Jens Martin Skibsted Quotes

The changing climate is a threat to human rights.

The latest computer modeling I've seen indicates that at mid-century, there might be 150 million people classified as "environmental refugees."

As foreign minister of Norway, I learnt how natural changes provoked by climate change are creating new sources of political instability.

Geological change usually takes thousands of years to happen but we are seeing the climate changing not just in our lifetimes but also year by year.

If there are more and more environmental refugees, they are going to end up on your doorstep too.

As Development Secretary, I have seen in the developing world that climate change there is not a theory, is not a future threat: it is a contemporary crisis.

Scientists will say we can't blame global warming for any single event. In a sense that's right, but the fact that the frequency and intensity of these events is increasing you can blame on global warming.

Some time this century, the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors.'

Here in New York, we are already seeing how climate change contributes to increasingly violent and extreme weather that has cost us dearly, in both damage and in lives.

We know the climate is changing. We don't know if it will be really bad or nearly apocalyptic. Both are within the realm of possibility.

From floods in Iowa and Nebraska to fires in California to hurricanes in Houston and Puerto Rico, we can no longer escape the fact that climate change is not happening in some far-off, distant future.

Runaway climate change would condemn millions to a life of poverty and cause us to fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030. This is not an acceptable outcome.

The climate is changing, but the question is how much - and to what extent human factors are contributing to that.

And if there is one thing we can be sure of, it’s that extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the British floods—disasters that, combined, pummeled coastlines beyond recognition, ravaged millions of homes, and killed many thousands—are going to keep coming.

We now know that climate change is a driver of migration, and is expected to increase the displacement of populations.

I think it's important for people to be aware of the impact that climate change is having on this huge community of people.

Rising sea levels will result in tens to hundreds of millions more people flooded each year with a warming of 3 or 4°C. There will be serious risks and increasing pressures for coastal protection in South East Asia (Bangladesh and Vietnam), small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, New York, Miami and London.

There are many war refugees and three times as many climate refugees. All of them are people who can no longer live where they were born. I hope we face reality in time to save ourselves. We will all be migrants soon.

Maybe the science is uncertain, maybe we don't have to worry about it. Climate change is the worst, but there's others.

If there's horrible flooding in Pakistan or a horrible heat wave in Texas, we're no longer able to call it an act of God, or a natural disaster, or something like that, the way we could have through all of human history until 35 or 40 years ago.

Climate change that is occurring right now is causing so much suffering all around the world. Whether it's adding 30 million people to the "at risk of starvation" list in 2008, whether it's the floods in Pakistan, or entire cultures at risk of disappearing, or desertification in Africa - all these things that are currently being caused by climate change. I think it's something that a lot of people want to figure out: how to make the shift, how to help. It seems like such an overwhelming problem.

The environment is going to change very quickly.

The scientific evidence of how serious this climate crisis is becoming continues to amass week after week after week.

Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country.

Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen...We risk damages on a scale larger than the two world wars of the last century.