David R. Brower Quotes

There is no place where we can safely store worn-out reactors or their garbage. No place!

There are many different kinds of radioactive waste and each has its own half-life so, just to be on the safe side and to simplify matters, I base my calculations on the worst one and that's plutonium.

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.

In the U.S.A. or Europe there is no realistic way to estimate the type, magnitude, or probability of the risk, nor any way to narrow down the potentially affected regions.

Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health.

The attributes for entrepreneurs cut both ways. You need the ability to ignore inconvenient facts and see the world as it should be and not as it is. This inspires people to take huge leaps of faith. But this blindness to facts can be a liability, too. The characteristics that help entrepreneurs succeed can also lead to their failure.

I do not think there should be a limit on the rig's liability, because they are sitting on top of unlimited amounts of oil, and thus, there could be an explosion occur that could do untold damage. ... The amount of damage that an offshore oil rig can do is infinite.

I've been working tirelessly in the House to help ensure Nevada does not become a dumping ground for the rest of the nation's nuclear waste, and I will continue that fight in the Senate.

E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the United States and can pose serious environmental and health problems here and around the world when not handled properly.

This plastic doesn't go away by itself, and to just let hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic be out there to be fragmented into these small and dangerous microplastics to me seems like an unacceptable scenario.

One of the ways a landfill engineer anywhere in the world earns bragging rights is if he can pour himself a glass of the leachate from his landfill and drink it.

If all of your electricity in your lifetime came from nuclear [energy], the waste from that lifetime of electricity would go in a Coke can.

People don't like getting dirty or living in an environment that's been contaminated and is covered in hazardous waste.

They build machines they can't control, and bury the waste in a great big hole.

Industrial vomit...fills our skies and seas. Pesticides and herbicides filter into our foods. Twisted automobile carcasses, aluminum cans, non-returnable glass bottles and synthetic plastics form immense middens in our midst as more and more of our detritus resists decay. We do not even begin to know what to do with our radioactive wastes - whether to pump them into the earth, shoot them into outer space, or pour them into the oceans. Our technological powers increase, but the side effects and potential hazards also escalate.

You just never know what's around the next corner in life or business or anything.

Have you been playing in toxic waste lately?

If we just create and don't think about what might happen, that's when we're going to get into trouble.

It's risky to allow radiation to constantly go up into the atmosphere. The main criticism of this approach of entombing it is that it would cost too much, involve too many resources and people. But think of the cost of having all the crops impounded by the government, all the milk being thrown into the river, people's livelihoods destroyed.

The DOE and DOD are among the most notorious offenders of our hazardous waste laws.

Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be - given the devastation it is wreaking - should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.

My thinking is, government is really there to do the things that people absolutely can't do for themselves. And that's mostly involved with the things that might kill you. And what might kill me? The environment and terrorism.

Crazy ideas sometimes work, and the technological society that we have is built on a foundation of those crazy ideas that work.

One accident or terrorist strike involving high-level waste would endanger lives and cause a catastrophe that would leave millions of dollars in damages and take years to clean up

Sometimes in life situations develop that only the half-crazy can get out of.