Carbon Quotes

By fundamentally changing how we design the places and systems that enable our daily lives, we can slash emissions way beyond the immediate carbon savings - because our own personal emissions are just the tip of a vast iceberg of energy and resources consumed far from our view.

I've been to Vulcan where I've been vulcanized, Carbon where you get carbonated and Standard where you get standardized. Ernie Isley's invited me to Castor … and I'm not looking forward to it.

We need to create incentives for our ranchers and farmers to manage their lands to maximize carbon sequestration.

[The Clean Power Plan] is an important step toward curbing carbon pollution and addressing climate change.

Even if Bill McKibben were to become dictator, future generations would suffer because of the carbon we had already emitted.

If you don't like carbon, if you want to be zero carbon, then you might as well shoot yourself, dry up and blow away because you are carbon.

All these corporate reports say they want zero carbon. Well that is ridiculous, because you are not telling us what you are, you are telling us what you are not.

We prefer to talk about 100% renewable instead of zero carbon. When you say zero carbon, you are not positively defined.

We're going to get to the point where we ask how the hell we put up with high carbon for so many years. You thank your lucky stars, because you are seeing this transformation in your lifetime. You are going to tell your children and your grandchildren you saw this whole thing in front of your eyes.

We need to go back to our relationship with nature and understand that those trees are our lungs. The earth is recycling as our body. The rivers are our circulation. This air is our breath. And the star stuff, the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen that comes from distant galaxies is actually the molecules of your body.

The existence of the EPA regulation will require large carbon polluters to look at their hole cards, and some of them have decided that they much prefer legislation.

The sooner we switch away from carbon-based fuel and start relying on renewable energy sources available in the United States, the sooner we will grow our economy by creating the millions of new jobs that will come from retrofitting homes and businesses, building smart grids, renewable energy systems and planting trees and all the rest. We need to create a lot of jobs that can't be outsourced.

A price on carbon sufficient to keep 80% of current reserves underground, rebated directly to citizens.

Only business can build a low-carbon economy. Business is all about seeing ideas and growing them. Businesses have the resources, the people, the technical skills to make things happen - and they have the channels to market

An outdated view still prevails that a low-carbon lifestyle requires immense personal suffering and sacrifice. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth. All the evidence shows that people who do not drive, do not fly on planes, do shop locally, do grow their own food, and do get to know other members of their community have a much higher quality of life than their compatriots who still persist in making the ultimate sacrifice of wasting their lives commuting to work in cars.

We are very confident that the data is showing that carbon capture and sequestration is technologically feasible and it's available. It has been successfully demonstrated and there are full-scale both conventional and unconventional coal projects with CCS that are moving forward. So there is no question that there's continued investment in this technology.

Enlightened self-interest from those involved in hydrocarbons should lead to the support of technologies enabling the clean use of hydrocarbons, such as carbon capture and storage, and not to the defence of deniers and cranks.

If coal is going to be used, the only response - because it is the dirtiest of all fuels - is that we have to learn how to do carbon capture and storage and we have to learn how to do it quickly on a commercial scale.

If you really could take the CO2, when you burn hydrocarbons - coal, for example - if you could really capture the carbon and sequester it - they call it CCS - if the extra capital cost, energy cost, and storage costs over time didn't make it super expensive, then that's another path that you could go down.

Each individual`s way is going to be different. Never follow anybody. That is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. Once you start following somebody else, you become a carbon copy. You become an imitation.

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

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

Some solutions are relatively simple and would provide economic benefits: implementing measures to conserve energy, putting a price on carbon through taxes and cap-and-trade and shifting from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources.

If we do nothing, we still get to a post-carbon future, but it will be bleak. However, if we plan the transition, we can have a world that supports robust communities of healthy, creative people and ecosystems with millions of other species.

1.5 billion people lack proper access to electricity. Many buy kerosene, which can cost 30 percent of their income. It sends millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. And often the lamp will fall over and catch the house on fire. So mothers hate it, but it's their only option.

Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do - to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius.

Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don't chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.

I try to identify myself with the atoms ... I ask what I would do If I were a carbon atom or a sodium atom.

