Douglas Tompkins Quotes

I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments.

The economy of the future has been aligned with the climate agenda. Even the competitiveness of companies will depend on how resource efficient they are.

Addressing the climate and biodiversity crises requires us to radically change our economic models, moving away from economic growth as the over-riding measure of progress and moving instead towards improving health and wellbeing for people and nature. That means a different economic model taking us towards a sustainable economy.

I think today we recognize that economic activity needs to search for ways to protect the environment.

Good environmental policy is good economic policy.

We don't have to sacrifice a strong economy for a healthy environment.

Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense. It's also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity, and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people.

We can be pro-growth, pro-jobs, and pro-environment.

We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive.

There is no such thing as a Fourth Industrial Revolution with 9 billion thriving co-citizens in the world if it is accomplished on linear economic principles. We need a transition to circular economic principles and practice.

It's time for all of us to kind of think about the green initiative as a whole. Monetizing it is very important. It's on us to continue to put the message out.

Giving my contribution to protect and respect the environment, as well as its inhabitants, makes me feel happy.

We cannot sustain long-term growth in our economies if we do not protect and preserve our environment.

Protecting our environment and natural resources is necessary for both our planet and our economy.

Trivially speaking, ecological awareness means realising that beings are interconnected in some way, but then we have to figure out what this interconnection actually means.

A worldwide shift to a shorter working week could cut the CO2 emitted this century by half. Countries with a shorter working week have a smaller ecological footprint.

Squeezing the lives of people is now being proposed as the saviour of the planet. Through the green economy an attempt is being made to technologise, financialise, privatise and commodify all of the earth’s resources and living processes.

Using less of the Earth’s resources more efficiently and productively in a circular economy and making the transition from carbon-based fuels to renewable energies are defining features of the emerging economic paradigm. In the new era, we each become a node in the nervous system of the biosphere.

The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.

What we call 'economic growth' is in fact a growth in waste and a decline in the health of natural habitat

Almost all systems of economic thought are premised on the idea of continued economic growth, which would be fine and dandy if we lived on an infinite planet, but there's this small, niggling, inconvenient fact that the planet is, in fact, finite, and that, unlike economic theory, it is governed by physical and biological reality

We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late. We can save our planet and also boost our economy at the same time.

We need to transform the economy so it works for people and the planet.

I see a future in which nature gives us a helping hand. Instead of destroying the natural world, why can't we use it to solve the kinds of problems that we are facing?

We need a completely different type of economy - one which is truly green, sustainable, and embeds the biggest issues of the day into its heart.