Climate Urgency Quotes

The urgency derives from the nearness of climate tipping points.

Throughout all of human history we've enjoyed certain benign circumstances: an envelope of atmosphere, an envelope of temperature. A kind of resilience that if you cut down trees, then they'll grow back. You take fish, they recover. You put stuff into the atmosphere that you know is not good for us, but we can still breathe. We haven't awakened, generally, to the sense of urgency that does exist.

I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change.

Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. The observed rapid warming gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions.

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.

Achieving the aims and ambitions of the Paris Agreement are not a given. The world needs to understand the urgency and complexity of what the international community has embarked upon.

The scientific consensus is that climate change is real, urgent, and caused by humans. This science should be both supported and understood by anyone who hopes to lead NASA, one of our nation's top science agencies.

We need to push ourselves to make as many reductions as possible in our own energy use first - and that takes time. But we must do this quickly - the climate will not wait for us.

We need to go to net zero carbon really quickly. And we're also asking for a people's assembly so people can decide how the change happens. We'll know when governments are doing different things, it could feel like a war, a beautiful war.

What's happening with the planet's climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social organizations, in order to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate.

Acidisation isn't benign - like fracking, it can pose risks to groundwater sources, and runs counter to the urgency with which we must shift away from fossil fuels.

We are in an unusual predicament as a global civilization. The maximum that is politically feasible, even the maximum that is politically imaginable right now, still falls short of the minimum that is scientifically and ecologically necessary.

I'm quite pessimistic about climate change. This is an urgent problem, and much of the world is only now waking up to the easiest part of solving - the realization that anthropogenic global warming is real.