Naveen Patnaik Quotes

Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libation or prayer.

The direct risks from climate change are obvious: as changing weather patterns cause extremes of flood and drought, hurricanes and typhoons. These damage the physical infrastructure of buildings and bridges roads and railways. They are violent and disruptive.

People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.

I have talked to people across the country struggling in the face of an altered climate. New Jersey homeowners are trying to rebuild after Superstorm Sandy. Miami government officials are trying to plan for rising seas and flooded streets. California farmers are trying to make it through the state's worst drought on record.

Famine has wreaked havoc in Ethiopia for so long, it would be stupid not to be sensitive to the risk of such things occurring. But there has not been a famine on our watch - emergencies, but no famines.

Floods will become more serious and frequent in the Indo-Gangetic plains. Drought induced food and water scarcity will become more acute. South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the small islands will be the worst victims.

I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation.

Writing or talking about famine and the world's response to it is not very easy.

There are a lot of farmers and ranchers who are struggling. I get on my knees every day. If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it.

I don't know how the poor farmers deal with such situations in real life. It's really sad.

In 1965, I went to what was called the worst Bihar famine in India, and I saw starvation, death, people dying of hunger, for the first time. It changed my life. I came back home, told my mother, 'I'd like to live and work in a village.' Mother went into a coma.

From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.

Once we start deliberately messing with the climate systems, we could inadvertently shift rainfall patterns (climate models have shown that rainfall in the Amazon might be particularly vulnerable), causing collapse of ecosystems, drought, famine, and more.

I guess I so desperately want to see us put this planet right. It's so horrifying to me that a fifth of us are starving every night, and that forty thousand children die every single day.

Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.

Famine seems to be the last, the most dreadful resource of nature.

People who, whether they inhabit the desert or settled areas and cities, live a life of abundance and have all the good things to eat, die more quickly than others when a drought or famine comes upon them

Droughts come and go, but this one is so extreme that it will doubtless affect the discussion of climate change.

The world is now on track to more than double current greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere by the end of the century. This would push up average global temperatures by three to eight degrees Celsius and could mean the disappearance of glaciers, droughts in the mid-to-low latitudes, decreased crop productivity, increased sea levels and flooding, vanishing islands and coastal wetlands, greater storm frequency and intensity, the risk of species extinction and a significant spread of infectious disease.

We have ended hunger, but now we have to end famine.

Famines were frequent in colonial India and some estimates indicate that 30 to 40 million died out of starvation in Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Bengal during the later half of the 19th century.

I wish 'Jal' could re-release so that the people could watch it and know how people from Rajasthan and other drought-affected areas suffer.

The U.N. has brought peace and order to many places around the world. However, terrorism, violent extremism, violations of human rights, natural disasters caused by climate change - they all threaten the lives of people today. Add migration, insufficient health care, lack of education, and the picture gets even bleaker.

Some of us don't respect water. We waste it and pour it out. But a lot of disastrous stuff involves water. Tsunamis. Hurricanes.

Climate change is a security threat that Africans have had to deal with all of our lives.