George Monbiot Quotes

Tar sands oil is the dirtiest fuel on Earth. Because producing it consumes so much energy, a gallon of tar sands crude generates 17 percent more carbon pollution than conventional crude oil.

The biggest drag on global growth in the coming decade will be the impact of energy on the environment.

I stick to stuff I'm pretty sure of and I know this: when the price of a barrel of oil is under $80 a barrel and you build a pipeline, you are driving up greenhouse gases.

Burning fossil fuels has given us the gift of seeing ourselves in new ways. But that very gift now enables us to see we've got to change our ways.

China and the U.S. are the two largest importers of oil. They are the two largest emitters of carbon.

If coal is going to be used, the only response - because it is the dirtiest of all fuels - is that we have to learn how to do carbon capture and storage and we have to learn how to do it quickly on a commercial scale.

The truth is, as most of us know, that global warming is real and humans are major contributors, mainly because we wastefully burn fossil fuels.

Many people believe the whole catastrophe is the oil we spill, but that gets diluted and eventually disarmed over time. In fact, the oil we don't spill, the oil we collect, refine and use, produces CO2 and other gases that don't get diluted.

If Britain was to close down altogether overnight, then China would take up the slack of carbon emissions in two years. If America closed down, just the growth in China's emissions would replace America's emissions in 12 years.

Undoubtedly, at the moment, the major cause of CO2 emission is what happens in developed countries.

I think that once people understand the great risks that climate change poses, they will naturally want to choose products and services that cause little or no emissions of greenhouse gases, which means 'low-carbon consumption.' This will apply across the board, including electricity, heating, transport and food.

Electric cars aren't pollution-free; they have to get their energy from somewhere.

The industrial stomach cannot live without coal; industry is a carbonivorous animal and must have its proper food.

Climate change is a consequence of the build up of greenhouse gases over the past 200 years in the atmosphere, and virtually all these emissions came from the rich countries.

Artificial lighting, air-conditioning, and automobiles, all powered by fossil fuels, swaddle us in our giddy modernity. In our ergonomic chairs and acoustical-panel cubicles, we sit cozy as kings atop 300 years of flaming carbon.

We recognize that greenhouse gas emissions are one of the factors affecting climate change.

We should not only look at the short-term economic benefits of fossil fuels but also at the bad news for climate change. We should therefore not greet the fossil fuel age unconditionally.

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.

When you see that charger in the wall, you have to now say okay that's, that's contributing to global-warming pollution, I have to pull that charger out of the wall.

Coal, oil and natural gas have lit homes and powered machinery for centuries, driving civilization forward. But as human development accelerated, the unsustainability of such energy became apparent.

We're putting 70 million tonnes of pollution into the atmosphere every day, trapping an enormous amount of extra heat from the sun inside the earth's atmosphere. It's threatening to push the planet past a tipping point beyond which climate change would be difficult to stop

I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels.

No country can hide from the dangers of carbon pollution

There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming. Greenhouse gases trap heat and thus warm the Earth because they prevent a significant portion of infrared radiation from escaping into space.

The U.S. has historically been the world's largest contributor to climate change.