Holdren Quotes & Sayings

The e-mails are mainly about a controversy over a particular data set and the ways a particular small group of scientists have displayed that dataset. — John Holdren

Reliable and affordable energy is essential for meeting basic human needs and fueling economic growth, but many of the most difficult and dangerous environmental problems at every level of economic development arise from the harvesting, transport, processing, and conversion of energy — John Holdren

The whole climate is changing: the winds, the ocean currents, the storm patterns, snow packs, snowmelt, flooding, droughts. Temperature is just a bit of it. — John Holdren

It's a tale of redemption. It's a tale of a girl who is going on a journey, who makes mistakes as most young people do ... the credit card companies love sending you credit cards so you exceed your limit and they can charge you interest. And this is a girl who overcomes her problems and figures a way out of her financial crisis, and hopefully the world will do the same thing. — Jerry Bruckheimer

Issues of energy, climate change, nuclear arms control and non-proliferation are all big deals. These are problems that we have to get right globally, not just nationally, and there are big benefits in cooperating, in terms of sharing costs, in terms of sharing risks, in terms of propagating the best answers. — John Holdren

A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. — John Holdren

There are lots of excellent analysts out there. John Holdren at the Harvard Kennedy School, who was just president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has been talking about this stuff for years. There are lots of people out there who understand what's going on. The problem is, they aren't much picked up on Fox News. — Paul R. Ehrlich

The great men of antiquity were poor. — Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

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

It is economically irrational to exclude large environmental costs from the balance sheets of the producers and the consumers. You are only kidding yourself if you export those costs on to society as a whole. — John Holdren

It's always the minorities who aren't a part of the mainstream who define what the limits ... of the majority are going to be. — Rose Bird

If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility - just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns - providing they are not denied equal protection — John Holdren

Do you think that angels are detached?" asked — Anne Rice

I really fell into drama school - I had a lot of lot of luck. I didn't take criticism very well while I was there; in fact, I took it personally. With every note I got, I felt like they were telling me I was a bad person. — Charlie Cox

The President's science advisor, who is a former Harvard professor named Holdren, is involved in the email scandals and covering up the fact that data has been lost, the fact that contrary opinions to the global warming crowd has been squeezed out of scientific journals ... Now this is an international conspiracy. — Jim Sensenbrenner

In today's world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children? — John Holdren

After September 11th, I never much liked the trend of everyone and his brother wearing the hats and jackets of the NYPD and FDNY. Only the people who do the job should get to wear the hat. Would you wear someone else's Medal of Honor?
Yes, it's a tribute, and sincere tribute is always appropriate for these brave people. But wearing their symbols is also rubbing off a piece of heroism that isn't yours. — Bill Maher

When I need to see the president, I make a request directly to his scheduler. I don't have to ask anybody's permission to see the president except the president. Some weeks, I see him multiple times. Some weeks, I don't see him at all. — John Holdren

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. — John Holdren

You don't have to do this," Ronan said.
"There isn't anything else, man."
"There's reality."
Kavinsky laughed the word. "Reality! Reality's what other people dream for you."
"Reality's where other people are," Ronan replied. He stretched out his arms. "What's here, K? Nothing! No one!"
"Just us."
There was a heavy understanding in that statement, amplified by the dream. I know what you are, Kavinsky had said.
"That's not enough," Ronan replied. — Maggie Stiefvater

I had dinner recently with a guy who bragged that he had only gotten four hours of sleep that night. I didn't say it, but I thought to myself 'If you had gotten five, this dinner would have been a lot more interesting' — Arianna Huffington

But if there was a heaven this is what it would have felt like. Touching the aether with my bare hands I could never have anticipated this, not from him — Samantha Shannon

I don't like the term 'global warming,' because it's misleading. It implies something that's mainly about temperature, that's gradual, and that's uniform across the planet. And in fact, temperature is only one of the things that's changing. — John Holdren

To date, there has been no serious attempt in Western countries to use laws to control excessive population growth, although there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated. — John Holdren

People are seeing the impact of climate change around them in extraordinary patterns of floods and droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and powerful storms. — John Holdren

But there is a more virulent strain at the root of Western Lysenkoism today. Scientists, like Holdren and Michael Mann, can be leftist ideologues as well, posing to manipulate and mislead for the good of the cause. Bottom line: green is the new red. That is why Obama at root is so committed to it. — Peter Ferrara

A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States ... [we] must design a stable, low-consumption economy. — John Holdren

We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth — Ray Bradbury

I think we ultimately ought to look to put all uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing, if any is done, under multinational control. Those are the two technologies by which nuclear energy can be translated into nuclear weapons programmes. — John Holdren

The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births. — John Holdren

Only one rational path is open to us - simultaneous de-development of the [overdeveloped countries] and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDCs), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between. By de-development we mean lower per-capita energy consumption, fewer gadgets, and the abolition of planned obsolescence. — John Holdren

Even the president's own Science and Technology Office head Mister Holdren says no one single weather event is due specifically to climate change. — Marsha Blackburn

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries' shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits. — John Holdren

The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided for every human being. — John Holdren

We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one - whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen - is hardly grounds for complacency.) — John Holdren

Wildfires are a result of temperature conditions, of soil moisture conditions; and, of course, something has to start it. — John Holdren

Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to choose our own and our descendants' destiny. Failing to choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catastrophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right choices could lead to a much better world. — John Holdren

My understanding is that Exxon, in particular, did fund a variety of small think tanks to generate what amounts to propaganda against understanding of what climate change was doing, the human role in causing it. — John Holdren

I'm a hero with coward's legs. — Spike Milligan

There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated ... It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. — John Holdren