Robert Jay Lifton Quotes

I think, in the long run, we have to wean ourselves from a carbon-based economy. We absolutely have to.

I want to see us move from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable economy - if not in my lifetime, then in the lifetime of my children.

[Coal is] a 19th-century fuel very badly suited for the 21st century. There's no way you can wash or scrub coal to make that essential fact go away.

We're aiming to be the leading investment platform for the clean-energy economy.

There's no miracle formula but we have to move towards a lower carbon economy. We don't have any other choice.

If you were running a solar company you may be okay - you may be able to keep growing. The question for physics is: Can you grow fast enough to begin to catch up with the damage?

Not using fossil fuels is tantamount to not using energy. It is economic suicide and eco-manslaughter.

I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies.

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.

My beef with the alt-fuel people is not the renewable or alt-fuel ideas themselves. Sooner or later, there's no question we're going to have to rely on them. For me, it's an issue of scale.

Coal is responsible for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as other fossil fuels combined and it still has far greater reserves. We must stop using it.

We cannot continue to close our eyes to the fact that we have to truly embrace green jobs, new technologies and alternative sources of energy.

Doing all we can to combat climate change comes with numerous benefits, from reducing pollution and associated health care costs to strengthening and diversifying the economy by shifting to renewable energy, among other measures.

We can power our economy without despoiling our wild places.

I don't believe that a hydrogen economy depends on a carbon economy at all.

That inefficiency is masked because growth and progress are measured in money, and money does not give us information about ecological systems, it only gives information about financial systems.

The idea that we are going to be able to take our entire society as it currently works and simply change the source of energy and make it sustainable is not actually congruent with reality.

The future is green energy, sustainability, renewable energy.

The more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.

Shifting towards low-carbon energy systems can avert climate catastrophe while creating new opportunities for investment, growth, and employment.

We can, and must, shift to an economy in which 100% of our electricity is generated renewably.

Ecology and economy are becoming inextricably entwined, and the world is becoming more conscious of this fact.

The climate-change industrial complex pontificates that the U.S. has to stop using coal to save the planet. But even if the U.S. cut our own coal production to zero, China and India are building hundreds of coal plants. By suspending American coal production, we are merely transferring jobs out of the U.S.

Climate change must be approached as an opportunity to transition our economy to a zero carbon future. Business understands this even when governments don't.

Fracking locks the U.K. into an industry that is based on fossil fuels long after our country needs to have moved to renewables.