Archive of Quotes of Note

The only way we’re going to seriously move away from fossil fuels is to significantly reduce the demand for fossil fuels.”

Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, quoted in Who Says You Can’t Live Off the Grid in Manhattan?, Nov. 10, a profile of Manhattan resident John Spodek, who is living off the power grid for a fourth consecutive year.

I had always felt like we were safe from climate change in this region. But now [Hurricane Helene] makes me question that maybe there’s nowhere that’s safe.”

Wedding photographer Erica Scott, who moved to Asheville, NC from California 16 years ago, in In Booming Asheville, Residents Rethink Their Sense of Safety, Sept. 30.

Instead of urging power companies to burn less fossil fuel, tax carbon emissions.”

Binyamin Appelbaum, lead writer on business and economics for the editorial board of The New York Times, in Blaming Milton Friedman, a NYT opinion piece published Sept. 18, 2020. (Yes, that was nearly four years ago, but it’s still current.)

We have to change the laws and policies. We must stop subsidizing. We have to put a tax on carbon, as we have already put a tax on methane.”

Al Gore, in Al Gore Thinks Trump Will Lose and Climate Activists Will Triumph, NY Times, April 15.

At this point we might as well meet inside an actual oil refinery.”

Joseph Moeono-Kolio, lead adviser to the campaign for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, quoted in The New York Times, Files Suggest Climate Summit’s Leader Is Using Event to Promote Fossil Fuels, Nov. 28.

Politically speaking, the big question [about NIMBYism against big clean-energy projects] is about intensity… Anyone who follows politics … knows that wide, broad, shallow majority support cannot stand up to narrower, smaller, but more intense opposition.”

Journalist-podcaster (at www.volts.wtf) David Roberts, What rural people really think about clean energy, Nov. 8. (Link is to transcript; this link goes to podcast.)

Nordhaus assures us in his DICE model that growth continues like a cruising Cadillac on the California coast with an occasional pothole. But the reality is rainstorms, mudslides, earthquakes, and other drivers on the road.

Christopher Ketcham, in When Idiot Savants Do Climate Economics How an elite clique of math-addled economists hijacked climate policy, The Intercept, Oct. 28.

Climate action is dwarfed by the scale of the challenge. We must make up time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels.”

United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres, while convening the U.N. Climate Ambition Summit, reported in At a Summit on Climate Ambition, the U.S. and China End Up on the B List, New York Times, Sept 20.

Watching TV and seeing everything burn, it’s hard to stay interested in world problems when there won’t be a world. Every summer will be hotter. It will always be worse.”

Italian student Sara Maggiolo, 16, quoted in How Do We Feel About Global Warming? It’s Called Eco-Anxiety, by Jason Horowitz, New York Times Rome bureau chief, Sept. 16.

In many parts of the world, including some of the most densely forested, trees are not perfect allies for tree-huggers anymore, and forests no longer reliable climate partners. What was once the embodiment of environmental values now seems increasingly to be fighting for the other side. In some places, fighting harder each year.”

NY Times climate correspondent David Wallace-Wells, in Forests Are No Longer Our Climate Friends, Sept. 6.

Asked what the country should do to combat climate change, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s energy and climate center, said ‘I really hadn’t thought about it in those terms.’”

A Republican 2024 Climate Strategy: More Drilling, Less Clean Energy, by Lisa Friedman, published in the NY Times, Aug. 4.

If anybody in New York is wondering why there’s smoke there, it’s because the fires here are unstoppable.”

Fabrice Mossé, commander of a team of 109 French firefighters battling climate-charged forest fires in northern Quebec, quoted by New York Times reporter Norimitsu Onishi in ‘The Fires Here Are Unstoppable,’ NYT, June 18.

Fossil fuel divestment is surely one of most useless climate change tactics ever invented. It has had no effect on the companies, or more importantly, the climate. And it never will.”

Veteran journalist Joe Nocera, in Divesting from Big Oil Is an Empty Gesture, The Free Press, June 7.

Fossil fuel companies are producing something that society has been eagerly gobbling up. We have to drastically reduce demand.”

John Holdren, chief science advisor to Pres. Obama (2009-2017), in New York Times, Many Young Voters Bitter Over Biden’s Support of Willow Oil Drilling, April 25. The article, by climate reporter Lisa Friedman, added that Holdren “opposed the Willow project. But he believes that driving down the demand for oil and gas — as the Biden administration is trying to do by expanding clean energy and encouraging electric vehicles — is more effective than blocking drilling. If everyone is driving electric cars, there’s less need for gasoline, the theory goes.”

If the world wants to limit warming, it will have to limit demand for oil and gas because [the oil] industry can deliver this kind of volume for many more decades.”

Espen Erlingsen, a partner at the research firm Rystad Energy, in “Even as Nations Push Renewables, Oil and Gas Projects Come Roaring Back,” New York Times, April 6. (Headline in digital edition: It’s Not Just Willow: Oil and Gas Projects Are Back in a Big Way)

We allow the fossil fuel industry, economists, politicians, celebrities, random people on the internet, the youths that are leading the climate movement — everyone has a stake and a right to comment on these climate policies except, it seems, those of us who have subject-matter expertise in the area. That seems like an odd policy and I take issue with it.”

Earth scientist Rose Z. Abramoff, interviewed on “Democracy Now” about being fired from her research job at the federal Oak Ridge National Laboratory for her public-facing climate protests, Jan 19, 2023 (quote begins at 54-minute mark).

It’s not trade protectionism, it’s a level playing field.”

Pascal Canfin, chair of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, commenting on a preliminary agreement between E.U. member states and the European Parliament to impose a tariff on imports from countries that insufficiently price their carbon emissions, in Europe Reaches Deal for Carbon Tax Law on Imports, New York Times, Dec. 13.

[I]f big change is hard, bigger change is even harder. How are we going to build a whole new economic system [to replace capitalism] if we can’t even enact a carbon tax?”

Elizabeth Kolbert, Climate Change From A To Z: The Stories We Tell Ourselves About The Future., The New Yorker magazine, Nov. 21. (The quote closes the section, “Capitalism.”)

It’s too late to protect everything. To save the climate, we need to build so much wind and solar that some will go in bad places. Not doing so would be much worse. Rather than climate denial, the environmental community has tradeoff denial.”

Michael B. Gerrard, A Time for Triage, Environmental Law Institute and Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive, 2022.

If you want to reduce the oil produced, you must reduce the oil consumed. It’s just that simple. If you don’t reduce consumption, and you reduce production in America, they’ll just get that oil from somewhere else.”

Former 4-term California governor Jerry Brown, in Los Angeles Times climate reporter Sammy Roth’s Aug. 4 “Boiling Point” column, Jerry Brown was surprised — and thrilled — by Joe Manchin’s climate deal.