Fossil Fuel Quotes

#1. I hold a vision of this blue green planet, safe and in balance. At the end of the Fossil Fuel Era, we are emerging to a new reality. We are ready to make the next leap - as momentous as abolishing slavery or giving women the vote.

Elizabeth May

#2. If your child gets asthma, the fossil fuel industry doesn't pay. Or if there's a natural disaster, the bill is paid by the taxpayer, not the fossil fuel company.

James Hansen

#3. Nuclear power, once regarded as petroleum's natural heir, has become less and less attractive as its numerous drawbacks come to light. Coal, the other fossil fuel, is ultimately as exhaustible as oil.

Lester R. Brown

#4. Fossil fuel corporations are supposed to pay the government fair market royalties in exchange for the right to drill on public lands or in federal waters.

Bernie Sanders

#5. Most Republicans are not prepared to stand up to the fossil fuel industry because they get a lot of their campaign funds from the Koch brothers and other people in the fossil fuel industry. That tells me why we have to reform our campaign finance system.

Bernie Sanders

#6. We have already used more than half of that budget. This means that three quarters of the fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground, and the fossil fuels we do use must be utilized sparingly and responsibly.

Christiana Figueres

#7. In addition to contributing to erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and the dead zone, corn requires huge amounts of fossil fuel - it takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn.

Michael Pollan

#8. We've got to alter our fossil fuel dependence and go to other energy sources.

Sylvia Earle

#9. So many people are on the front lines of this fossil fuel frenzy. It is infused with a sense of urgency.

Avi Lewis

#10. Natural gas is a dirty fossil fuel like the rest of them.

Josh Fox

#11. The reality is that we are going to have problems with water in this century. And the fact that we are going to have problems with fossil fuel is a given.

Henry Rollins

#12. The fossil-fuel-based development model has not benefitted all people and those who have benefitted least are now suffering great harm in the face of climate change.

Mary Robinson

#13. The International Energy Agency warns that if we do not get our emissions under control by a rather terrifying 2017, our fossil fuel economy will "lock-in" extremely dangerous warming.

Naomi Klein

#14. Fresh water is like a fossil fuel; we should not waste it.

Walter Munk

#15. People are are moving away from the fossil fuel-based economy, to a more renewable economy. That is what is called the 'transition town' movement. There are three hundred towns in Britain that are making this transition. Taking energy from solar power, from wind power, from water power.

Satish Kumar

#16. The fact is fossil fuel carbon will stay in the surface climate system for millennia.

James Hansen

#17. Chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to [should] be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature; [Hansen] accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

James Hansen

#18. Wet milling (to produce starch) is an energy-intensive way to make food; for every calorie of processed food it produces, another ten calories of fossil fuel energy are burned.

Michael Pollan

#19. We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)

Bill McKibben

#20. When you think about the current present value of the fossil fuel reserves that are on the books, the current fossil fuel companies, the last time that that much wealth was at stake was when the South fought the Civil War,

Chris Hayes

#21. With each month that passes, a solar panel gets 2 or 3 percent cheaper. So while we're holding the fossil fuel industry in check, the engineers in the renewable energy world are undercutting them from the other side.

Bill McKibben

#22. There is an urgent need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, dramatically reduce wasted energy, and significantly shift our power supplies from oil, coal, and natural gas to wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources.

Bill McKibben

#23. It makes no sense to invest in [fossil fuel] companies that undermine our future

Desmond Tutu

#24. I like the analogy that the way that we live in Western Society, the energy that we consume in the form of fossil fuels, is the energy equivalent in pre-fossil fuel terms of having 500 slaves.

John Lindsay

#25. The amount of energy stored in all the fossil fuel on earth is negligible compared to the amount that the sun dispenses every day, free of charge.

Yuval Noah Harari

#26. At issue is not whether the global economy will pass away. It is passing away. Rising populations and debt combined with depletion of freshwater sources and fossil fuel make the status quo untenable. The only question is whether civil society will survive the transition.

Daniel Suarez

#27. We're clearly coming to the end of the fossil fuel era. We have the technology to shift to renewable energy, we have the will of the people. The only thing that's keeping us back is the fossil fuel industry's hold on our political system. That's what we need to change.

Mark Ruffalo

#28. I am proud to work with the fossil fuel industry. I think it has historically done a horrible job of educating the public and I think my ideas will help it make a better case for freedom.

Alex Epstein

#29. Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence ... Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and - now - Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

#30. Will we confront climate change in time or will we let fossil fuel companies determine our fate? This is a fight we can't afford to lose, and that's what keeps me moving forward.

Frances Beinecke

#31. Trusting your energy policy to the fossil fuel lobby is like trusting your health care system to the tobacco lobby.

William H. Calvin

#32. [The Center for Industrial Progress'] model allows us to keep conflicts of interest to an absolute minimum as we do our research and writing. As for our relationship with the fossil fuel industry, it's the same as everyone else - they pay for our ideas, we never accept money to voice theirs.

