Quotes About Emissions

If everyone that has agreed to the Paris Agreement wants to meet their targets they are going to have to make renewables part of the equation. There's no other way out of it.

The targets we all agree on - every country in the world except the U.S., Nicaragua, and Syria - will have targets under the Paris Agreement. So everyone knows what the targets should be, and then we can have a difference of opinion on exactly how these emissions will be reduced.

If the carbon tax really was about saving the world, we would presume the largest industrial emitters of carbon would have to pay it.

Tax what you burn not what you earn.

Many scientists and economists also say putting a price on carbon through carbon taxes and/or cap-and-trade is necessary.

Agency (EPA) estimates that coal-fired power plants account "for over 40% of all domestic human-caused mercury emissions." Furthermore, the EPA says, "about one quarter of US emissions from coal-burning power plants are deposited within the contiguous US and the remainder enters the global cycle."6 In addition, the ash that comes out of coal-fired power plants is usually contaminated with heavy metals.

It is profoundly inequitable that the difficult starting point is largely the result of actions by the developed nations, but the numbers on population and future emissions are such that a credible response cannot come from the rich countries alone.

Cars are environmental enemy number one. (from an interview in Attitude, 2002)

You should be attacking the carbon emissions, period, and whether it's cap-and-trade or carbon tax or whatever, that's the realm in which we should be playing.

Whilst the developed world may say it wants to see much greater commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this may only be politically feasible if there is strong support for adaptation measures in those countries at greatest immediate risk.

Cuts in carbon emissions would mean significantly higher electricity prices. We think the American consumer would prefer not to be skinned by Obama's EPA.

Since 1850, burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas has increased 100 times to produce energy as the world has industrialized to serve the world's more than 6 billion and growing population.

We have brought down emissions in this country through our legal system and through technological innovation. We can do this on our own. We don't have to have the permission of countries all over the world to do that.

From solar to electric cars, from geothermal to reconfiguring the grid, the scale of investment needed in green technologies in order to meet whatever agreements on emissions reductions are finally agreed will be immense.

You have to be able to generate usable energy without greenhouse gas emissions, and you have to be able to do it cheaply if you want people to choose that approach. That means new technologies.

This is the way that I like to phrase it: we want to focus on 100% of the problem, and you can only focus on 100% of global emissions if you have technology that is exportable, clean, reliable, and cheap.

In the stable emissions model, in which a rise in global surface temperatures by two degrees Celsius from preindustrial times is more than likely, the Northeast would still see a robust increase in nitrogen loading.

Prominent scientists have become increasingly convinced that the connection between carbon emissions and rising temperatures is real, but skeptics have whole truckloads of studies to demonstrate the opposite.

The post-2020 fiscal reckoning does not require higher payroll taxes or lower retirement benefits, as new sources of fiscal revenue are available from drug legalization, increased tax progressivity, tax reform that eliminates most tax deductions, and a carbon tax that provides incentives to reduce emissions.

But reducing harmful emissions, abating our dependence on foreign oil and developing alternative renewable energy sources have benefits that go beyond environmental health, they improve personal health, enhance national security and encourage our nation's economic viability.

I have advocated an entirely different approach than cap and tax, which would be worldwide in application and which emphasizes technology as a way of reducing total emissions.

The science is clear that there is an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. What is not clear from the science is how much of that increase is caused by human activity and what also is not clear is what impact those increases have on the climatic cycle.

Factory farming is one of the biggest contributors to the most serious environmental problems. The meat industry causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, planes and ships in the world.

I say just put a big fat tax on carbon.