Van Jones Quotes

We need to make growth greener, to make our economic and environmental policies more compatible and even mutually-reinforcing. This is not just a matter of new technologies or new sources of renewable, safe energy. It is about how we all behave every day of our lives, what we eat, what we drink, what we recycle, re-use, repair, how we produce and how we consume

Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn't really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it, and doesn't just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can't really afford to eliminate it - not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend.

Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.

After all, sustainability means running the global environment - Earth Inc. - like a corporation: with depreciation, amortization and maintenance accounts. In other words, keeping the asset whole, rather than undermining your natural capital.

But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.

Governments have a unique opportunity to incentivise corporations so that they can accelerate their evolution to a more sustainable economy through more sustainable practices and products.

You can listen to them [environmental protesters] but don’t stop your project—don’t stop your thinking.

The key to understanding the future is one word: sustainability.

If we want to move towards a low-polluting, sustainable society, we need to get consumers to think about their purchases.

Global warming is not only the number one environmental challenge we face today, but one of the most important issues facing all of humanity... We all have to do our part to raise awareness about global warming and the problems we as a people face in promoting a sustainable environmental future for our planet.

Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over - unless we find new ways of producing energy.

When we speak about climate change, you're a victim of something ... which is happening with deep roots where you don't have - anything to deal with. And people just want to choose a life. That's very much important. And I think one of the key elements of the collective battle we have today, in order to fight against climate change is to provide people the ability to choose a life. To have a better life by behaving differently, by innovating, by creating new type of companies and startups, new type of activities.

Changing an economic system that is bent on uncontrolled and poorly measured economic growth and depends on fossil energy for its main objectives, is much more difficult than changing how nuclear energy is used for military purposes. Some think it may be impossible.

Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth - that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in pandering rhetoric.

I absolutely am an environmentalist. I am probably more of an environmentalist than most people who live in the world, but I think that comes from my position in the world and that doesn't make me a better person.

In Europe and America alike, voters increasingly recognize that the benefits of the green revolution aren't worth the costs, particularly when the revolutionaries don't have a clue what they're doing.

Innovative companies have started to realize there are not enough 'green consumers' willing to pay more for something just because it's green.

In time, we will have to recognise that it is not 'nature' that we need to protect, but ourselves, and we can only do this by abandoning the old, grandiose, profit-seeking schemes so beloved of our masters and learning to till the soil, live to scale, and live within our means.

We need a mobilized and active civil society using its purchasing power to demand sustainable products and practices. It is also essential that governments commit to the future, creating fiscal and regulatory conditions for sustainable policies to thrive.

Economic growth and environmental protection are not at odds. They're opposite sides of the same coin if you're looking at longer-term prosperity.

If nature were a bank, they would have already rescued it.

So-called 'sustainable development'... is meaningless drivel.

We owe it to each other - and to our children and grandchildren - to leave our planet in a better state than when we found it.

What we've proven is that you can protect the environment, use it wisely and grow the economy and that there is no conflict between the two.

If there is a future, it will be Green.