Leslie Odom Jr. Quotes

I have been described as the grandfather of climate change. In fact, I am just a grandfather and I do not want my grandchildren to say that grandpa understood what was happening but didn't make it clear.

I joined the Safe Climate Caucus because I believe in leaving a safer planet for future generations.

I hope that in future Congresses there will reemerge a recognition that climate change is a reality, that our policies to meet our energy needs must also deal responsibly with environmental issues, including the damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

I've always said that climate change is the defining issue of our generation. I've set out to hold candidates and elected officials accountable and to push our democracy to truly represent the interests of our kids.

I was at Earth Summit in Rio 20 years ago... I was only 12 years old. And when I was speaking to the U.N. I was fighting for my future.

I'm at one with Ed Miliband in saying that it's important that people have the right to express their democratic voices and also their deep concerns about climate change because we have a planet in peril.

I'm sad that it's uncool or offensive to talk about environmental or human rights issues.

After 'An Inconvenient Truth' came out, a lot of people came to me with their causes, and there are a lot - water, poverty, and so many, many more.

We need to send a message to Congress and the president that we want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet.

The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it's all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.

We need policy change, and the most important thing people can do is to contribute and participate in the political process. We have to vote climate change deniers and people who will create subsidies for the fossil fuel industry out of office. We have to protest when bad decisions are being made about fracking or tar sands.

I don't think there's any other issue out there that young people are more passionate, and more ahead in, than global warming.

Those few people who do respond to the dire conditions of the future - journalists, environmentalists, behavioral scientists - tend not to be powerful.

Climate change is the central environmental ill of our time. We have an obligation to protect our children from the dangers of this widening scourge, and we aren't yet doing enough about it.

Climate change does not respect border; it does not respect who you are - rich and poor, small and big. Therefore, this is what we call 'global challenges,' which require global solidarity.

Today, we can see with our own eyes what global warming is doing. In that context it becomes truly irresponsible, if not immoral, for us not to do something.

For all of the hurtling towards climate change, there's also a lot more understanding of it than there was when we were kids. They don't call environmentalists tree huggers any more, so there's hope!

Posterity is the world to come; the world for whom we hold our ideals, from whom we have borrowed our planet, and to whom we bear sacred responsibility. We must do what America does best: offer more opportunity to all and demand responsibility from all.

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.

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

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

For us to try and step in and say we have got to do all these global things to prevent the earth from getting any warmer in my opinion is absolute nonsense. It’s not going to happen

I gone on for years about the importance of thinking about the long term in relation to the environmental damage, climate change, and everything else because we don’t want to hand on an increasingly dysfunctional world to our grandchildren and I do not want to be confronted by my future grandchild saying, “Well why didn’t you do something?”

The only way we can hope to combat climate change, protect our precious land and water, and prevent future extreme weather disasters is to cut the carbon pollution that’s warming our planet, and replace dirty energy sources with clean, renewable sources.