Burning Fossil Fuels Quotes

The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia. ~ James Hansen

What has become clear from the science is that we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet. ~ James Hansen

CO2 is a minor player in the total system, and human CO2 emissions are insignificant compared to total natural greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, lowering human CO2 emissions will have no measurable effect on climate, and continued CO2 emissions will have little or no effect on future temperature ... While controlling CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels may have some beneficial effects on air quality, it will have no measurable effect on climate, but great detrimental effects on the economy and our standard of living. ~ Jonathan Duhamel

Sure, you can say nuclear power is somewhat less carbon-intensive than burning fossil fuels for energy; beating your children to death with a club will prevent them from getting hit by a car. Ravaging the Earth by one irreparable means is not a sensible way to prevent it from being destroyed by another. There are alternatives. We should choose them and use them. ~ Rebecca Solnit

You see, the Greenhouse Effect is a direct result of burning fossil or old carbon fuels. ~ Jack Herer

We need to stop burning fossil fuels and utilize only wind, water, and solar power with all generation of power coming from individual or small community units like windmills, waterwheels, and solar panels. Sea transportation should be by sail ... Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary. ~ Paul Watson

I think that the world is in the middle of a huge transition that we have to make to renewable energy. We have to transition away from fossil fuels very, very quickly. ~ Josh Fox

Burning fossil fuels has given us the gift of seeing ourselves in new ways. But that very gift now enables us to see we've got to change our ways. ~ Sylvia Earle

The high prices also highlight the fact that the U.S. is too heavily dependent on fossil fuels that we import from unstable parts of the world. To protect our national security, we must become more energy secure. ~ Dan Lipinski

Many anti-energy groups display little appreciation of the extent to which modern economies depend pervasively on the use of fossil fuels and petrochemical products. ~ Robert Higgs

Even if we didn't have greenhouse gases, were going to have to move away from fossil fuels, as we're going to run out. They're finite, whereas solar and wind are infinite. ~ Ted Turner

We need an energy revolution by breaking our dependence on fossil fuels, polluting fuels ... I am very, very confident our small state will lead this. We will be noticed by the country and the world. ~ Bernie Sanders

There is more He-3 energy on the Moon than we have ever had in the form of fossil fuels on Earth. All we have to do is to go there and get it. ~ Wilson Greatbatch

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

As long as we're dependent on those fossil fuels, we're dependent on the Middle East. If we are not victims, we're certainly captives. ~ John M. McHugh

I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies. ~ Paul Krugman

So we now know the formula for extinction. Something happens to increase global temperatures five to six degrees, which triggers a melting of the frozen carbon and methane oceanic reserves that then leads to further global warming devastating life on Earth. Thus, the pressing question for us today is this: Can seven billion people on the planet burning fossil fuels imitate the sort of carbon greenhouse gas release caused by the Permian lava flows, or the K/T mass extinction impact or whatever warming caused the PETM? The answer is yes. ~ Thom Hartmann

Pop culture. Nobody does bullshit better than us. Right? China took over manufacturing. And the Middle East has us on fossil fuels. That's just geography and politics. We're a nation of whacko immigrants. Scavengers and con men. We crossed the ocean on faith, stole some land and stone-cold made up a whole country out of nothing but balls and bullshit. Superhero comics got invented by crazy genius Jews who showed up and revamped the refugee experience into a Man of Steel sent from Krypton with a secret identity. ~ Damon Suede

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

The times today are too dangerous for the young and the smart to be not bothered. Know the truth. Remember, "We can deny the truth. But, we can't avoid it." We have been there; we have all been there. Ask a female friend who is fighting for a better pay scale, ask the father of an immigrant who is nervous about the future of his daughter, ask a gay friend who is fighting for the right to marry, ask an African-American friend who wants her younger brother to be unafraid and proud, ask a homeless worker in Bangladesh whose house just got swept by rising sea levels, ask a young child in Beijing who breathes an air polluted by fossil fuels, ask a child labor in India who works ten hours and twelve hours to get two square meals a day. And, when you ask, you will know. You will know why we need to take it personally. ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

