John Chafee Quotes

Liability does apply with respect to the amount of the oil spill.

I don’t think that there is ever a Mission Accomplished with an oil spill…the consequences go on for years.

When people are involved, accidents will happen…. You don’t want to drink frack fluid.

You cannot affirm the power plant and condemn the smokestack, or affirm the smoke and condemn the cough.

In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.

BP had a lease to drill. They did not have a lease to pollute the Gulf of Mexico. They did not have a lease to blow oil into the environment. They did not have a lease to disperse the oil and try to hide the body. They don't have a lease to clean up.

The BP spill was the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. Yet somehow, gas companies like BP and Halliburton ran interference on reporting that story.

BP has finally acknowledged what the American people have been saying for weeks: It must take responsibility for its reckless conduct, clean up the Gulf and compensate the countless victims of the disaster it caused.

One of the responsibilities faced by the Environmental Genome Project is to provide the science base upon which society can make better informed risk management decisions.

We can eliminate gasoline in this country in 25 years.

We will run out of air long before we run out of oil.

The oil market is the biggest failure of the free market because it did not take into account the environmental damage.

We are funding the rope for the hanging of ourselves.

We just can't afford to sit back and watch all that land be destroyed so a few people can get rich now. One of these days the dear old federal government is going to have to come in and spend billions of dollars just to repair the damage that's already been done. And guess who will have the machines and the workmen to do the job? The same coal operators who made the mess in the first place will be hired to fix it back, and the taxpayers will bear the cost

The downsides of fossil fuels, notably their geopolitical and environmental risks, are not fully reflected in their market prices.

Historically, countries have made big energy shifts only when confronted with acute fossil-fuel crises: oil embargoes, debilitating pollution, or wars.

It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.

Why did they pick the [Indian] Reservations to lay down their pipeline? They were probably thinking the indigenous people were not going to stand up.

They are one of the most profitable industries in the world, and they’re throwing money into Washington DC. They’re buying politicians.

The only way we can hope to combat climate change, protect our precious land and water, and prevent future extreme weather disasters is to cut the carbon pollution that’s warming our planet, and replace dirty energy sources with clean, renewable sources.

We can turn your bottles back into oil. We can burn it to make energy. Our we can put it in a landfill. There’s a green spectrum. And a cost spectrum. The most green is the most expensive.

If there is one thing BP's 'watery improv act' made clear, it is that, as a culture, we have become far too willing to gamble with things that are precious and irreplaceable, and to do so without a back-up plan, without an exit strategy.

We know that, too often, oil and other hazardous materials are shipped across the country on aging tankers. Too many communities have seen what happens when trains derail and in some cases catch fire.

The Keystone pipeline is one of those things that's sort of a political driver. And mostly, the Republicans use it to sort of embarrass the president and embarrass quite a few Democrats who feel that there's a potential for an environmental disaster.

If you drill, there's going to be a spill. It's axiomatic.