Barack Obama Quotes

I have never believed we had to choose between either a clean and safe environment or a growing economy. Protecting the health and safety of all Americans doesn’t have to come at the expense of our economy’s bottom line. And creating thriving companies and new jobs doesn’t have to come at the expense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or the natural landscape in which we live. We can, and indeed must, have both.

Moreover, environmental health at the local level has become narrowly focused, very much defined around regulations and the attendant regulatory debates.

Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.

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.

The children and nature movement is fueled by this fundamental idea: the child in nature is an endangered species, and the health of children and the health of the Earth are inseparable.

People say that I'm a tree hugger, but I do a lot more than hug trees. I like having my drinking water without faecal matter, that's really nice. Or acceptable levels of strychnine. I'm an air breather, I've gotten used to that over the years.

One of the most unfortunate side effects of the urban activism of the '60s and '70s is the belief that development is wrong and that fighting it makes you an environmentalist.

We can make the world a better place, one butt at a time.

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.

Schoolchildren and older people like the idea of planting trees. For children, it's interesting that an acorn will grow into an oak, and for older people it's a legacy. And the act of planting a tree is not that difficult.

She was green when green wasn't in. From sea to shining sea, Lady Bird Johnson has left her legacy in a more beautiful America. From millions of trees and wildflowers planted, to interstates free from billboards and replaced with green.

We're not trying to reinvent the wheel; for any environmental organization to claim sole responsibility for any kind of victory is insane, because everybody attacks these problems as a group.

Some environmentalists have had the feeling that Indians are not good stewards. I've always been critical of that.

There are some things that we value as a public good that the markets can't deliver, like clean air.

Every once in a while, I get mad. 'The Lorax' came out of my being angry. The ecology books I'd read were dull... In 'The Lorax,' I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality - what a joke. In my district, we caught them lying to us about the results of air quality studies in the Barnett Shale. They are playing with the health and safety of our communities, and we are going to tell them that is not acceptable.

We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation.

Environmental protection doesn't happen in a vacuum. You can't separate the impact on the environment from the impact on our families and communities.

We must not be the generation responsible for irreversibly damaging the environment. We must hand it over to our children in as near pristine condition as we were lent it from our parents.

To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

In many developing countries environmental problems are relegated to the periphery because they do not appear to be as urgent as other issues … We cannot survive without clean drinking water, food and pure air. Environmental concerns are not a luxury in Africa.

One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal. At least one execution for that offense is recorded. But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England.

Every American deserves to breathe clean air.

In the final analysis we all inhabit the same planet, we all breath the same air, we all cherish our children’s future, and we are all mortal.

Pure air, pure water, the inspection of unhealthy habitations, the adulteration of food, these and many kindred matters may be legitimately dealt with by the Legislature;