Noam Chomsky Quotes

Make no mistake: Tackling climate change is vital. But to see everything through the lens of short-term CO2 reductions, letting our obsession with carbon blind us to the bigger picture, is to court catastrophe.

The growing evidence of climate change is forcing attention on carbon emissions and their reduction.

[Israel] undermines the international community's reaction to global warming.

The debate is over. The scientific community has spoken in a virtually unanimous voice. Climate change is real. It is caused by human activity.

But no matter how big the effort to push a propaganda line might be, climate change is bigger. This, undoubtedly and regrettably, is the biggest immediate long-term environmental challenge we face. A failure to concretely come to some policy outcome on climate change has not only a negative environmental impact but also social and economic consequences for us.

Climate change is real, caused by human activity and already devastating our nation and planet. The United States must lead the world in combating climate change and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainability.

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

Climate change is a complex problem with no central lever, and with unequal distribution of resources.

Every footstep we take, every action has a consequence. We breathe in weather, but we breathe out CO2. We're responsible for weather and for climate.

I honestly don't know, but if America continues to refuse to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, I see a bleak future not only for American society, but for the world as a whole. This is a global problem that is not going away, and the United States is an obstacle to solving it.

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.

CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally... Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past.

The second thing is, if you want to do something about global warming, you have to think much more long-term. There is something wrong with saying we should start using renewables now, while they are still incredibly expensive.

You should be attacking the carbon emissions, period, and whether it's cap-and-trade or carbon tax or whatever, that's the realm in which we should be playing.

The effects of climate change are real and must be acted on.

The United States did not sign Kyoto, yet its emissions are not that different from the countries that did sign it.

Climate change is obviously happening and there is obviously a man-made contribution.

Many of the technologies we've invented are necessary to keep 6.5 billion people alive. We can't go back from that, so we need to decarbonize really rapidly.

A cap on carbon is important because it sets a specific goal for reducing carbon emissions 80% by 2050.

Every day, we're learning about what's happened with global warming and what's happening all around the world, and our employees and our customers are really feeling that it's time to step up and make a difference.

I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to have to deal with global warming, to tell you the truth.

And by the way, the United States is the biggest cause in global warming pollution. And we're doing the least about it. I find that personally embarrassing.

Coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel available for electricity generation. The most urgent threat to climate policy is the scale of new investments in unabated coal-fired electricity generation still being planned.

We actually all care about the environment, and most people believe in climate change and believe that mankind has something to do with that - how much is scientifically debatable, but there is some effect and we all have an interest in reducing carbon emissions, just having cleaner air, cleaner oceans. It's something we can get behind.

If you're serious about climate targets, you don't build and expand the oil sands and move from coal-fired electricity to inefficient fracked gas.