Harry Shearer Quotes

Prediction is a mug's game, but taking the side of water polluters has not been a winning political strategy for 50 years. Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II all undertook to weaken water regulations in the name of economic growth. They left office; the regulations remained.

Americans are conservative. What they want to conserve is the New Deal.

We are committed to cleaning up the air and cleaning up the water. But we also are committed to a strong economy, and we are not going to allow the environmental issue to be used sometimes falsely and sometimes in a demagogic way basically to destroy the system-the industrial system that made this the great country it is.

A lot of people think that regulations bring higher costs, but regulation is also about making sure that someone doesn't get to beat out the competition because they're dumping filth in the river or spewing poisons in the air.

The president has said Republicans want dirty air and dirty water.

[The Clean Power Plan] is an important step toward curbing carbon pollution and addressing climate change.

Environmental laws were not passed to protect our air and water, they were passed to get votes.

The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.

Our national conservation effort must include the complete spectrum of resources: air, water, and land; fuels, energy, and minerals; soils, forests, and forage; fish and wildlife. Together they make up the world of nature which surrounds us- of the American heritage.

We need a race to the top so that we have policies and regulations that protect human rights, the environment and that reduce poverty.

There have been many amazing Presidents in American history, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, all of whom I greatly admire.

Critics play a dangerous game when they denounce the science and law EPA has used to defend clean air for more than 40 years. The American people know better.

I want the cleanest water, the freshest air and wildlife in abundance... but most of all I want a future for our children.

When it comes to the environment and global warming from emissions, it has to be dealt with in one of two ways - preemptive regulations, which I don't agree with, or with private property principles. Nobody has the right to pollute their neighbors' air or water or land.

I had no expectations about Barack Obama and I'm not in the least disillusioned.

The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?

Our mental environment is a common-property resource like the air or the water. We need to protect ourselves from unwanted incursions into it, much the same way we lobbied for non-smoking areas ten years ago.

Basically [Louise] Brandeis was a Jeffersonian. And you say the timing is great, and it is in a lot of senses, except not for [Tomas] Jefferson, because this is a Hamiltonian moment, and he's the rock star of the minute with a great musical.

If you're asking me do we want clean air and clean water? Yes. Do we want a safer climate for future generations of the world? Of course we want that. We're working super hard here in Trump Tower to make sure that happens.

We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor's yard.

Those concerns of a national character-such as air and water pollution that do not respect state boundaries, or the national transportation system, or efforts to safeguard your civil liberties-must, of course, be handled on the national level.

Environmental regulation looked like it was going to be under serious attack, and they were giving all of those speeches about getting government off people's backs.

Nixon was a Southern Rim President, and so antipathetic to the old guard.

And I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be renamed the 'job-killing organization of America.'

Ronald Reagan fought for America. He loved America. He feared where the left, based on history, wanted to take the country.