Nicholas Stern Quotes

We'd already lost the possibility of stopping global warming entirely. That hasn't been in the cards for a long time. The triumph of Trump probably means that we're not going to be able to stop it at the two-degree mark that the world had been aiming for. That's very bad news, mostly because the planet seems to be more sensitive than we thought to even small increases in temperature.

If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster - just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate.

Even if we were to stop putting out greenhouse gases right now, we'd still face decades of warming.

The planet will continue to cook.

We're clearly not going to stop global warming at this point. We've already raised the temperature of the planet one degree. We've got another degree in the pipeline from carbon we've already emitted. What we're talking about now is whether we're going to have a difficult, difficult century, or an impossible one.

...in just 25 years the glaciers in the Himalayas which provide water for three-quarters of a billion people could disappear entirely.

We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them. Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring. We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great. The most relevant question now is whether our own government is equal to the challenge.

What's at risk [in 100 years] if we do not take action, truly is the survival of civilization as we know it... Literally that is the case. We have seen global warming so far of just a little bit less than one degree Celsius and look at what's happened. Superstorm Sandy. Boulder Colorado. All these fires. Hurricane Irene one year before.

The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril

Those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don't have time to deny it - they're busy dealing with it.

Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change.

Few scientists now dispute that today's soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will cause global temperature averages to rise by as much as nine degrees Fahrenheit sometime after the year 2000.

A rise of 5C would be a temperature the world has not seen for 30 to 50 million years. We've been around only 100,000 years as human beings. We don't know what that's like.

I think we're going to find, with climate change and everything else, things like global warming and goodness knows what else and the cost of fuel for a start, that things are going to become very complicated.

A third of summer sea ice in the Arctic is gone, the oceans are 30 percent more acidic, and since warm air holds more water vapor than cold, the atmosphere over the oceans is a shocking five percent wetter, loading the dice for devastating floods.

If we do nothing, the ensuing climate catastrophe will wreck our economy - including wreaking havoc on our food production systems. All credible scientists agree on this point.

I think climate change is probably the most extreme, and it's been going on for years because it's very difficult to talk about a planetary issue like climate change and to get people who live within four-year electoral cycles to actually pay attention to something that you predict is happening way in the future.

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades.

In Australia, average temperatures have risen almost one degree since 1910, and each decade since the 1940s has been warmer than the one before. That warming is real. Its consequences are real. And it will change our lives in real and practical ways.

I think that it is impossible to think of a threat to social justice greater than what we are doing to the earth's atmosphere at the moment.

I thought if the climate was heating that CO2 was the only forcing, and it would be late in the century before we had trouble. Now that we know about the other half of the forcing, it's obvious that the trouble is coming much sooner.

Global warming threatens the survival of our species.

Global warming is a deadly threat precisely because it fails to trip the brain's alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed.

Don't kid yourself. Global warming is no joke. Here's how serious global warming has gotten to be in the United States. In this country global warming is so bad, we are now actually starting to warm up to Barry Bonds.

Unless we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled.