Quotes About Change

It's not so much that we are losing our identities, but rather that we are no longer embracing false identities. If we hold on to what once defined us, we will miss out on the authentic identity we are being called to.

We also face psychological obstacles in responding to climate change. Evolution built us to respond to rapid movements of middle-sized objects, not to the slow buildup of insensible gases in the atmosphere. Most of us respond dramatically to what we sense, not to what we think. As a result, even those of us who are concerned about climate change find it difficult to feel its urgency and to act decisively.

As the late climate scientist Jerry Mahlman used to say, "There is no need to exaggerate the problem of climate change; it is bad enough as it is.

The challenge we face is not (only) to reduce or stabilize concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, but to live in productive relationship with the dynamic systems that govern a changing planet. This is a new challenge because humanity is young and now constitutes an important planetary force in a way that is unprecedented. Anthropogenic climate change is the harbinger of a new world in which humans have become a dominant force on Earth's natural systems.

Several candidates for the Republican nomination for president in 2012 had previously accepted the climate science consensus, and in some cases actively worked toward climate change solutions (e.g., Huntsman, Pawlenty, Gingrich, and Romney). After becoming presidential candidates, they retreated from their previous positions in every case.

By the 1960s scientists had expressed concerns about the possibility of an anthropogenic climate change to presidents of both parties. At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the industrialized countries seemed to agree that by 2000 they would stabilize their GHG emissions at 1990 levels. Yet global emissions are still increasing, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is now almost 10% greater than it was in 1992, we have already experienced a warming of .8°C,

President Johnson said, "[t]his generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

We are constantly told that we stand at a unique moment in human history and that this is the last chance to make a difference, but every point in human history is unique, and it is always the last chance to make some particular difference.

In 1975 Wally Broecker published an influential paper correctly predicting a twentieth-century warming of 0.8°C, and worrying about the consequences for agriculture and sea level.64

In a September speech to the Royal Society, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher expressed concern about climate change, ozone depletion, and acid rain, echoing Roger Revelle's language about the global experiment that was now underway, noting that the five warmest years in a century had all been in the 1980s, and reminding her audience of the vulnerability of the Maldives to sea level rise.

In the 1950s climate change was discussed in newspapers and popular magazines. Many will be surprised to learn that in 1965 climate change was mentioned by the president of the United States in a message to Congress.

Over the past 10,000 years, when almost everything we value about humanity and its creations came into existence, the Earth has been remarkably stable on a broad range of indicators. Until the last 250 years, when concentrations began to grow as a result of the industrial revolution, concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide have varied between 240 and 280 ppm. We have reached nearly 400 ppm as a result of human action,

each generation of adults has a choice to pass on traditions of violence and fear—or refuse to do so.

The highest ethical duty is often to discard the outmoded ethics of the past." —Corliss Lamont, humanist philosopher

the presence of that lone dissenter reduced the error rates of subjects by 75 percent. This is a crucial realization: If a group is embarking on an unfortunate course of action, a lone dissenter may turn it around by energizing ambivalent group members to join the dissent instead of following the crowd into error.

Your past comes with you no matter where you go.

Because freedom, it turned out, wasn't like a new shoe: you didn't need to break it in. It felt comfortable the first time you tried it on. It wasn't the present that pinched, it was the past.

If you let the alembic cool, metaphor becomes superstition.

unhappiness was something you got used to or something that passed.

Human development, not secularization, is what's key to women's empowerment in the transforming Middle East.

Dos 19 aos 25 anos, Anne. Estes são os "anos de loucura". É a época em que se deve ter loucos casos de amor, longas conversas com alguém que poderia ser mas não é, o grande amor de nossa vida. É quando a gente experimenta usar as roupas mais estranhas e muda de penteado dez vezes por mês, vai a festas esquisitas, bebe demais e vomita no tapete.

Ninguém sabe o que vai acontecer amanhã ou na semana que vem. Não importa quanto sua vida seja segura e estabelecida, tudo pode mudar num piscar de olhos.

Revelation comes most often when we are on the move.

How else to make a dent in an object as immovable as patriarchy itself...?