I oppose the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It's an ill-conceived project that would lock us into further dependence on some of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet. ~ Elizabeth Warren

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

And my car back then, a Studebaker as I recall, was powered, as are most of all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any left. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't the TV news is it? Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In reality, Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power, bashed energy-efficiency standards, attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar. ~ Jeff Goodell

Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable. ~ Maurice Strong

Our children will work in energy tomorrow - they just won't work in fossil fuels, in the meantime, for social justice, economic justice and stability, we need ... negotiated, planned outcomes that people can touch at both the national and industry and enterprise level. ~ Sharan Burrow

The probability that we face global warming caused by fossil fuels is now so overwhelming that it is legitimate to doubt the motives of those who deny it ~ Adair Turner, Baron Turner Of Ecchinswell

I believe that it is impossible to stop people from using the fossil fuels, so we need to develop technologies which allow us to use them without creating environmental havoc on the planet. ~ Klaus Lackner

WE have to take care of this world. WE can't wait any longer. WE need to stop using fossil fuels. Get behind the green new deal. WE are running out of time. Stop being distracted by reality TV shows in the White House. Climate Change is what Reality looks like.
The mud slides are coming. The rain is coming. The timing is all off. The rain could have saved California. Now it is coming to bury the things we've done. This is what you and I are leaving our kids. Wake up. Love one another. Save one another. The Earth is talking to us. LOVE.
- more at the neil young archives website ~ Neil Young

If aliens did visit us, I'd be embarrassed to tell them we still dig fossil fuels from the ground as a source of energy. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

We have already used more than half of that budget. This means that three quarters of the fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground, and the fossil fuels we do use must be utilized sparingly and responsibly. ~ Christiana Figueres

Developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class-involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing-are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns. ~ Maurice Strong

The 1,230 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power generating capacity in place at the end of 2009 now constitutes just over 25 percent of total generating capacity worldwide. This is over three times nuclear generating capacity and roughly 38 percent of the capacity of fossil fuel-burning power plants worldwide. ~ Christopher Flavin

This year - today - I am repenting of my dependence on fossil fuels. ~ Jim Wallis

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

There is hardly an activity that a person can think about that does not intrinsically involve energy, most of which is currently provided by fossil fuels. ~ Lee R. Raymond

I find it interesting that many of the people who want to restrict fossil fuels live in well-developed countries where abundant and affordable energy is readily available. ~ Lee R. Raymond

A stock market index helps investors track the performance of a group of stocks. NRDC worked with FTSE to develop comprehensive and transparent methodologies that screen out companies linked to owning, exploring, or extracting fossil fuels. ~ Frances Beinecke

Beyond reducing individual use, one of our top priorities must be to move from fossil fuels to energy that has fewer detrimental effects on water supplies and fewer environmental impacts overall. ~ David Suzuki

It is very possible to have lives that are just as prosperous, and nicer, that use 5 percent of the fossil fuels and virgin materials we do now. But if we're living anything like the average McMansion-ite, SUV-driving suburbanites, there's simply no way that can be powered in a climate-friendly way. ~ Alex Steffen

I personally think that a couple of pounds a week - maybe rising to almost £3 a week - is a reasonable price for Britain to achieve a degree of energy security to reduce its total dependence on fossil fuels and to honour its commitments to cut green house gases. ~ Tim Yeo

Enzymes - plainly the most important biotechnology of our era - already permeate many industrial processes. Unlike fossil fuels, they carry chemical programming which drives complex reactions, are renewable, and work at ordinary pressures and temperatures. ~ Gregory Benford

The popular notion is that Americans are addicted to fossil fuels, but I find that's not true; most people would be happy to power their lives with anything else. ~ Bill McKibben

A hundred years ago, this City[...]'s energy production, its food and fuel, came from all over the world, often traveling thousands of miles. People used energy just to ship more energy to the places that needed it. When you're high on fossil fuel fumes, I guess almost anything can make sense. ~ Annalee Newitz

One SF prediction that I would like very much to see: Get solar collectors launched to beam energy back home, and get away from fossil fuels. ~ Jack McDevitt