We cannot hope to either understand or to manage the carbon in the atmosphere unless we understand and manage the trees and the soil too.

The world's forests need to be seen for what they are - giant global utilities, providing essential public services to humanity on a vast scale. They store carbon, which is lost to the atmosphere when they burn, increasing global warming. The life they support cleans the atmosphere of pollutants and feeds it with moisture. They act as a natural thermostat, helping to regulate our climate and sustain the lives of 1.4 billion of the poorest people on this Earth.

We need scientists to design new fuels. We need farmers to help grow them. We need engineers to invent new technologies. We need entrepreneurs to sell those technologies. We need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high-tech, zero-carbon components. We need builders to hammer into place the foundations for a clean energy age. We need diplomats and businessmen and women, and Peace Corps volunteers to help developing nations skip past the dirty phase of development and transition to sustainable sources of energy. In other words, we need you.

As president, I'll set bold goals to combat climate change: generate enough renewable energy to power every home in America within 10 years and slash carbon pollution at home and around the world.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you. It will return to the soil, and there a plant may take it up again in time, sending it once more on a cycle of plant and animal life.

Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that - that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.

There is no proof that carbon dioxide is causing or precedes global warming....All indications are that the minor warming cycle finished in 2001 and that Arctic ice melting is related to cyclical orbit-tilt-axis changes in earth's angle to the sun.

A majority of American citizens are now becoming skeptical of the claim that our carbon footprints, resulting from our use of fossil fuels, are going to lead to climatic calamities. But governments are not yet listening to the citizens.

Build high-speed, electrified trains over the most-traveled corridors. It'sreally hard to power carbon-free airplanes, but electrified trains are much easier. We'll be a half century behind the Japanese, but better late than never.

There would be a cost for dumping carbon into our atmosphere and a cap on total emissions. The government must make a clear and firm decision - terminating the idea in our society it is free to pump infinite amounts of carbon into the air. Once that happens, private capital will flow even more aggressively into developing and deploying the alternative, less-polluting technologies.

CO2 from air can replace petroleum: it can produce plastics and acetate, it can produce carbon fibers that replace metals and clean hydrocarbons, such as synthetic gasoline. We can use CO2 to desalinate water, enhance the production of vegetables and fruit in greenhouses, carbonate our beverages and produce biofertilizers that enhance the productivity of the soil without poisoning it. Carbon negative technology is absolutely needed now.

After all, the same steps that reduce carbon pollution also clean the air we breathe, which saves lives and reduces disease.

Some molecules - ammonia, carbon dioxide, water - show up everywhere in the universe, whether life is present or not. But others pop up especially in the presence of life itself. Among the biomarkers in Earth's atmosphere are ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons from aerosol sprays, vapor from mineral solvents, escaped coolants from refrigerators and air conditioners, and smog from the burning of fossil fuels. No other way to read that list: sure signs of the absence of intelligence.

Today, about 40 percent of America's carbon pollution comes from our power plants. There are no federal limits to the amount those plants can pump into the air. None. We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, and sulfur, and arsenic in our air and water, but power plants can dump as much carbon pollution into our atmosphere as they want. It's not smart, it's not right, it's not safe, and I determined it needs to stop.

We can still cap carbon, but that needn't be at the top of the agenda that we communicate to voters.

Some argue that now isn't the time to push the green agenda - that all efforts should be on preventing a serious recession. That is a false choice. It fails to recognise that climate change and our carbon reliance is part of problem - high fuel prices and food shortages due to poor crop yields compound today's financial difficulties.

By kicking its carbon addiction, America will increase its national wealth and generate millions of jobs that can't be outsourced.

By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited... The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.

If you're going to drive a Hummer and buy carbon offsets, that's like getting drunk every night and getting into an AA meeting, throwing money in the basket, and leaving.

The transition to a low-carbon economy will be one of the defining issues of the 21st century. This plan sets out a route-map for the UK's transition from here to 2020...every business, every community will need to be involved. Together we can create a more secure, more prosperous low carbon Britain and a world which is sustainable for future generations.