Christine Lagarde Quotes

It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the imperatives of global environmental cooperation.

If people destroy something replaceable made by mankind, they are called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable made by God, they are called developers.

No-one wants polluted air, water or land, denuded forests or extinct animal species. But the error most people make is to trust the legislature to prevent these tragedies. What they don’t realize is how big a role the legislature has played historically in causing environmental destruction.

Foreign relations should involve human rights, workers' rights, and environmental protection.

We need to be rid of the insane policy of environmentalism. No more 'green', anti-growth, anti-science environmental policy.

In the 19th century, we devoted our best minds to exploring nature. In the 20th century, we devoted ourselves to controlling and harnessing it. In the 21st century, we must devote ourselves to restoring it.

Development requires modification and transformation of the environment... the planet's capacity to support its people us being irreversibly reduced by the destruction and degradation of the biosphere and the need to understand the problem and take corrective action is becoming urgent.

While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment.

We need to support our future instead of undermining human survival. Let's do it.

It would be a mistake to believe that environmental protection and economic growth are mutually exclusive.

We only have one earth. Let's take care of it.

The city of the future development will be shifted from the pursuit of material civilisation to the pursuit of nature. This is what happens after human beings experience industrial civilisation at the expense of the natural environment.

We must not risk defunding environmental conservation programs, which is why Congress should reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund to preserve our natural resources.

As our world gets more interconnected, no one country or region can meet development challenges on its own.

The earth of the future belongs to the people of the future.

Taking bold climate action now has the potential to unleash the full power of business and at the same time lift millions of people out of poverty. We're the first generation to recognize this and the last generation that will have this opportunity.

We desperately need to recognise that we are the guests, not the masters, of nature and adopt a new paradigm for development, based on the costs and benefits to all people, and bound by the limits of nature herself rather than the limits of technology and consumerism.

Our nation's continued prosperity hinges on our ability to solve environmental problems and sustain the natural resources on which we all depend.

We are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and our very survival is dependent on protecting nature.

If we want the world to be a better place to live, we have to treat it as one unit. If we want economic growth to be pervasive, we have to make people its partners. If we want the process of development to be sustainable, we have to work with the environment.

That's what the best global conservation organisations and the American government (and other environmentally inclined governments, such as Sweden and the Netherlands) are doing: protecting the remaining wild environment. This is the equivalent of getting a patient to the emergency room - keep them alive and then figure out how to save them.

In reality, Kyoto was a huge transfer of resources from the United States to the Third World, under the guise of environmental protection.

Pollution should never be the price of prosperity.

Achieving climate security must be the core of foreign policy. All of us have to pick up the pace.

Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.