Planetary Risk Quotes

What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?... In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?

By far the single greatest danger facing humankind - in fact, all living beings on our planet - is the threat of nuclear destruction.

Climate change poses an existential threat to the planet that is no less dire than that posed by North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment.

I'm no longer sceptical. I no longer have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world.

There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.

The oceans themselves are threatened and life itself, therefore, and the planet is threatened because of it.

I agree, along with Carl Sagan, that we should eventually become a two planet species. Life is too precious to place on a single planet.

We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imminent? It's a delusion to think it's gone away.

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.

As a planet, we are at risk of destruction (for example, gradually by the warming of the planet; or rapidly, by nuclear war or a pathogen that gets out of control). And these threats require us to work together, and not just to announce our diversity.

In the history of the world, all five mass extinctions have been accompanied by massive climate change, so we are facing an incredibly serious threat. In fact, we are technically in the sixth mass extinction right now, and it is the first mass extinction being attributed to humans.

The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.