John Holdren Quotes

We're in a new reality, living in a time of climate change. We already have climate refugees around the globe and now have to talk about adaptation and mitigation.

Ultimately, here is the choice we face: we can either make the solution to the climate crisis the central organizing principle of civilization–or the hostile conditions we are creating will grow rapidly worse, thickening the smothering blanket of global warming pollution surrounding our planet and destroy the viability of civilization as we know it.

Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.

I have long understood that climate change is not only an environmental issue - it is a humanitarian, economic, health, and justice issue as well.

Climate change is here. We have to learn how to deal with it.

Climate change is a real thing that is happening in the Maldives. It is not something in the future… We are only 1.5 meters above sea level. Fossil fuel technology is obsolete; it has been around for too long.

There's no really rosy scenario ahead, where climate change just doesn't happen, but I believe we don't have the ethical right to throw our hands up in the air and say, 'Game over.' Whatever pathway we choose, our descendants will be dealing with that reality for centuries to come.

One thing we do know about the threat of climate change is that the cost of adjustment only grows the longer it's left unaddressed.

Global warming is a crisis greater than WWI and WWII put together. Government leadership is lacking, so companies must play their part.

There are those who say that climate change is a hoax, a concoction of radical environmentalists and a liberal media. That is simply hogwash.... To ignore and dismiss the threat of climate change to the economy and the environment is like insisting the earth is flat.

Global warming and climate change is a big problem. It requires a big solution.

If 98 doctors say my son is ill and needs medication and two say, “No, he doesn’t, he is fine,’ I will go with the 98. It’s common sense-the same with global warming. We go with the majority, the large majority...The key thing now is that since we know this industrial age has created it, let’s get our act together and do everything we can to roll it back.

We now know beyond a doubt that global warming is a reality. And the question we must all answer is, what are we going to do about it?

We can beat back the forces of climate change, but we must choose to do so. You’re either on the side of your fellow residents of this planet, or you are on the side of the storms as yet unnamed.

We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.

The thing about climate change is that you’ll never know for sure until it’s way too late.

It is true that, in theory, we can avoid the worst consequences of climate change with an intensive global effort over the next several decades. But given real-world economic and, in particular, political realities, that seems unlikely.

Climate change is moving faster than we are, but we don't give up because we know that climate action is the only path.

There is no debate about whether or not climate change is happening. We will deal with it as a challenge. But we also take it as an opportunity to invest.

There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change - or whatever the currently voguish phrase for it all is - certainly is one of them. But it's low on my list.

If we don't succeed on the climate change agenda, we risk getting feedbacks that undermine everything else.

Climate change is happening, and humans are significant contributors, and that raises some really important policy questions.

Americans know our only response in the face of mounting risks from climate change must be the swift transition to a clean energy economy. We do not have the luxury of burying our heads in the sand.

If every country's climate policy was driven purely by environmental science, we may have no need for international agreements.

Adaptation is the forgotten word of climate change.