Sylvia Earle Quotes

It's as certain that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, we will just keep burning them.

Coal is cheap, but up to what extent are we going to allow coal plants to operate?

The very energy sources that have gotten us to where we are now are also, if we continue doing what we're doing, a shortcut to the end of all that we hold near and dear.

We're not going to persuade people in the developing world to go without, but neither can we afford a planet on which everyone lives like an American. Billions more people living in suburbs and driving SUVs to shopping malls is a recipe for planetary suicide. We can't even afford to continue that way of life ourselves.

The question of energy is an important one. The big issue is how to get it, how not to destroy the environment, and how to survive as a species. It's a big deal.

Oil has allowed us to think about economics as though energy doesn't matter.

China is bearing the environmental cost for much of the world because China is the factory of the world.

Not all the coal that is dug warms the world.

The more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.

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

We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources without regard for the future of our children and people all around the world.

If we don't change, our species will not survive... Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.

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

Markets are lethal, if only because of ignoring externalities, the impacts of their transactions 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.

I had a very clear vision. If Indians start consuming power like the Americans, the world will run out of resources. Either you stop India from developing, or you find some alternate solution.

Climate change and energy use are global problems - News Corp is a global company. Our operations affect the environment all over the world.

Climate change is real, caused by human activity and already devastating our nation and planet. The United States must lead the world in combating climate change and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainability.

We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.

Low-cost, high-grade coal, oil and natural gas - the backbone of the Industrial Revolution - will be a distant memory by 2050. Much higher-cost remnants will still be available, but they will not be able to drive our growth, our population and, most critically, our food supply as before.

I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies.

The doomsayers of the 1970s were wrong about how quickly the world would run out of oil, but not about the dangers that hydrocarbon consumption posed to the global environment, especially with respect to climate change.

Energy consumption matters both to our environment and our economy.

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.

Perhaps it has been too uncomfortable for those with vested interests to acknowledge, but we have spent the best part of the past century enthusiastically testing the world to utter destruction; not looking closely enough at the long-term impact our actions will have.