Werner Herzog Quotes

We hope that as a species we're capable of dealing with environmental catastrophe before it actually does collectively kill most of us.

Capitalism is destroying Mother Earth, and to destroy Mother Earth is to destroy humanity.

Climate change is not a discrete issue; it's a symptom of larger problems. Fundamentally, our society as currently designed has no future. We're chewing up the planet so fast, in so many different ways, that we could solve the climate problem tomorrow and still find that environmental collapse is imminent.

As for climate change, it's by now widely accepted by the scientific community that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which the Earth's climate is being radically modified by human action, creating a very different planet, one that may not be able to sustain organized human life in anything like a form we would want to tolerate.

We have arrived at a moment of decision. Our home - Earth - is in grave danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.

We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.

What's at risk [in 100 years] if we do not take action, truly is the survival of civilization as we know it... Literally that is the case. We have seen global warming so far of just a little bit less than one degree Celsius and look at what's happened. Superstorm Sandy. Boulder Colorado. All these fires. Hurricane Irene one year before.

The environmental crisis is a sign that the ecosphere is now so heavily strained that its continued stability is threatened. It is a warning that we must discover the source of this suicidal drive and master it before it destroys the environment-and ourselves.

We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.

Environmentalism has failed.

So when you're dealing with an existential threat like death or like climate change, if you see it as 'we are all toast anyway,' then denial is a pretty good way of coping.

I can't even consider the prospect of grandchildren because I don't know if there will be anything left for them on Earth. That's how serious the problem is. We can't drink the water or breathe the air, and we're all dying from some sort of cancer. How many generations can sustain that? It frightens me terribly.

What we're doing to the planet is inexcusable.

The environmental crisis is all a result of rushing.

The living world has become impoverished. Species are being lost every day. Energy and other resources are nearing exhaustion. The environment is deteriorating. Pollution is everywhere. Climate is changing. Natural balances are threatened.

I always get involved with the environment because once you go past the tipping point with the environment, you don't get it back.

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on Earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.

The language 'It's too late' is very unsuitable for most environmental issues. It's too late for the dodo and for people who've starved to death already, but it's not too late to prevent an even bigger crisis. The sooner we act on the environment, the better.

Ultimately, here is the choice we face: we can either make the solution to the climate crisis the central organizing principle of civilization–or the hostile conditions we are creating will grow rapidly worse, thickening the smothering blanket of global warming pollution surrounding our planet and destroy the viability of civilization as we know it.

There are those who say that climate change is a hoax, a concoction of radical environmentalists and a liberal media. That is simply hogwash.... To ignore and dismiss the threat of climate change to the economy and the environment is like insisting the earth is flat.

Global warming and climate change is a big problem. It requires a big solution.

If 98 doctors say my son is ill and needs medication and two say, “No, he doesn’t, he is fine,’ I will go with the 98. It’s common sense-the same with global warming. We go with the majority, the large majority...The key thing now is that since we know this industrial age has created it, let’s get our act together and do everything we can to roll it back.

We now know beyond a doubt that global warming is a reality. And the question we must all answer is, what are we going to do about it?

Climate change is an economic, public health, and environmental issue that we have a moral responsibility to address.