Mark Kirk Quotes

The climate challenge illustrates how we have to change. The developing countries need more support and opportunities to develop and use clean energy. Because if the current situation continues, then the world will not be able to handle this burden.

If every country committed to spending 0.05 per cent of GDP on researching non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, that would cost $25 billion a year, and it would do a lot more than massive carbon cuts to fight warming and save lives.

Many countries - as well as cities, states and provinces - are taking global warming seriously and are working to reduce emissions and shift to cleaner energy sources.

We all know that we have to get off of fossil fuels. And we know that the world is going in that direction. And we have to do it fast.

I think what we all have to do is make this big leap towards renewables. And it has to be a solution where you're actually building the answer; and it has to be built faster than the natural gas industry can build their answer.

There's 20 companies that I have investments in - some batteries, some solar-thermal, one big nuclear thing. We need hundreds and hundreds of companies like that, so that in a 20-year time frame we really are starting to change the energy infrastructure.

Japan is a model already to the lie that economic growth is the key to our future. If they can really show an alternative to nukes and fossil fuels, then they will be the poster boy for the renewable energy for the future.

This [hydrogen] is the only technology we know of that can change the game

The solution to climate change is staring us in the face. It's energy policy. If we pursue a global clean-energy economy, we can cut dramatically the amount of carbon pollution we emit into the atmosphere and prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

I applaud the work of Clean Power Lake County in their leadership to call for Lake County to build a just transition from coal to clean energy, and I'm proud their work will be highlighted on the national stage for TV viewers around the country.

If we're going to be serious about decarbonizing the bulk-power system, nuclear has to be part of the conversation.

We believe it is essential to establish federal emission reduction targets that can vary by state or region with policy flexibility for states to design solutions that work for their unique circumstances. Such targets would level the playing field and send a clear signal to business and industry as we transition to a clean energy economy.

By looking at climate change as a clean energy generation problem, we're setting ourselves up not to solve it.

I'm not against international institutions that would try to tackle global warming. But the way to go, at least in the short run, is to go to nuclear power. It's amazing to me that people who are so alarmed about global warming are so reluctant to adopt the obvious short-term solution - the bridge until the day when we have affordable renewable energy - of nuclear power.

In my current work on global warming, I argue that the only apparent solution to the deep problem of climate change would require very large transfers of wealth from rich nations to poor nations, so that the entire world can make the transition to renewable forms of energy as fast as possible.

The challenge that climate change presents to us, both in Australia and around the world, won't be solved by ramping up the nuclear industry.

Becoming carbon neutral is only the beginning. The climate problem will not be solved by one company reducing its emissions to zero, and it won't be solved by one government acting alone. The climate problem will not be solved without mass participation by the general public in countries around the globe.

We're going to need that kind of movement, because the fossil fuel industry is a sprawling adversary - at work everywhere, its tentacles in everybody's politics, invulnerable, I think, to direct frontal assault, but probably more brittle than it guesses if we come at it from all sides.

The net-zero agenda, a set of targets and strategies by Western governments and climate diplomats to arrest global warming by limiting emissions, is the most audacious international effort in diplomatic history. It seeks to persuade or compel every country on the planet to make a transition to energy production that does not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The costs of the transition easily run into the trillions of dollars. The social and economic impact will transform everything from agriculture to manufacturing.

We have climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from human power and transportation infrastructure. At the same time, we have 2 billion people who live in energy poverty.

The angry men know that this golden age (of fossil fuels) has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings.

We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge.

[Hillary Clinton'] transition director being Ken Salazar, I think, indicates that she will continue to be a friend to fracking. It's not possible to solve the climate crisis while we continue to expand fracking.

Now, as the world's largest economy and as the world's second largest emitter, America bears our responsibility to address climate change, and we intend to meet that responsibility.

We'd like to get the fossil fuel industry on the back foot for a while, having to deal with us.