to the environment. — Jim Jeffords

Every concerned citizen and policy maker should read this book. The environmentalists will hate it. The world's destitute masses will love it. And everyone will be challenged by it to reexamine their beliefs and the environmental establishment's claims. — Niger Innis

It is a world of extremes, which can be characterised most clearly in terms of exclusion. That means political exclusion, whereby the rights of citizens are marginalised by the interests of big business: George W Bush's environmental policy, for example, is clearly formulated in the interests of U.S. energy companies. — Noreena Hertz

In the past we could afford a long gestation period before undertaking major environmental policy initiatives. Today the time for a well-planned transition to a sustainable system is running out. We may be moving in the right direction, but we are moving too slowly. We are failing in our responsibility to future generations and even the present one. — Kofi Annan

The disaster at the Chernobyl plant, along with the war in Afghanistan and the cruise-missile question, is generally seen today as the start of the decline of the Soviet Union. Just as the great famine of 1891 had mercilessly laid bare the failure of czarism, almost a century later Chernobyl clearly showed how divided, rigid and rotten the Soviet regime had become. The principal policy instruments, secrecy and repression, no longer worked in a modern world with its accompanying means of communication. The credibility of the party leadership sank to the point at which it could sink no further. In the early hours of 26 April, 1986, two explosions took place in one of the four reactors at the giant nuclear complex. It was an accident of the kind scientists and environmental activists had been warning about for years, particularly because of its effects: a monstrous emission of iodine-131 and caesium-137. Huge radioactive clouds drifted across half of Europe: — Geert Mak

Sometimes I feel like there isn't enough Prozac in the world to make Environmental Protection Agency people feel better about their jobs. They're going out there, they're trying to protect Americans and then time and time and time again they get their knees cut off at the policy level. — Josh Fox

The United States inherited a seemingly inexhaustible fortune in natural resources, yet it has responded to its environment with a dismaying mixture of materialism and inertia. The nation was virtually founded upon a ubiquitous desire for access to land and its contents. Its amazing growth during the nineteenth century was based directly upon the exploitation - immediate, unplanned, full use of soils, minerals, forests, and rivers. Equitable access to these natural bounties rather than constitutional guarantees would be the practical basis for democracy. Subsequently, political institutions were shaped in such a way that they could facilitate the disposition of the public domain. But that expectation, as later generations ruefully observed, did not materialize. The combination of economics and government had instead produced a handful of owners and policy makers who were beyond the control of the ballot box. — Elmo Richardson

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes. — Jay Inslee

I thought I was gonna be an attorney, so I went to Dartmouth and I was a government major and I minored in environmental policy, and I didn't do anything academically around the arts. — Aisha Tyler

Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated. — Ottmar Edenhofer