Frances Beinecke Quotes

It's imperative that we opt out of the fossil fuel endgame.

If we want to address global warming, along with the other environmental problems associated with our continued rush to burn our precious fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we must learn to use our resources more wisely, kick our addiction, and quickly start turning to sources of energy that have fewer negative impacts.

Coal is responsible for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as other fossil fuels combined and it still has far greater reserves. We must stop using it.

The problem with cap-and-trade and programs such as carbon capture and storage is that they all assume that business as usual can continue. The financial meltdown and peak oil has pretty much demonstrated that business as usual's not going to work.

I certainly would like to see the war on coal come to an end.

We clearly have to reduce harmful energy emissions. Everyone acknowledges we simply can't switch off fossil fuels overnight.

As a member of both the energy and environment committees, I am constantly astounded by how many of my colleagues prefer to focus on what the government can do for the nuclear or coal industries rather than why the government should support clean and sustainable energy.

The U.S. limits mercury, arsenic, and soot from power plants. Yet, astonishingly, there are no national limits on how much carbon pollution these plants can dump into our atmosphere.

I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies.

Since stepping down as laboratory director in 1999, I have devoted an increasing fraction of my time to international issues. I am involved with energy, environment, and sustainability issues, particularly as they involve new energy sources free of greenhouse gases.

The question of energy is an important one. The big issue is how to get it, how not to destroy the environment, and how to survive as a species. It's a big deal.

Energy is the issue I care most about.

I have to have faith that we're going to succeed in transforming where we get our energy from. The big worry is whether or not we're going to do it before it's too late. And I think nobody knows the answer to that.

Our society, our culture - the greatness of America - goes hand-in-hand with energy, and our leaders need to wake up. We need energy, OK?

I think really what needs to happen is the people of the United States need to stand up and say, 'Oil is an energy model from the past. It doesn't work for the planet, it doesn't work for the people, it never has and it never will.'

The idea that we are going to be able to take our entire society as it currently works and simply change the source of energy and make it sustainable is not actually congruent with reality.

It's as certain that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, we will just keep burning them.

Why would we build a thousand mile pipeline taking almost a million barrels of oil from the most carbon intensive fuel source on the planet when wind energy is a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot cleaner.

I think, in the long run, we have to wean ourselves from a carbon-based economy. We absolutely have to.

There are a lot of people doing good work, but we need to get the burning of fossil fuels off the highways and speedways of the world, so that we'll step up on global warming.

To shut off coal, or to say you can't have further coal development, I think is the wrong way to go.

Wind energy can and will play one of the most important roles in saving the world of tomorrow, today.

We won't rescue humanity from self-destruction without a dramatic change in how we invest for our future energy needs.

As investments and as an energy source, fossil fuels have nowhere to go but down.

The golden era for coal is over.