Alex Epstein

#33. Coal is our most abundant fossil fuel. (GE's) development efforts are to just end up making the plants more competitive on an economic basis by using these other coals.

Bill Vaughan

#34. The food industry burns nearly a fifth of all the petroleum consumed in the United States (about as much as automobiles do). Today it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate.

Michael Pollan

#35. We should be increasing research and development into our fossil fuel program.

Tim Holden

#36. Protectionist politicians cannot stand the notion of a fossil-fuel-rich America maintaining record levels of production through exports.

Mike Pompeo

#37. Because the financial power of the fossil-fuel industry is so great it can, and has, delayed any real action of the climate issues almost everywhere.

Bill McKibben

#38. The only reason that 5 billion people have any food is that we've displaced vast numbers of species and we're eating fossil fuel. The nitrogen for this food is being manufactured from gas and oil, and we are on a crash course with reality.

Anonymous

#39. We'll always need energy. We need to communicate, too, but we're not stuck with hand gestures and smoke signals. There are better ways to power our future than by digging fossil fuel from the ground and setting it on fire.

Frances Beinecke

#40. Energy markets can be thought of as suffering from appendicitis due to fossil fuel subsidies. They need to be removed for a healthy energy economy.

Fatih Birol

#41. I believe, along with Pope Francis and almost all scientists, that climate change is threatening this planet in horrendous ways, and that we have to be aggressive in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel and defeat the Keystone Pipeline.

Bernie Sanders

#42. You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet

Bill McKibben

#43. Apparently, the fossil-fuel industry's strategy is to convince the American people that we should just burn all the way through the last of our oil and coal reserves.

Van Jones

#44. Horizontal and vertical sprawl ... are the dinosaurs of an ending fossil-fuel age of synthetic culture.

Leon Krier

#45. Just 8% of the $409bn spent on fossil-fuel subsidies in 2010 went to the poorest 20% of the population.

Fatih Birol

#46. The climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear and there is a potential for explosive changes, effects that would be irreversible, if we do not rapidly slow fossil-fuel emissions over the next few decades.

James Hansen

#47. If we can come up with innovations and train young people to take on new jobs, and if we can switch to clean energy, I think we have the capacity to build this world not dependent on fossil-fuel. I think it will happen, and it won't destroy economy.

Kofi Annan

#48. Hillary Clinton understands that a president's job is to worry about future generations, not the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industry.

Bernie Sanders

#49. It is a fact that, up to seven million people a year are dying from fossil fuel pollution. It is a fact that we are already dealing with the catastrophe of climate change in places like California, where people have been burnt out of their homes and where they are dealing with record droughts.

Mark Ruffalo

#50. There is a reason it is called fossil fuel-it is an outdated method of getting power.

Alexandra Paul

#51. Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy.

David Suzuki

#52. All told, growing food organically uses about a third less fossil fuel than growing it conventionally, though that savings disappears if the compost is not produced on site or nearby.

Michael Pollan

#53. So this is what commodity corn can do to a cow: industrialize the miracle of nature that is a ruminant, taking this sunlight- and prairie grass-powered organism and turning it into the last thing we need: another fossil fuel machine. This one, however, is able to suffer.

Michael Pollan

#54. Unless a price can be put on carbon emissions that is high enough to force power companies and manufacturers to reduce their fossil-fuel use, there seems to be little chance of avoiding hugely damaging temperature increases

Rajendra K. Pachauri

#55. It's imperative that we opt out of the fossil fuel endgame.

Mark Ruffalo

#56. Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free

Bill McKibben

#57. People who claim, for example, that capitalism can overcome its dependence on fossil fuel have either not researched the question or they are on mescaline.

Stan Goff

#58. It's time to transition beyond our fossil fuel addiction to a just economy based on green jobs, renewable energy, and local organic food.

Winona LaDuke

#59. If [a student's] college's endowment portfolio has fossil-fuel stock, then their educations are being subsidized by investments that guarantee they won't have much of a planet on which to make use of their degree.

Bill McKibben

#60. As long as a handful of U.S. scientists, most receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry, get equal time with hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists, the public inevitably ends up with a misimpression about the state of our scientific understanding.

Joseph J. Romm

#61. Think about your work situation. Do you treat your creativity like a fossil fuel - a limited resource that must be conserved - or have you harnessed the unending power of the sun? Are you in an environment where creativity thrives? Is there room for new ideas every day? Can you make room?

Biz Stone

#62. I know just enough about thermodynamics to understand that if it takes too much fossil-fuel energy to create ethanol, that's a very stupid way to solve an energy problem.

Charlie Munger

#63. We have to be aware that fossil fuel energy sources have an expiry date. A timeframe of 30, 40 or 50 years can seem a long time to get rewards for economic policy, but it's only a short time for implementing a new energy policy.

Carlo Rubbia

#64. The fossil fuel industry for too long has shifted enormous costs of carbon pollution onto the public.