The single thought that can empower us to empower the world: Mankind's use of fossil fuels is supremely virtuous-because the human life is the standard of value, and because using fossil fuels transforms our environment to make it wonderful for human life. ~ Alex Epstein

Improved energy productivity and renewable energy are both available in abundance - and new policies and technologies are rapidly making them more economically competitive with fossil fuels. In combination, these energy options represent the most robust alternative to the current energy system, capable of providing the diverse array of energy services that a modern economy requires. Given the urgency of the climate problem, that is indeed convenient. ~ Christopher Flavin

Thermophilic composting requires no electricity and therefore no coal combustion, no acid rain, no nuclear power plants, no nuclear waste, no petrochemicals and no consumption of fossil fuels. The composting process produces no waste, no pollutants and no toxic by-products. Thermophilic composting of humanure can be carried out century after century, millennium after millennium, with no stress on our ecosystems, no unnecessary consumption of resources and no garbage or sludge for our landfills. And all the while it will produce a valuable resource necessary for our survival while preventing the accumulation of dangerous pathogenic waste. ~ Joseph Jenkins

In nature the only source of energy is from the sun. So in ecological systems everything comes from the sun through the process of photosynthesis whereas now in human built environment our source of energy is from fossil fuels, renewable, wood energy or hydro-energy but it is not from the sun. So until we are able to operate and run a human built environment by imitating photosynthesis it will be a long while before we can have a true eco-system. ~ Ken Yeang

Wind and other clean, renewable energy will help end our reliance on fossil fuels and combat the severe threat that climate change poses to humans and wildlife alike. ~ Frances Beinecke

This is the one-two punch of an economy built on fossil fuels: lethal when extraction goes wrong and the interred carbon escapes at the source; lethal when extraction goes right and the carbon is successfully released into the atmosphere. ~ Naomi Klein

What we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return ~ Barack Obama

The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil ... . We [will] start to run out of all fossil fuels by the end of this century. ~ David Goodstein

I like the analogy that the way that we live in Western Society, the energy that we consume in the form of fossil fuels, is the energy equivalent in pre-fossil fuel terms of having 500 slaves. ~ John Lindsay

Nuclear power and fossil fuels are the choices of the past. Renewable energy is the choice of the future that is here today. ~ Hermann Scheer

They had known that it would happen. Yet they had not prevented it. Their world had been overused, abused, their forests logged, their precious fossil fuels wasted, their rich obscenely wealthy, their poor reduced to beggary. They had been powerful enough to put up the satellites, they had plated the landscape with their roads, crisscrossed it with their machines. And now where were they? ~ Kerry Greenwood

We basically used oil and aquifer water to temporarily boost the carrying capacity of the land, all for economic growth demanded by Wall Street investors. It's a crazy system that only makes sense when you foist all the costs onto taxpayers in the form of crop subsidies that benefit agribusiness, and defense spending to secure fossil fuels. We're basically paying for corporations to seize control of the food supply and dictate to us the terms under which we live. ~ Daniel Suarez

Permaculture principles focus on thoughtful designs for small-scale intensive systems which are labor efficient and which use biological resources instead of fossil fuels. Designs stress ecological connections and closed energy and material loops. The core of permaculture is design and the working relationships and connections between all things. ~ Bill Mollison

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

Despite all the progress climate scientists have made in understanding the risks we run by loading the atmosphere with CO2, the world is still as addicted to fossil fuels as ever. ~ Jeff Goodell

We discover too late that we have turned a blind eye to the extinction of a species that is essential to the balance of life in a particular context. Or we discover too late that the importation of a foreign life-form, animal or vegetable, has upset local ecosystems, damaging soil or neighbouring life-forms. We discover that we have come near the end of supplies-of fossil-fuels for example -on which we have built immense structures of routine expectation. ~ Rowan Williams

Anyone who would tackle our current addiction to fossil fuels is going to have to maneuver around denial. ~ William H. Calvin

Not using fossil fuels is tantamount to not using energy. It is economic suicide and eco-manslaughter. ~ Paul Driessen