Michael Oppenheimer Quotes

The window of opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change is closing more quickly than previously thought.

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.

Science is science, and there is no doubt that if we burned all the fossil fuels that are in the ground right now that the planet’s going to get too hot and the consequences could be dire.

If we don't embrace a low carbon economy this decade, it won't just harm the planet, but also the U.S. economy.

You can't just do one of the things, because it won't be enough to combat the climate change that we're already starting to experience. It will only get worse.

Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction; we are already feeling the effects.

We need to do as much as we can from every direction or we will surpass that two-degree climate increase. Actually, the science is showing we are already en route to surpassing two degrees.

We have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.

I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change. No longer than a decade at most.

If what the science tells us about climate change is correct, then unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world.

We face a climate crisis now that is the most serious challenge our civilization has ever confronted. And the greatest country in the world [America] has to remain a part of this unprecedented global agreement to deal with it.

I'm about to embark on what may be as important as an initiative as anything I do as President, trying to nudge the world in the direction of doing something serious about climate change.

For those of us who worry more about working people than about windfall profits for oil companies, it may net out. A better question is: what does it do to our economy if we manage to overheat the earth? This summer's drought provides a small taste.

Climate change is real. Climate change is being substantially increased by humans and the carbon we put into the atmosphere. And it appears to be speeding up. If science has made any mistakes, science has been underestimating it.

I honestly don't know, but if America continues to refuse to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, I see a bleak future not only for American society, but for the world as a whole. This is a global problem that is not going away, and the United States is an obstacle to solving it.

Even leaving aside government policy, whole industries are already making expensive changes around the perceived need to 'go green.' Al Gore and countless other prophets of global catastrophe are making megamillions pushing these expensive solutions. Schoolchildren around the globe are being frightened by tales of impending calamity.

We're either going to save Ihe world or no one will be saved.

The best way to deal with climate change has been obvious for years: cut greenhouse-gas emissions severely. We haven't done that. In 2010, for example, carbon emissions rose by six per cent - the largest such increase on record.

In my personal belief, the big problem with climate change is getting people to understand the magnitude and scale that we're dealing with. If you buy a vehicle that gets 35 miles to the gallon, that means nothing; it's not enough. We need to make changes across society and in every piece of the energy pie.

Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. The observed rapid warming gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions.

I sort of feel that climate change will be solved by science. I just feel instinctively that we will find a way of saving ourselves. But I am less confident that we won't destroy ourselves in other ways.

I am now certain that we have no alternative but to reduce urgently the levels of carbon that we are still pumping into the atmosphere as though tomorrow simply didn't matter. If we don't act collectively and individually, our children and their children will reap a whirlwind which will obliterate their civilisation.

Bill Gates is a relative newcomer to the fight against global warming, but he's already shifting the debate over climate change.

Americans are already paying the price for record heat waves, dirty air, and an unstable climate. We need to fight these threats with every weapon we have, and the electricity industry has to do its fair share.

The only way we can hope to combat climate change, protect our precious land and water, and prevent future extreme weather disasters is to cut the carbon pollution that’s warming our planet, and replace dirty energy sources with clean, renewable sources.