Environmental Impact Quotes

• Look at your business and the activities that you undertake. Then, start to think about not just your economic concerns, but about social and environmental impacts that businesses have.

  Jerry Greenfield

  Thinking, Impact, Environmental

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• Businesses typically look at issues like price, quality, time of delivery. They don't often think about social and environmental impact because they're focused on their financial bottom line.

  Jerry Greenfield

  Thinking, Impact, Issues

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• The industrial processes in use today were developed at a time when no one had to consider what the environmental impact was. Who cared? But making ecological concerns matter to a company's bottom line will help it do the research and development that will reinvent everything we buy.

  Daniel Goleman

  Impact, Research And Development, Environmental

  "How Daniel Goleman Is Changing Our Ideas About Living Green". Interview with Aimee Lee Ball, www.oprah.com. April, 2009.

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• Let he who would move the world, first complete an environmental impact assessment and a 90-day public comment period.

  Socrates

  Moving, Impact, Assessment

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• Beyond reducing individual use, one of our top priorities must be to move from fossil fuels to energy that has fewer detrimental effects on water supplies and fewer environmental impacts overall.

  David Suzuki

  Moving, Impact, Water

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• The gains made by better management and technology are still being outpaced by the environmental impacts of population and economic growth. We are on an unsustainable course.

  Klaus Topfer

  Technology, Impact, Growth

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• Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude.

  Stuart L. Hart

  Real, Technology, Order

  Stuart L. Hart (2010). “Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World”, p.52, FT Press

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• For nearly 11 years, now, we have been on this mission; we call it, "climbing Mt. Sustainability", a mountain higher than Everest, to meet at that point at the top that symbolizes zero footprint-zero environmental impact. Sustainable: taking nothing, doing no harm.

  Ray Anderson

  Zero, Responsibility, Years

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• Those of us who think about what we eat, how it's grown, those of us who care about the environmental impact of food - we've been educated by fabulous books, like Fast Food Nation and documentaries like Food Inc. But despite these and other great projects that shine a critical light on the topic, every year the food industry spends literally tens of millions of dollars to shape the public conversation about our food system.

  Anna Lappe

  Book, Thinking, Impact

  "Anna Lappé Is Ready to Bust the Food Industry’s Biggest Myths". Interview with Tom Philpott, www.motherjones.com. October 2, 2013.

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• Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the reasons we have a coal-dependent infrastructure, with the resulting environmental impact that all of us can see. I suspect environmentalists, through their opposition of nuclear power, have caused more coal plants to be built than anybody. And those coal plants have emitted more radioactive material from the coal than any nuclear accident would have.

  Vinod Khosla

  Impact, Perfect, Enemy

  "Power Q&A: Vinod Khosla". Interview with Elizabeth Gettelman, www.motherjones.com. April 21, 2008.

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• The government of Qatar, as I mentioned, has proposed to come and lease Kenya's Tana River delta in order to farm there. What I am not sure of is, has an environmental impact assessment been made to ensure that exploiting this delta for agricultural activities is the best way we can use the delta?We must be concerned about the long-term impact of agricultural activities in the delta.

  Wangari Maathai

  Order, Qatar, Rivers

  Source: kenvironews.wordpress.com

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• I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.

  Tony Hayward

  Thinking, Impact, Environmental

  "The spilling fields". "Background Briefing" with Wendy Carlisle, www.abc.net.au. July 4, 2010.

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• This is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidize highways beyond the gasoline tax, airlines, and we don't subsidize, we don't want to subsidize a national rail system that has environmental impact.

  Joe Biden

  Impact, Environmental, Gasoline

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• But no matter how big the effort to push a propaganda line might be, climate change is bigger. This, undoubtedly and regrettably, is the biggest immediate long-term environmental challenge we face. A failure to concretely come to some policy outcome on climate change has not only a negative environmental impact but also social and economic consequences for us.

  Peter Garrett

  Impact, Long, Effort

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• Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.

  Garrett Hardin

  Impact, Political, Environmental

  Garrett James Hardin (1982). “Naked emperors: essays of a taboo-stalker”, Course Technology Ptr

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• If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.

  Ronald Reagan

  Impact, Government, Hands

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches”, p.427, Simon and Schuster

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• What's it like to envision the ten-thousand-year environmental impact of tossing a plastic bottle into the trash bin, all in the single second it takes to actually toss it? Or the ten-thousand-year history of the fossil fuel being burned to drive to work or iron a shirt? It may be environmentally progressive, but it's not altogether pleasant.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Impact, Years, Iron

  "Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now". Book by Douglas Rushkoff, www.wired.com. 2004.

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• For businesses, biomimicry is about bringing a new discipline - biology - to the design table. It's not to write an environmental impact statement, as most biologists in business do right now.

  Janine Benyus

  Writing, Impact, Discipline

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• Surveying the available alternative energy sources for criteria such as energy density, environmental impacts, reliance on depleting raw materials, intermittency versus constancy of supply, and the percentage of energy returned on the energy invested in energy production, none currently appears capable of perpetuating this kind of society.

  Richard Heinberg

  Oil, Impact, Environmental

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• Sustainability at Nike means being laser-focused on evolving our business model to deliver profitable growth while leveraging the efficiencies of lean manufacturing, minimizing our environmental impact and using the tools available to us to bring about positive change across our entire supply chain.

  Mark Parker

  Nike, Mean, Impact

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• Millions of people around the world suffer daily from the harmful health and environmental impacts caused by indoor cooking fires and inefficient cookstoves. Together with the Global Alliance on Clean Cookstoves, we are taking action to address this critical problem and to promote a cleaner, healthier environment. I am pleased to celebrate the launch of this Alliance and proud to say that agencies from across the U.S. Federal Government will continue to play an important role in this initiative.

  Nancy Sutley

  Fire, Impact, Agency

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