Arundhati Roy Quotes

If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.

We depend on our rivers and dams for energy, transportation, irrigation and recreation and I will continue this year to fight for what's best for the Pacific Northwest.

We have serious challenges regarding climate change, unsustainable use of natural resources, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, forests and farmland. Not to mention the huge inequality still prevailing in several parts of the planet.

Though dams and artificial lakes can have significant negative environmental impacts, when carefully considered, mitigated, and managed, the benefits of hydropower often outweigh these costs.

We're loosely calling it The River Project, but hopefully the pieces that we put together will be educational pieces that will throw some light on the situation as to what kind of jeopardy may be surrounding our great rivers.

Climate change is a complex problem with no central lever, and with unequal distribution of resources.

The doomsayers of the 1970s were wrong about how quickly the world would run out of oil, but not about the dangers that hydrocarbon consumption posed to the global environment, especially with respect to climate change.

I think having toured the world and seeing many places, I've just been blown away by how we've really scarred our home. I'm as guilty as the next person if not more so. I travel a lot. The damage we do to our planet is huge.

Yet, despite our many advances, our environment is still threatened by a range of problems, including global climate change, energy dependence on unsustainable fossil fuels, and loss of biodiversity.

Because we're not in harmony with the environment, we're destroying the environment that supports us.

How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.

The coal industry is a huge industry when we're talking about polluting the environment, our air and our waterways.

There is a societal cost of increased pollution, and that's what I'm passionate about as a mother.

In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity.

The tar sands boom has become the world's largest energy project, the world's largest construction project, and the world's largest capital project.

As I'm traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we've harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don't know what I feel; I just don't know what the emotion is.

China leads the world in energy consumption, carbon emissions, and the release of major air and water pollutants, and the environmental impact is felt both regionally and globally.

Climate change is obviously happening and there is obviously a man-made contribution.

What's it like to envision the ten-thousand-year environmental impact of tossing a plastic bottle into the trash bin, all in the single second it takes to actually toss it? Or the ten-thousand-year history of the fossil fuel being burned to drive to work or iron a shirt? It may be environmentally progressive, but it's not altogether pleasant.

There's no question that tar sands in Canada are probably the largest source of oil available to the U.S. over a long period of time. There's as much oil in the tar sands probably as there is in Saudi Arabia. The problem is, there's a huge capital requirement to develop that.

How we grow food has enormous effects on the environment - climate change as well as pollution of air, water, and soil.

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

Every time there is an economic intensification, there is an ecological impact.

There probably were floods when our land was newly settled but before we cut our trees so recklessly they were not so serious. If we go to the headwaters of our rivers and we will find the cause and the results which follow in the wake of man's destructive ignorance.

As artists, we can help, visually and intellectually, to make people understand that, at some point, we have to accept that it is our collective impact that is putting the whole planet in jeopardy.