Sustainable Development Quotes - Page 5

• The fossil reserves that have already been discovered exceed what can ever be safely used. Yet companies spend half a trillion dollars each year searching for more fuel. They should redirect this money toward developing clean energy solutions

  Desmond Tutu

  Future, Years, Vision

  "Desmond Tutu: We fought apartheid. Now climate change is our global enemy" by Desmond Tutu, www.theguardian.com. September 20, 2014.

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• We can encourage more of our universities and municipalities, foundations, corporations, individuals and cultural institutions... to move their money out of the problem (fossil fuels) and into the solutions (renewable energy)

  Desmond Tutu

  Moving, Future, Vision

  "Desmond Tutu: We fought apartheid. Now climate change is our global enemy" by Desmond Tutu, www.theguardian.com. September 20, 2014.

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• The 2013/14 storms & floods show the UK needs to invest in a climate resilient, low carbon, food secure, full employment, positive future

  Phil Harding

  Future, Vision, Storm

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• Short term "dash for cash" economic solutions hinder progress towards a better, more sustainable, world

  Phil Harding

  Future, Vision, Progress

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• At every level the greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different

  Roberto Unger

  Future, Imagination, Vision

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• Peace, non-violence, human rights and the environment - if only everybody saw these as the seamless whole that they are

  Jonathon Porritt

  Future, Rights, Vision

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• It makes no sense to invest in [fossil fuel] companies that undermine our future

  Desmond Tutu

  Future, Vision, Fossils

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• We're handing them [young people & future generations] a climate system which is potentially out of their control. We're in an emergency: you can see what's on the horizon over the next few decades with the effects it will have on ecosystems, sea level and species extinction

  James Hansen

  Future, Sea, Ecosystems

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• In a climate where people don't understand the numbers, newspapers, campaigners, companies, and politicians can get away with murder

  David J. C. MacKay

  Future, Numbers, People

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• We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science

  James Lovelock

  Future, Ignorance, Feelings

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• ...four in five of us are, to some extent, members of faith communities. If just a fraction of this huge body of believers were to connect their faith to sustainable development and act accordingly, with the support of their institutions, the gains could be world-changing

  Ian Christie

  Future, Community, Support

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• Religious leaders could play a significant role in making explicit the connections between current concerns for the environment and age-old teachings about our dependence on the natural world, and the dangers of greed and excess

  Ian Christie

  Religious, Teaching, Future

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• Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension.

  Fred Hoyle

  Future, Taken, Emotional

  Fred Hoyle (1960). “The nature of the universe”

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• Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Challenges, Climate, Limited Resources

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• I always run into these Ph.D.s. They write and write and write about sustainable development. Then these guys ask me, 'But, how do you do it?' They are scared to death to do anything.

  Jaime Lerner

  Running, Writing, Guy

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• The science is getting worse faster than the politics is getting better.

  David Miliband

  Future, Vision, Get Better

  "'We nearly threw it away. We must be more radical'". Interview with Patrick Wintour, www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2006.

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• The western model of growth that India and China wish to emulate is intrinsically toxic. It uses huge resources - energy and materials - and generates enormous waste... it remains many steps behind the problems it creates. India and China have no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory

  Sunita Narain

  Future, Choices, Growth

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• ...living more sustainably means living happier, more balanced and potentially more fulfilled lives than most of us 'choose' to live today, whatever Jeremy Clarkson may have to say about that!

  Jonathon Porritt

  Future, Mean, Vision

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• The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right

  Donella Meadows

  Nature, Future, Technology

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• The three pillars of development (economic, social and environmental) must be strengthened together. But it is evident that two of the pillars - economic and social - are subsidiary to, and underpinned by, the third: a vibrant global ecology. Neither dollars nor our species will out-survive our planet. The earth can survive happily without people or profit

  Dave Hampton

  Future, Two, People

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• We live on this very small and fragile planet: a world in which there is poverty and injustice is never going to be a safe and secure world

  Hilary Benn

  Future, Vision, World

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• A global human society, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable

  Thabo Mbeki

  Future, Islands, Sea

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• We all have an interest, and a duty to future generations, to ensure that the benefits of mobility that we now take for granted, do not place an intolerable burden on our environment

  Elliot Morley

  Future, Vision, Generations

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• Whatever the short term clashes between protecting the environment and eradicating poverty, medium term and long term it is clear. Unless we grow sustainably, at some point we face catastrophe

  Tony Blair

  Future, Long, Vision

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• Sustainable development is not an option! It is the only path that allows all of humanity to share a decent life on this, one planet. Rio+20 gives our generation the opportunity to choose this path.

  Sha Zukang

  Opportunity, Our Generation, Giving

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