Bernie Sanders

#65. It is a search for a mythical CO2 sink to explain an immeasurable CO2 lifetime to fit a hypothetical CO2 computer model that purports to show that an impossible amount of fossil fuel burning is heating the atmosphere. It is all a fiction.

Tom Segalstad

#66. We must not let ourselves be swept off our feet in horror at the danger of nuclear power. Nuclear power is not infinitely dangerous. It's just dangerous, much as coal mines, petrol repositories, fossil-fuel burning and wind turbines are dangerous.

David J. C. MacKay

#67. It is a fact that, today, up to seven million people a year are dying from fossil fuel pollution.

Mark Ruffalo

#68. We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy.

Wendell Berry

#69. if fossil fuel companies are going to help pay for the shift to renewable energy, and for the broader costs of a climate destabilized by their pollution, it will be because they are forced to do so by law.

Naomi Klein

#70. No matter what else happens, this is the century in which we must learn to live without fossil fuel.

David Goodstein

#71. A hundred years ago, this City[...]'s energy production, its food and fuel, came from all over the world, often traveling thousands of miles. People used energy just to ship more energy to the places that needed it. When you're high on fossil fuel fumes, I guess almost anything can make sense.

Annalee Newitz

#72. The history of fossil-fuel development has always been that certain people are expendable. What's changed is that new, larger populations are now considered expendable.

Josh Fox

#73. Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.

Margaret Mead

#74. Most reputable scientists agree that climate change is real and that the effects are likely to be bad. But nobody can say for sure exactly what 'bad' means. The safest and most equitable way out of this horrific mess is simple: cut fossil-fuel emissions.

Michael Specter

#75. Trees and soils can absorb carbon dioxide released by fossil fuel burning. It would be great to subsidize responsible farmers and forest managers.

Alana Beard

#76. Many governments are giving subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption that encourage greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as they are spending on projects to promote clean energy. This is a wasteful use of scarce budget resources.

Jose Angel Gurria

#77. It is a fact that many of the wars and conflicts happening all over the world are aggravated or fought strictly for geopolitical fossil fuel energy interests, and many of the world's most dangerous regimes are funded by fossil fuel dollars.

Mark Ruffalo

#78. I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.

Nancy Pelosi

#79. It will be nearly impossible to slow warming appreciably without condemning much of the world to poverty unless energy sources that emit little or no carbon dioxide become competitive with conventional fossil fuels.

Henry Sylvester Jacoby

#80. Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels.

David Goodstein

#81. You've got to do everything, everything's got to be pointing in the same direction and you've got to really turn this whole economic engine from one that's based on fossil fuels to one that isn't.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#82. Burning all the fossil fuels will destroy the planet we know, Creation, the planet of stable climate in which civilization developed.

James Hansen

#83. Today, in directly harnessing the power of the Sun, we're taking the energy that God gave us, the most renewable energy that we will ever see, and using it to replace our dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.

Jimmy Carter

#84. The world will soon start to run out of conventionally produced, cheap oil ... . We [will] start to run out of all fossil fuels by the end of this century.

David Goodstein

#85. Climate change is real, caused by human activity and already devastating our nation and planet. The United States must lead the world in combating climate change and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainability.

Bernie Sanders

#86. The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions

Desmond Tutu

#87. The worst thing we can do as a nation is taking the easy way out. If you start opening up offshore drilling, then you are buying time and you are not addressing the fundamental problem with fossil fuels.

Joe Biden

#88. Here's what we should be doing. We've got to get off fossil fuels.

Lee Iacocca

#89. Burning fossil fuels is like breaking up the furniture to feed the fireplace because it's easier than going out to the woodpile.

Theodore Roosevelt

#90. Our dependence on fossil fuels amounts to global pyromania, and the only fire extinguisher we have at our disposal is renewable energy.

Hermann Scheer

#91. We must rapidly wean ourselves off our dependence on coal and fossil fuels

Richard Branson

#92. I oppose the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It's an ill-conceived project that would lock us into further dependence on some of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet.

Elizabeth Warren

#93. If aliens did visit us, I'd be embarrassed to tell them we still dig fossil fuels from the ground as a source of energy.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#94. Not using fossil fuels is tantamount to not using energy. It is economic suicide and eco-manslaughter.

Paul Driessen

#95. Dreaming is the soul's fuel...and it is not fossil

Jennifer Jimenez

#96. If we're going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we're going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.

Barack Obama

#97. Today, wind is the cheapest energy in America; solar is not far behind. In time, fossil fuels will only get more and more expensive.

Mark Ruffalo

#98. The probability that we face global warming caused by fossil fuels is now so overwhelming that it is legitimate to doubt the motives of those who deny it

Adair Turner

#99. We must move away from our dependency on fossil fuels, and I am glad that GM has invested over $1 billion in hydrogen fuel cells cars to meet this goal.

Albert Wynn

#100. In a sense, the fossil fuels are a onetime gift that lifted us up from subsistence agriculture and eventually should lead us to a future based on renewable resources.

Kenneth S. Deffeyes