Climate Crisis Quotes

“To avert climate crisis, it's important that humanity recognizes the intrinsic value of nature, beyond its convertible utility.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., Principles of a Permaculture Economy

“To avert climate crises, it's important that humanity shifts to permaculture economics, fostering resilience and cooperation.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.

“To avert climate crises, it's important that humanity listens to and learns from indigenous knowledge. Pairing indigenous knowledge with modern science and technology will be a win for humanity.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.

“[H]ow can we design an evolutionary learning capability into our political, economic, and social systems so they are not crippled by rigidity in the face of changing circumstance or external shocks.”
― Roman Krznaric, The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking

“walking in the Cambrian Desert, it sometimes seems impossible to imagine trees returning there, the emptiness stands as an incontestable fact, as if it were a matter of geology, not ecology”
― George Monbiot, Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life

“most human endeavours, unless checked by public dissent, evolve into monocultures. money seeks out a region’s comparative advantage, the field in which it competes most successfully, and promotes it to the exclusion of all else. every landscape or seascape, if this process is loosed, performs just one function. this greatly taxes the natural world”
― George Monbiot, Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life

“Yes, our world is like a living being, wouldn’t you agree? Rishona has good days and bad days — mood swings, if you like: random outbursts, tears of joy, laughter and sorrow — all those delightful things that we experience.”
― H.C. Roberts, Harp and the Lyre: Extraction

“As a society, we cannot afford to overlook the nexus between environmental health and reproductive well-being. The future health and vitality of our communities depend on our collective commitment to creating a cleaner, safer environment for everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable.”
― Shivanshu K. Srivastava

“The richest 1 per cent of the world's population are responsible for more than twice as much carbon pollution as the people who make up the poorest half of humanity.”
― Greta Thunberg, The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

“Her tactic when lecturing for preventing student despair… was to give them what she called “solution multipliers” – answers to a problem that addressed more than one issue, rather than solving one problem and thereby creating another.”
― Gareth Hughes

“I am not suggesting that the new politics is just about sweetness and light and being nice to people. It is as important as ever to have a proper analysis of power and be prepared to confront it. But perhaps the image is not the two boxers facing up to each othe with fists and bloody noses, but he aikido skill of turning the force against itself, or of removing just the right brick from the wall so that it crumbles. This requires no less strength, courage or determination.”
― Gareth Hughes, A Gentle Radical: The Life of Jeanette Fitzsimons

“She knew that sometimes a well-placed question could effect a significant change in direction. She also knew that Palmer was not a dyed-in-the-wool right-winger; he was not opposed to energy efficiency per se, just disagreed about the appropriate constitutional delivery. She leaned forward and asked him, ‘How would you do it, Sir Geoffrey?’ he replied at length, expounding on all the ways it could be done. Dennis Marshall, the select committee chair, looked at Jeanette and back at Sir Geoffrey and said, ‘Professor Palmer, would you like to assist the committee with a redraft?’ Jeanette loved to tell this story and would joyfully recount watching the expression on the face of the ministry of commerce official at the back of the room go from a grin to a horrified grimace as Palmer said yes. With Palmer’s help, an ambitious first attempt at writing law grew to become a fine piece of legislation. (the EECA)”
― Gareth Hughes, A Gentle Radical: The Life of Jeanette Fitzsimons

“In the 1990 election campaign both Labour and National parties adopted ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The country at that point was near carbon-neutral, with sources of emissions balanced by forestry which s3equestered the carbon. However, in the coming decade emissions would skyrocket as New Zealanders drove more; trucks replaced rail and shipping for freight; coal and gas were increasingly burnt for electricity; vast swathes of the country’s farms and wetlands were converted to dairy farming; and coal was used to convert that milk to powder for export. The National government spent the 1990s anguishing over what tool to use to reduce emissions and ended up doing nothing. Labour came in in 1999, signed up to the Kyoto Protocol and announced a carbon tax, but set it so far in the future that coalition politics eventually killed it. Meanwhile, every year, NZ’s net emissions increased from cars, cows and coal. Labour took climate pollution out of the RMA, relying on voluntary commitments and technological wishes… By 2008 NZ’s emissions were 25% higher than they had been in 1990.”
― Gareth Hughes, A Gentle Radical: The Life of Jeanette Fitzsimons

“I have sat here for 13 years weeping at the tragedy of so many people wasting the precious gift of life by chasing the mirage of a bigger GDP.”
― Gareth Hughes, A Gentle Radical: The Life of Jeanette Fitzsimons

