Benjamin Wittes Quotes

Congressional Republicans are dismantling the limited environmental protections initiated by Richard Nixon, who would be something of a dangerous radical in today's political scene.

So that was Reagan's political problem. As a rancher in California, he was an environmentalist himself. But the President of the United States doesn't control everything that happens in Washington.

From global warming to fish and wildlife, we've seen that the Bush administration has little regard for scientific findings that don't support its predetermined policies.

We have very strong environmental laws in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The problem is that they're seldom enforced.

You name it - it is something every day from the Environmental Protection Agency, and every group I talk to is the same message: 'Please stop them. Please stop.'

No clean energy development is complete without extensive environmental protections, and I've been proud to work in a bipartisan fashion with my colleagues in Congress to protect our most precious natural resources.

Stewardship of our air and water is a responsibility that should be free of the bias of politics. What's more, environmental regulators should abide by the law.

Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.

I fight for the environment because we only have one planet, but I see how the environment affects poverty and how the environment affects women around the world.

I reflect back 35 years ago, and look how far we have come in America with our environmental policy to improve the conditions of our air and water, and we have had some real successes.

I cannot in good conscience vote for final passage of legislation that would pave the way to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

My efforts in Congress are guided by the belief that environmental preservation and restoration are a critical part of the legacy we leave to future generations.

The planet doesn't require saving, and actually hasn't asked Greenpeace to save it.

Environmental agencies in China are hamstrung by local officials who put economic growth ahead of environmental protection; even the courts are beholden to local officials, and they are not open to environmental litigation.

There should be more attention paid to scientific research in the ecology area, and I think that such attention to proper environmental concerns would make the public feel much better about it.

Federal elections happen every two years in this country. Presidential elections every four years. And four years just isn't long enough to dismantle all the environmental laws we've got in this country.

I think the government has to reposition environment on top of their national and international priorities.

The language 'It's too late' is very unsuitable for most environmental issues. It's too late for the dodo and for people who've starved to death already, but it's not too late to prevent an even bigger crisis. The sooner we act on the environment, the better.

Let us face it, there is no law in any country - to my knowledge - that makes it illegal to clear-cut forests, nor to erode our topsoil, nor to generate greenhouse gases over and above that which can be absorbed by dwindling natural sinks. What is more, even if such laws were enacted, I can see no effective mechanism anywhere in the world for applying them.

What’s been going on for years is political science, not good science in the environmental area.

We ought to move toward the objective of allowing our state to become number one, not in the protection of toxic substances, but in the prosecution of those who are polluting our environment.

True conservation means protecting the entire habitat.

The current challenge facing the environmental authorities is how to properly deal with the environmental problems caused by economic development.

Government Enviornmental poisitions are tradeoffs. In that process, Democrats tend to worry more about the harm done to the enviornment and the health of the people; Republicans tend to worry more about harm to business and the economy.

I've long believed the environmental issue is an economic issue and a political issue. The three are entwined. You can't build prosperity on any basis other than a long-term basis, and you can't do that if you don't have a healthy environment.