Disaster Prevention Quotes

Preparing for climate change has to be a national priority backed by tens of billions in federal investment. Lives are on the line.

We owe it to the flood victims of New Orleans to give them truthful answers as to why this event took place and to assure our citizens that tragedies like this will never happen again.

Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.

It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disasters to discuss the matter.

If Europe blazes in the late spring or summer, we must put our house in order before the sparks reach the Western Hemisphere.

Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence... they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and... a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have.

I think that if the atomic bomb did nothing more, it scared the people to the point where they realized that either they must do something about preventing war or there is a chance that there might be a morning when we would not wake up.

We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.

What I love about natural climate solutions is that we should be doing all these things anyway. Instead of making painful choices and deploying miserable means to a desirable end, we can defend ourselves from disaster by enhancing our world of wonders.

The Titanic will protect itself.

The Titanic was built by professionals. The Ark was built by volunteers.

It is vain to look for a defense against lightning.

When I write a script, I have all the old versions of the script on my laptop. They're saved as backups in case something goes horribly wrong.

Chernobyl happened in April of 1986. A few months earlier, in January 1986, the Challenger space shuttle exploded. It did not have the impact on the environment and the amount of lives that Chernobyl did, but it was the result of the same exact problem: a failure of a lot of people and institutions over a long period of time.

We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn't have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.

For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Now, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods-all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science-and act before it's too late.

When the ship has sunk everyone knows how she might have been saved.

There is no doubt that the time to act is now. It is now that timely action can avert disaster. It is now that with foresight and will such action can be taken without disturbing the essence of our way of life, by adjusting behaviour not altering it entirely.

Responsible statesmen have only one choice - to do everything possible to prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Any other position is short-sighted; more so, it is suicidal.

The lesson of Chernobyl is not an indictment of nuclear power as such. Nuclear power, designed well, regulated properly, cared for meticulously, has a place in the world’s energy supply.

Neither the Destruction of the Ninth Ward Nor the South Bronx Was Inevitable

People have to decide, first of all, how they'd like to live, and how secure they want to be from disaster. After that, scientists can help determine what would be necessary to achieve that.

I think that our work contributed to the safety of the world.

When we hear a prediction of some disaster we need to throw the entire weight of our positive thought in the opposite direction!

What we can do now is contribute to a clearer understanding of what happened that day on Everest in the hope that the lessons to be learned will reduce the risk for others who, like us, take on the challenge of the mountains.