“The feminism we have in mind recognizes that it must respond to a crisis of epochal proportions: plummeting living standards and looming ecological disaster; rampaging wars and intensified dispossession; mass migrations met with barbed wire; emboldened racism and xenophobia; and the reversal of hard-won rights—both social and political.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“we are living through is a crisis of society as a whole. By no means restricted to the precincts of finance, it is simultaneously a crisis of economy, ecology, politics, and “care.” A general crisis of an entire form of social organization,”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“confront head on, the real source of crisis and misery, which is capitalism.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“who will guide the process of societal transformation, in whose interest, and to what end?”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“societal reorganization, has played out several times in modern history—largely to capital’s benefit. Seeking to restore profitability, its champions have reinvented capitalism time and again—reconfiguring not only the official economy, but also politics, social reproduction, and our relation to nonhuman nature. In so doing, they have reorganized not only class exploitation, but also gender and racial oppression,”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“Historically, the 1 percent have always been indifferent to the interests of society or the majority. But today they are especially dangerous. In their single-minded pursuit of short-term profits, they fail to gauge not only the depth of the crisis, but also the threat it poses to the long-term health of the capitalist system itself: they would rather drill for oil now than ensure the ecological preconditions for their own future profits!”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“How is it that we already have so many solutions to the climate crisis that don't compromise human rights or justice, but the only solutions being seriously considered are the ones that do?”
― Mikaela Loach, It's Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World

“Antonio José Bolívar tried to keep [the ocelots] at bay while the settlers destroyed the jungle and constructed that masterpiece of civilized man: the desert.”
― Luis Sepúlveda, The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

“He was definitely saying something. That we could become something magnificent, or at least interesting. That we began as we still are now, child geniuses. That there is no other home for us than here. That we will cope no matter how stupid things get. That all couples are odd couples. That the only catastrophe that can't be undone is extinction. That we can make a good place. That people can take their fate in their hands. That there is no such thing as fate.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

“AI will become more potent and be able to regulate both the climate and the surroundings.”
― Kathy Greggs , The Mother The Soldier The Activist: Resistance is Futile and Justice will Prevail

“It is pointless waiting for perfect weather. You’ll never get anywhere or do anything worthwhile if you do. Perfect weather never comes, and even if it comes, it doesn’t last long. Make a move. Make a move now.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“Life is running away from us, and it would be one thing if we had something to look forward to, if you and I could enjoy a bit of luxury once we're fifty or sixty, but that's never going to happen, is it? This is what life is like now, and it's only going to get worse. All of it. The best we can hope for is that we die before it becomes completely unbearable. With the heat, the water, the food. That we can keep society functioning for a few more years, until the next pandemic shuts everything down again. That we don't have to eat insects. That the racists and lunatics don't take over even more of the world. That there's still coffee in the rest home . . . And ultimately it doesn't really matter all that much, the fact that hu anity is collapsing isn't a problem, not from a cosmic or evolutionary perspective, the planet will still be here, life will go on, for millions of years I'm sure, it's just us that doesn't have a future . . . So I want to enjoy myself. I want to live life to the max. I want to burn through every last krona. I don't want to waste a single day on a life I'm not happy with. There's no point waiting for things to get better, because nothing is going to get better. This is the world we live in now. Don't be ashamed to be human, be proud."

- Didrik”
― Jens Liljestrand, Even If Everything Ends

“Life is running away from us, and it would be one thing if we had something to look forward to, if you and I could enjoy a bit of luxury once we're fifty or sixty, but that's never going to happen, is it? This is what life is like now, and it's only going to get worse. All of it. The best we can hope for is that we die before it becomes completely unbearable. With the heat, the water, the food. That we can keep society functioning for a few more years, until the next pandemic shuts everything down again. That we don't have to eat insects. That the racists and lunatics don't take over even more of the world. That there's still coffee in the rest home . . . And ultimately it doesn't really matter all that much, the fact that humanity is collapsing isn't a problem, not from a cosmic or evolutionary perspective, the planet will still be here, life will go on, for millions of years I'm sure, it's just us that doesn't have a future . . . So I want to enjoy myself. I want to live life to the max. I want to burn through every last krona. I don't want to waste a single day on a life I'm not happy with. There's no point waiting for things to get better, because nothing is going to get better. This is the world we live in now. Don't be ashamed to be human, be proud."

- Didrik”
― Jens Liljestrand, Even If Everything Ends

“We need to teach them that the worst thing isn't what nature is gom to do to us, it's what we're going to do to each other.”
― Jens Liljestrand, Even If Everything Ends

“We need to teach them that the worst thing isn't what nature is going to do to us, it's what we're going to do to each other.”
― Jens Liljestrand

“... there is a difference between reading about the end of the world and actually seeing it with your own eyes. Watching a kingdom, drunk on sugar and youth culture and hippie nostalgia and reality TV and porno dreams and Hollywood lies, shrivel up and fall apart; it's like watching Alexandria and Constantinople and Rome and Athens all crumble to ash. Rising poverty. The annual migration inland, as the unemployment and homelessness and hopelessness on the West Coast spread like poison through a society that hadn't yet recovered from the pandemic. And on top of that, the forest fires that began earlier and ended later each year, meaning that a period that had once stretched from June to September now spanned April to November. Some parts of California were now more or less uninhabitable, there were places the insurance companies refused to cover, with homeowners unable to renew their existing policies, and I knew enough to understand that once the money starts leaving a place, the people follow.”
― Jens Liljestrand, Even If Everything Ends