Van Jones Quotes

I have long understood that climate change is not only an environmental issue - it is a humanitarian, economic, health, and justice issue as well.

I began to lead two lives... one being a kid and the other starting to speak internationally about the environment... and advocating for social and environmental justice.

Safeguarding our common home is not only essential to protecting endangered species and preserving old-growth forests, it is also paramount to ending poverty, fighting injustice, and protecting the long-term survival of humankind and of our faith.

The environmental movement can only survive if it becomes a justice movement. As a pure environmental movement, it will either die, or it will survive as a corporate 'greenwash'. Anyone who's a sincere environmentalist can't stand that role.

We don't know yet how to build a society which is environmentally sustainable, which is shareable with everybody on the planet, which promotes stability and democracy and human rights, and which is achievable in the time-frame necessary to make it through the challenges we face.

But social justice and the environment are very tied together in my head.

It is futile to seek solutions to environmental disturbances without considering them from a broad perspective that encompasses the factors underlying world poverty and the inequities within and among nations.

Environmental justice is vitally important to the mission of Our Revolution.

We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?

I think I'm becoming a climate activist.

One thing is that you won't get climate action without equity, and Greens around the world have always understood this. This has been the dividing point between the green party of France and Emmanuel Macron: You can't get climate policy without equity.

We have to have a planet to pass on to the next generation, and these issues of climate change and climate justice and the disproportionate burdens that communities of color actually bear from our damaging climate is a huge issue.

I was and am an ardent environmentalist and I am terrified of the instability that climate change will bring.

I think the Greens are posing some of the most important questions of our time, for example how we live sustainably on a planet of finite resources and a rising population, and how do we do that in a way that doesn't exceed environmental limits and which is fair.

I'm a social justice supporter, but there is no social justice on a dead planet.

Tackling the extreme gap between the rich and the poor and tackling climate change is part of the same struggle.

If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planetIt is the poor, those least responsible for climate change and least able to afford adaptation, who would suffer the most.

Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing?

The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle-class straights.

We must act now and wake up to our moral obligations. The poor and vulnerable are members of God's family and are the most severely affected by droughts, high temperatures, the flooding of coastal cities, and more severe and unpredictable weather events resulting from climate change. We, who should have been responsible stewards preserving our vulnerable, fragile planet home, have been wantonly wasteful through our reckless consumerism, devouring irreplaceable natural resources.

Environmental justice [means that] no community should be saddled with more environmental burdens and less environmental benefits than any other.

I think we have reached a stage now where we need to find solutions to economic injustice in the same place and in the same ways that we find solutions to sustainability. Sustainability on environmental grounds and justice in terms of everyone having a place in the production and consumption system - these are two aspects of the same issue. They have been artificially separated and have to be put back again in the Western way of thinking.

Poor people of all colors are getting poorer and our communities are getting more toxic. There is a misconception that to grow our economy we will have to do business as usual, because cleaning up the environment, mitigating climate change is just too costly. Well, I say the business of poverty is just too expensive a bill for humanity to pay any longer.

People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.

Once government's objectives were economic growth and social cohesion. Now they are prosperity, fairness and environmental care