Jeremy Rifkin Quotes

The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.

In reality, the main thing that keeps me awake at night is probably the destruction of the planet that's what gets me pretty upset.

We're not environmentally doing very good things to this planet, and we might not be around too long.

Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on Earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.

I feel lucky that I even have the luxury to write about feeling lonely or feeling confused. When you think about climate change that means that we won't have an Earth to be lonely on.

We've poisoned the air, the water, and the land. In our passion to control nature, things have gone out of control. Progress from now on has to mean something different. We're running out of resources and we are running out of time.

The abuse of the Earth is the ecological crisis.

I can't really see how anybody could be particularly optimistic about the future in general because we are destroying the planet.

If there is no cost to be paid for the indiscriminate dumping of pollution into the earth's atmosphere, then it should be a surprise to no one that today we will dump another 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet. ... We have to [act] this year, not next year. Mother Nature does not do bailouts.

What we're doing to the planet is inexcusable.

The Industrial Age is not sustainable. It's not sustainable in ecological terms, and it's not sustainable in human terms.

I think that witnessing ecological problems visible from space is one of the new and essential roles of astronauts.

I have bigger concerns than what pop stars are doing. I'm more concerned about our environment, what industrialists are doing to it.

We all see that, today, man can destroy the foundation of his existence: his Earth.

If we do not act to curb climate change immediately, we will leave our children and grandchildren an unrecognizable planetIt is the poor, those least responsible for climate change and least able to afford adaptation, who would suffer the most.

This planet is our home and we're trashing and killing it.

Every time we burn a gallon of gas or an acre of rain forest, aren't we killing the future to preserve the present?

Unfortunately, The End of Nature turns out to be correct, although I wish it were not so. The only places that I was incorrect was, as with environmental science at the time, the estimation of the speed at which we see the effects of global warming.

Capitalism is destroying Mother Earth, and to destroy Mother Earth is to destroy humanity.

We need to get a broader awareness. People say climate change is really bad, but painting that picture of what you're putting at risk.

We're destroying the planet, and the planet rebels.

One thing leads to the other. Deforestation leads to climate change, which leads to ecosystem losses, which negatively impacts our livelihoods - it's a vicious cycle.

Our situation, with global warming and air quality and all of that, has gotten to be catastrophic.

Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticides, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide - all can be traced easily to too many people.

Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.