China was asleep during the Industrial Revolution.
She was just waking during the Information Technology Revolution.
She intends to participate fully in the Green Revolution.
The cheapest energy is what you don't use.
There are issues of war and peace. And then, there are issues of life and death
like this one that are no less morally compelling than war itself.
Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find.
I’ve often said that global climate change is an issue where no one has the luxury of being “half-pregnant.”
You either are or you aren’t. And so it is with climate change. You either understand and accept the science – or you don’t.
Folks this isn’t a cafeteria where you can pick and choose and accept the science that tells us what is happening,
but then reject the science that warns us what will happen.
The first time we put standards on a product,
we tend to get objections that this will be the ruin of civilization as we know it.
But then people get used to it.
Perhaps we cannot raise the winds.
But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.
Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not.
With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.
A lot of work and money has been spent on astronomy and yet we have not found life.
So we are rare, and rare things tend to be fragile and you have to be careful about them.
The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change.
In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand;
and we will understand only what we have been taught.
The world's energy system is at a crossroads. Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable… What is needed is nothing short of an energy revolution.
Climate change and global poverty are two sides of the same coin.
Both challenges must be addressed together.
If we fail on one, we will also fail on the other.
Global climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century.
As far as I'm concerned, however, it is clear that the concept of premium
will be increasingly defined through sustainability in the future.
While a large majority of businesses are potential supporters of incentives,
emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes, many executives also believe that
current government policies are not sufficiently coherent or effective.
Still, they remain ready to support policies that are consistent,
clearly linked to saving the environment, and developed in consultation with the private sector.
Seen from the historical point of view the urge for growth has (almost) always outweighed
the striving for justice, growth was in fact a substitute for justice. However, if climate
change were to be viewed as an existential problem of stability and justice – and therefore as a climate disaster,
then the thinking on economic growth might start to change and its limitations might become clearer. There might then
be an ecological “greening” of the global economy – a “Global Green New Deal”, so to speak.
This is by far the most serious crisis civilisation has ever faced.
Time is running out.
There are no local solutions.
Europe and other parts of the world are arriving at a crossroads where we have the choice and
ability to achieve renewable power at scale.
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
You don’t change things by fighting the existing reality,
you change things by building a new model that makes the existing one obsolete.
