Fatih Birol Quotes

The second thing is, if you want to do something about global warming, you have to think much more long-term. There is something wrong with saying we should start using renewables now, while they are still incredibly expensive.

Many people believe the whole catastrophe is the oil we spill, but that gets diluted and eventually disarmed over time. In fact, the oil we don't spill, the oil we collect, refine and use, produces CO2 and other gases that don't get diluted.

If Britain was to close down altogether overnight, then China would take up the slack of carbon emissions in two years. If America closed down, just the growth in China's emissions would replace America's emissions in 12 years.

Undoubtedly, at the moment, the major cause of CO2 emission is what happens in developed countries.

Tar sands oil is the dirtiest fuel on Earth. Because producing it consumes so much energy, a gallon of tar sands crude generates 17 percent more carbon pollution than conventional crude oil.

The industrialization of China alone would increase by 90 percent the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere and would at least increase the atmospheric CO2 by at least another 100 parts per million.

The biggest drag on global growth in the coming decade will be the impact of energy on the environment.

Artificial lighting, air-conditioning, and automobiles, all powered by fossil fuels, swaddle us in our giddy modernity. In our ergonomic chairs and acoustical-panel cubicles, we sit cozy as kings atop 300 years of flaming carbon.

India doesn't take responsibility for the problems that the world is facing because of thermal coal.

We promote new fossil fuel infrastructure, from airport expansion and coal mines in the U.K. to oil pipelines in the U.S. Investments are meant to build and secure our shared future - but all these fossil fuel investments are directly fuelling the climate crisis that threatens to undermine that future.

It's imperative that we opt out of the fossil fuel endgame.

What has become clear from the science is that we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet.

Mitt Romney's energy policy is a relic of the 19th century. We need a 21st century plan. The fate of the planet is at stake.

Everybody knows that the industrialized nations are the worst offenders.

If coal is going to be used, the only response - because it is the dirtiest of all fuels - is that we have to learn how to do carbon capture and storage and we have to learn how to do it quickly on a commercial scale.

We must reduce the emissions 100 percent. In Venezuela, the emissions are currently insignificant compared to the emissions of the developed countries.

I find it interesting that many of the people who want to restrict fossil fuels live in well-developed countries where abundant and affordable energy is readily available.

Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course.

The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.

The industrial stomach cannot live without coal; industry is a carbonivorous animal and must have its proper food.

What makes tar sands particularly odious is that the energy you get out in the end, per unit carbon dioxide, is poor. It's equivalent to burning coal in your automobile.

Humanity has nearly suffocated the globe with carbon dioxide, yet nuclear power plants that produce no such emissions are so mired in objections and obstruction that, despite renewed interest on every continent, it is unlikely another will be built in the United States.

[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 can eliminate gasoline in this country in 25 years.

The oil market is the biggest failure of the free market because it did not take into account the environmental damage.