Richard Branson Quotes

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.

...if we get the right kind of energy, there are endless amounts. I think we should be developing every kind of alternative fuel that is available to us. That includes hydrogen to soybeans, from solar to wind. Whatever we can find that is going to help us clean up the environment we should be working really hard on developing.

I don't have an interest in any car that isn't good for the environment, other than maybe an aesthetic quality in a picture book.

Manufacturers to Green when it makes more Green.

I'm very excited by biomass and biofuels. We have a company, KiOR, that turns biomass - for instance, wood chips - into gasoline. The potential value of this company is huge. It could compete with regular crude oil without subsidies.

Cities should function more like ecosystems, or even metabolisms. When we build, we should be thinking about how we can integrate into the ecosystems around us, but without sacrificing all the niceties of civilization like good restaurants, concert halls, and high-speed Internet access. I'm saying that partly tongue-in-cheek, but I'm also deadly serious. The future of technology is sustainable ecology.

The foundation is being laid for the emergence of both wind and solar cells as cornerstones of the new energy economy. World wind generating capacity grew from 7,600 megawatts in 1997 to 9,600 in 1998, an expansion of 26 percent. At a national level, Germany led the way, adding 790 megawatts of capacity, followed by Spain with 380 megawatts, and the United States with 226 megawatts. In the past, U.S. wind generating capacity was concentrated in California, but in 1998, wind farms began generating electricity in Minnesota, Oregon, and Wyoming, broadening the new industry's geographical base.

One thing that Barack Obama promised, one thing that we all know we must do is evolve our industry and our technology to being green and sustainable. We need to move away from fossil fuels and nuclear power, both of which I think spell doom for human society.

Getting enough energy to satisfy the needs of the developing world without bringing on an eco-disaster is not going to be easy. It will require a marriage of science and technology with good international policy, something that is always hard to bring off. We need to get it right this time.

We have a business that some people feel pollutes, and I happen to agree with them. ... And so on the basis of trying to do good and, you know, hopefully turn a profit, what we did was we pledged that we'd put all the profits from our airline business into trying to develop clean fuels.

I think for the next 50 years I'm not going to be able to stop because of the light that you shine for me and so many millions of Americans.

The biggest gains, in terms of decreasing the country's energy bill, the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere, and our dependency on foreign oil, will come from energy efficiency and conservation in the next 20 years. Make no doubt about it. That's where everybody who has really thought about the problem thinks the biggest gains can be and should be.

If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases.

The price of a solar panel keeps plummeting, which is why it is so absurd to watch Donald Trump try to somehow revive the expensive and dirty coal industry. We are ready to go, and now we have got I think what is going to be the flag around which progressives rally. Nothing less than 100 percent of renewable energy will do.

The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it.

No amount or combination of alternative fuels is going to allow us to continue running what we're running, the way we're running it.

The choice before us is simple. Will we continue to subsidize the dirty fossil fuels of the past, or will we transition to 21st century clean, renewable energy?

The terrible part of this looming catastrophe is that people have been working on solutions for years and have developed concrete steps to massively reduce our energy use, while stimulating whole new industries and technologies that are more efficient and affordable.

I think we can say our energy system will be the most efficient and environmentally friendly in the world.

The order and harmony of the Western world, its most famous achievement, and a laboratory in which structures of a complexity as yet unknown are being fashioned, demand the elimination of a prodigious mass of noxious by-products which now contaminate the globe. The first thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.

Yes, I met Carl Barat [from Dirty Pretty Things] yesterday when I was at the POPWORLD TV show. He smiled at me and watched 5 minutes of my performance. I don't think I've said anything that bad about anyone, though, to be honest.

Too often we think about the green economy as an elite market niche, one in which affluent people spend more money to consume greener and cleaner products.

I think, there is a possibility - I would say it's more than that - that we will come to a view of foreign policy going forward that learns from the past but doesn't get captured by it.

I think, it is a challenge to get critics or whoever to see past what you wear and makeup and the way you look and just concentrate on the music.

Neurotics think of the past with resentment, and the future with dread; the present just doesn't exist.