Johan Eliasch Quotes

I know there is pain when sawmills close and people lose jobs, but we have to make a choice. We need water and we need these forests.

As a nation we have not yet come to have a proper respect for the forest and to regard it as an indispensable part of our resources—one which is easily destroyed but difficult to replace; one which confers great benefits while it endures, but whose disappearance is accompanied by a train of evil consequences not readily foreseen and positively irreparable.

We can halt the destruction of the world's rainforests - and even restore parts of them - in order to ensure that the forests do what they are so good at - in other words, storing carbon naturally.

Every other civilized nation in the world has been compelled to care for its forests, and so must we if waste and destruction are not to go on to the bitter end, leaving America as barren as Palestine or Spain.

Timber extraction provides big profits at the expense of local communities. Providing communities with unfettered access to harvest a forest that is protected in perpetuity provides better and more reliable incomes.

Deforestation will continue as long as cutting down and burning trees is more economic than preserving them.

Most Americans are more concerned about the economy and job creation. And they can't understand why the Obama administration or the Democrat majority in Congress wants to pass a bill like the cap-and-trade tax that will cost us jobs, that will hurt our economy, that will drive up costs for families, as well as for small businesses.

We are working with the communities in building institutional relationships with local governments and businesses to create ways to get value from the Amazonian area in order to keep the forest as the forest. This makes sense for us from the perspective of climate change and of poverty.

We don't need a War on Carbon. We need a new prosperity that can be shared by all while still respecting a multitude of real ecological limits - not just atmospheric gas concentrations, but topsoil depth, water supplies, toxic chemical concentrations, and the health of ecosystems, including the diversity of life they depend upon.

Endangered forests are being slaughtered for toilet paper.

Job creation is a choice. Investing in cleaner, greener technologies that allow us to strike a more sustainable balance with the other living systems of this earth - this, too, is a choice.

Look at timber prices in the late '90s, at around $50. If you count the true damage of cutting down forests, the resultant flooding, insurance claims, and so on, then the timber price should have been $100.

The tropical rain forests are a telling example. Once cut down, they rarely recover. Rainfall drops, deserts spread, the climate warms.

In the end, I think the majority of Romanian society will understand that if we respect environmental protection standards, if we have benefits in taxes, royalties, jobs, we should do what all the modern countries in Europe and beyond are doing to take advantage of their natural resources.

If I have my way, I'm going to dissolve the Forest Service. They're in the business of harvesting trees and they're not harvesting trees, so why have them anymore?

My government has the challenge of addressing the issue of gas. The issue of gas cannot be addressed today without the participation of all Bolivians alike.

I don't give a darn about coal or about oil. I do give a darn about oil jobs. I do give a darn about the jobs that coal can bring... I am against the Obama administration demonizing certain forms of energy and glorying others. I say, bring it all in.

New Zealand needs to balance its environmental responsibilities with its economic opportunities, because the risk is that if you don't do that - and you want to lead the world - then you might end up getting unintended consequences.

It's a matter of life and death for this country. The Kenyan forests are facing extinction and it is a man-made problem.

If you have forest, if you have green forest, the water table goes up. What happens with deforestation is the water level goes down and we all know how much importance drinking water has.

If you cut down a forest, it doesn't matter how many sawmills you have if there are no more trees.

We need healthy forests if we want to protect our climate. As the climate changes, forests become more vulnerable to insect outbreaks, droughts and wildfires. Simultaneously, when our forests are destroyed, their carbon is released back into the atmosphere, further impacting climate change. It's a horrifying one-two punch.

Most of the well-developed world - Australia, Western Europe - they develop their resources base, they inventory it, they develop it, and they view it as a good source of jobs and revenue. We are a country that for too long has taken affordable energy for granted.

Our government has done nothing effective with its forests, though the best in the world, but is like a rich and foolish spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent estate in perfect order, and then has left his rich fields and meadows, forests and parks, to be sold and plundered and wasted at will …

The forests shall not be burned needlessly.