Quote of Note – Page 6

if you’re distressed by the devastating costs of covid-19 wherever officials have dismissed and denied the science and public health warnings — wait til you see the vastly greater costs of the same officials’ same dismissal and denial of climate change.”

July 3, 2020 By Charles Komanoff

New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch), on Twitter, July 2.

I and other activists in my community are focused on issues that feel like immediate life or death, like the environment.”

June 30, 2020 By Charles Komanoff

Scranton, Pa. resident Kaitlin Ahern, 19, quoted in June 30 NY Times story, ‘I Can’t Focus on Abortion Access if My People Are Dying’, about younger U.S. women’s lower prioritization of abortion rights vis-a-vis other justice issues.

In one of the stupidest statements in history, Trump just said ‘if we didn’t do any testing, we’d have very few cases’ of the pandemic coronavirus. Thus introducing the Republican solution to #climatechange: just stop reading the thermometers.”

May 15, 2020 By Charles Komanoff

Peter Gleick (co-founder, Pacific Institute; MacArthur “genius award” recipient; member, National Academy of Sciences), via Twitter, May 15.

If you wait until you are absolutely sure a worst-case scenario could happen, you have almost certainly missed the chance to avoid it.”

March 18, 2020 By Charles Komanoff

Journalist David-Wallace Wells (“The Uninhabitable Earth“), discussing the COVID-19 crisis, on Twitter, March 17.

We have seen the unfolding wings of climate change.”

February 16, 2020 By Charles Komanoff

Australian filmmaker Lynette Wallworth, quoted in “The End of Australia as We Know It,” by Damien Cave, New York Times, February 16.

The dangers of climate change are no longer predictions about the future.”

January 2, 2020 By Charles Komanoff

NY Times op-ed columnist (and 2008 Nobel laureate in economics) Paul Krugman, in “Apocalypse Becomes the New Normal,” The New York Times, January 2.

Until there are penalties for emitting carbon, clean alternatives will just meet new energy demand. They are not currently displacing ‘fossil fuel use to any great extent’ and will not in the future.”

December 4, 2019 By Charles Komanoff

Robinson Meyer, commenting on three linked articles by the Global Carbon Project, in 5 Big Trends That Increased Earth’s Carbon Pollution, The Atlantic, Dec. 3. The quote is from the project’s article in Nature Climate Change (links are in the Atlantic article).