Renee O'Connor Quotes

I've always been very aware of environment. When I was a kid I wanted to be a marine biologist until I realized I hated being underwater. I think a lot of that came from traveling and seeing the levels of waste produced by so many factories around the world.

I think the best thing I can hope to achieve is to educate, or make aware, as many people as possible on how the little things they do every day really do affect our environment, and how easy it is to fix some of those things.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.

Everything I do is the environment.

What's it like to envision the ten-thousand-year environmental impact of tossing a plastic bottle into the trash bin, all in the single second it takes to actually toss it? Or the ten-thousand-year history of the fossil fuel being burned to drive to work or iron a shirt? It may be environmentally progressive, but it's not altogether pleasant.

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

You can't separate the clothes from the stores, from the environment.

We happen to believe that emissions going into the atmosphere are not good for us as humans or Mother Earth.

And by the way, the United States is the biggest cause in global warming pollution. And we're doing the least about it. I find that personally embarrassing.

Climate change has always been sort of my main focus. I think also with [what happened in Fukushima, Japan] there's still a lot to think about in terms of what's coming down the pike into the world's oceans, too.

I think the environment is possibly our most worrying thing at the moment, so I think mountaintops are the place to live.

From my travels around the world I have seen how much damage and pollution is done by the careless disposal of waste. It is also evident that we in the West produce far more and throw away far more than the developing world, almost without thinking

We Americans think we are pretty good! We want to build a house, we cut down some trees. We want to build a fire, we dig a little coal. But when we run out of all these things, then we will find out just how good we really are.

Thanks to my effort in the last 40 years, there has been more paper and film wasted.

Fortunately, we know more about the problems that we have than in all preceding history. We know now the consequences of the things that we put into the air, into the water - of the way we treat life on Earth.

New Zealanders are so chill. I know they say Australians are chill, and I feel like Australians are chill, but I keep thinking, "If they get drunk, they would commit a hate crime." Now that is an extreme position to take, but it's just a feeling I get. New Zealand people, I don't see that.

We know it (meat eating) is indisputably the number one cause of global warming. So what does it mean exactly to be an environmentalist on a daily basis if you are not thinking about the number one cause of global warming or one of the top two or three causes of all other environmental problems? Does it mean you are necessarily someone who doesn't care about the environment? Obviously not, but it might mean you have a blind spot for something big.

The U.S. population, a mere four or five percent of the world total, creates half the world's toxic waste.

Many conservatives, I think, see action on climate change as really an attack on a way of life. That's really a hard pill to swallow, that the whole way that I have created my life is wrong, you're saying, that I shouldn't have this house in the suburb, I shouldn't be driving this car.

By eating meat we share responsibility for causing climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian can make a difference in the health of our planet.

Thirty years ago, if you said the country was living beyond its means, people would have thought about economics. Now, if you talk about the country, or the planet living beyond its means, you think about the environment. We are taking out more than we are giving back. We are consuming energy, water, and other natural resources in a way that is leading to huge and often irreversible damage to the planet. So too are most other developed nations. And so too will China and India if they follow the same path of economic development as us

Coal is a portable climate.

There are so many messages and lessons that I have been taught that I would want to share with people. Perhaps one that is very present in my mind now is the concept that we are all living on this one tiny planet that we call Earth. It is very small and is not getting any bigger, but the amount of people living on this planet continues to grow at a rapid rate.

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.

If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do. It's staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.