Quotes About Carbon

To eliminate diversity would be like eliminating carbon and expecting life to go on.

I once asked a CEO of an environmental equipment company what his goals were. I was expecting to hear some intent, like "Give people inexpensive tools to reduce carbon emissions" or "Help coal companies be better neighbors in their communities." Instead, he replied that he wanted his company to make the Fortune 500. That might be a result of his success, but success doing what? Only intent points to clear action.

Carbon may be a talented connector, but without a medium that allows it to collide randomly with other elements, those connective powers are likely to go to waste. All

the unique property of the carbon atom: its combinatorial power. Carbon is a connector.

we are stardust, billion year old carbon. we are golden, caught in the devil's bargain.

The permafrost contains more than some 1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, which is nearly twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere. Although

As soon as you plow, you're releasing carbon.

Depending on how you farm, your farm is either sequestering or releasing carbon.

I don't believe that a hydrogen economy depends on a carbon economy at all.

Bill McKibben named his climate change advocacy group 350.org, because 350 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide is what Dr. James Hansen, former head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the most respected climatologists in the world, says is the maximum level to "preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted." Tragically, we have now exceeded 400 ppm.

Death is re-arrangement; it is the disassociation of the compounds whose resultant was life; the breaking up of the complex organic products, and their gradual resolution into the simpler inorganic forms; until the living body, with its compounds of wonderful variety and intricacy, is resolved through stage after stage of ever-increasing simplicity into those ultimate fates of all living things, carbon dioxide, water, and ammonia; and then these re-commence the upward building once more.

A little thing we've begun to do is replace all the traditional light bulbs in our house with fluorescent light bulbs. I introduced a bill to promote compact fluorescent light bulbs. If every family in America changed just one bulb, we could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 7 million tons per year. There are a lot of little things we can do to make a gigantic change.

the world in 2100 would have about 600 parts per million carbon dioxide. That is, we'd live if not in hell, then in some place with a very similar temperature.

Taken together, he said, these two lines of inquiry made it clear that the safe number was, at most, 350 parts per million.

The planet has nearly 390 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We're too high. Forget the grandkids; it turns out this was a problem for our parents.

changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than a thousand years after carbon dioxide emissions are completely stopped.

Calculations by Plass (1956) indicate that a ten percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would increase the average temperature by 0.36 degrees Celsius. But, amplifying or feed-back processes may exist such that a slight change in the character of the back radiation might have a more pronounced effect.

in fact American carbon dioxide emissions were expected to fall nearly 5 percent in 2009.47 Which is good news. Just not good enough. To give you an idea of how aggressively the world's governments are willing to move, in July 2009 the thirteen largest emitters met in Washington to agree on an "aspirational" goal of 50 percent cuts in carbon by 2050, which falls pretty close to the category of "don't bother.

An increased push for energy efficiency, renewable energy technology, electric mobility - along with the growing digitalization movement and a universal carbon pricing structure - would speed up the carbon-free future and the rise of a global middle class we desperately need. We can and must all do our part.

We really need to kick the carbon habit and stop making our energy from burning things. Climate change is also really important. You can wreck one rainforest then move, drain one area of resources and move onto another, but climate change is global.

Everything is moving, but there's so much we can't see: how thought comes into being; how grasses and trees connect; how animals know weather, experience pleasure and love; how what's under the soil, the deep microbial empire, can hold twenty billion tons of carbon in its hands.

The American Republican Party is the last political bastion of the fossil fuel industry - now so in tow to the fossil fuel industry that it cannot face up to the realities of carbon pollution and climate change.

There's no miracle formula but we have to move towards a lower carbon economy. We don't have any other choice.

I think it's important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating. I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.