Katharine Hayhoe Quotes

The first thing we can do as individuals and as communities, like a school or a university or a church, is cut our energy use. Do an energy audit or measure our carbon footprint using online carbon calculators that are free, easy, and cheap. Get a list of the ways that we can stop wasting so much energy and save money.

Natural gas is a very flexible source of energy that can help us bridge the gap between our current high-carbon economy and our zero-carbon future.

The word "evangelist" means someone who spreads good news. Studying the impacts of climate change as I do, it's hard to come up with good news. In many ways I feel more like a Cassandra or a Jeremiah than a good-news evangelist.

I don't have to change the world all by myself, I just need to partner in the work God wants us to do.

I don't think there are any churches that have "Thou shalt not believe in climate change" written in their actual statement of faith.

We must prepare for a changing climate by incorporating climate preparedness into every aspect of our planning - for food, water, health, energy, even national security. We must reduce our emissions to prevent even more dangerous change.

If we smoke, there's no magic number of cigarettes, or number of years, that we can smoke before we know we'll get lung cancer.

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.

People have taken advantage of the very well-trodden pathways that divide science and faith on other issues, such as creation, evolution, and the age of the universe, to pigeonhole climate change as yet another variant on the same theme.

My faith tells me that God does want people to understand climate change and do something about it.

I feel like a physician, one who's done a scan of the patient's body and seen evidence of a potentially serious issue.

There is no set period of time or total amount of carbon emissions that we can stay below to ensure we stay safe.

Our carbon emissions have to eventually go to zero. We have to. Otherwise we're never going to have a stable climate and that's what our goal is for human civilization to thrive, a stable climate. We don't want one that's hotter, we don't want one that's colder, we want one that's stable.

It's a new normal and I really do think that global weirding is the best way to describe what we're seeing.

Where I live, if I put solar panels on my roof I'm not allowed to sell that energy back to the grid. I can't change that restriction myself. I need our local decision-makers to fix that.

One of the biggest issues with renewables right now is the fact that if the wind isn't blowing, if the sun isn't shining, we don't have energy. Many people are working on storage technology so when the wind isn't blowing, we can use the energy stored in our giant batteries, essentially. But what happens if we don't have enough stored energy?

We're not paying a real price for carbon. If we were, we wouldn't be using as much. We need to have the right perspective. It's not just about next quarter's financial return. It's about where we want to be in ten years.

When I talk to my neighbor, or to someone at church who doesn't accept that the planet is changing, I know that they don't know any better. They've been told this information by somebody they trust and it's not their fault. They've just never heard otherwise.

We have to fix climate change with the people we have right now, and to a large extent with the perspectives we have right now as well.

We need a price on carbon that accurately reflects its real costs on our society and our wellbeing.

My faith is an enormous motivator for me to engage as well, because climate change is not just an issue that affects the entire planet, it is one that disproportionately affects those who do not have the resources to cope with this change - those whom we are explicitly told as Christians to care for.

There has been a concerted effort to frame caring about climate change and the environment as an alternate religion - one that worships the creation rather than the creator, so to speak.

We have to reach out to churches and schools and help people understand science, and we have to build rapport between scientists and people of faith. Then once we get that understanding and rapport built, then everyone will be on board with climate change.

I think the biggest pushback comes from people who perceive me to be a threat. Having bloggers who are dedicated to making up false information about you, having anonymous people write nasty emails and letters, having organizations file legal requests for your work-related emails, and all the other things that happen can be very depressing and discouraging.

I've even had people tell me that I must not be a Christian because I think climate change is real. But you know, there's nothing in the Bible that says that. The sad truth is that our thought leaders - many of them in the conservative media and politics - are the ones telling us this isn't real, and we are believing them.