Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Barry Gardiner

The degradation of natural resources such as forests and freshwater has removed much of the resilience that societies formerly enjoyed.

The media when it focuses on climate change at all, does so in terms of carbon emissions and how to reduce them. Only rarely do our leaders advance arguments about adapting our environment and our economy to the effects of climate change that are already inevitable.

We engage in the public institutions of work and school and club and team, because it is there that we find meaning and purpose. But sometimes when we engage, we find confrontation not affirmation.

When I was a child my mother used to pay me half a crown - 12.5 pence - to wash her car each week.

GDP has been a con perpetrated upon the poor of the world: a measure of economic activity and not of actual wealth. What it masks is the way in which we transform their natural capital into our consumption through international rules that regard the ecosystem services upon which they rely as mere externalities.

We need robust sustainability regulations for shipping that are internationally recognised and respected. This will ensure shipping plays its part in the global transition to carbon neutrality.

You cannot send battleships in to stop the destruction of a rainforest. But you can spend money on clean technology transfer that enables countries to bring their people out of poverty without polluting their future.

Years of government inaction on air pollution has got people thinking that the state cannot even protect basic public goods like clean air.

We're fighting for community energy initiatives, warmer homes and crucial flood defences - and fiercely opposing the Government's assault on renewables.

Whether you're a banker or a botanist - the economic benefits of a clean energy revolution are compelling.

If government is so keen to let local people have a veto in stopping wind farms, why does it not allow local people to say no to fracking?

Financial decision-makers at every level are recognising that fossil fuel investments risk their returns being undermined by stranded assets.

A Land Valuation Tax is a levy on the value of the land unimproved by buildings or other enhancement. The method is already used by insurance companies each year when they calculate your home insurance premium - they separate the cost of a total rebuild of the property from the value of the land itself.

The Tories are trying to lock the country into the old, dirty technologies that harm our communities and the people who are forced to live with disruption on their doorstep.

The problem with climate change has always been that whilst political timeframes and economic investment timeframes work on a 3-5year cycle, the planet needs a rather longer term view.

We want trade agreements that aid development and increase prosperity, growth and productivity at home and in our trade partner countries.

An efficient economy does not perpetuate the misallocation of capital - it punishes it.

The road to the Paris climate talks has been paved across decades.

Trade negotiations require compromise.

Subsidies should never be a permanent feature of any market. They should be introduced only to address market failure and they should be withdrawn gradually as those distortions in the market are addressed.

We as politicians have to understand that the greatest threats to our security are no longer conventional military ones. You cannot nuke a famine.

Even if Trump leaves the Paris Agreement or the U.N. climate process entirely, the issue will be unavoidable at G7 and G20 level.

The direct risks from climate change are obvious: as changing weather patterns cause extremes of flood and drought, hurricanes and typhoons. These damage the physical infrastructure of buildings and bridges roads and railways. They are violent and disruptive.

The mark of a bad leader is not to make the wrong decision. It is to make no decision at all.

MPs should be able to debate, amend and approve a mandate for the negotiation of any trade agreement before talks start, based on an independent impact assessment of what social, economic and environmental risks might be expected.

Like air pollution, flood risk is a threat that government should be protecting us against.

Climate change brings pressures that will influence resource competition between nations and place additional burdens on economies, societies and governance institutions around the globe. These effects are threat multipliers.

After years of globalisation, disaffected populations have lost confidence that the system is fair.

Trade policy can be a tool for change and progress.

The U.K. should see overseas aid as an investment in the future potential of a market and shouldn't be used as a stick to bash trading partners and strategic allies with.

Making the most of global trade opportunities does not mean transitioning to a low-tax, deregulatory, 'Bargain Basement' economy. It means developing a robust Industrial Strategy intertwined with a strong trade agenda.

Adaptation is the forgotten word of climate change.

We must learn the lessons of the 2008 crash: no company should be able to become too big to fail.

The less money you have the more likely you are to live close to polluted roads. Most of us cannot choose to move further away from a main road or add another 40 minutes to our commute so that we can live in a quiet, clean, leafy street.

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.

The basis for securing preferential future trade terms with India begins in that recognition of essential equality. Indeed it begins in recognising that India is now an emerging global superpower whose primary interests are regional in South East Asia and who needs a deal with the U.K. less than we need one with her.

Understanding government can be a complex business. The stated reason for a policy and the real reason for it are rarely the same.

Public demand for better services requires increased revenue, but international market competition for capital and labour drives down the ability of any one country to raise either corporate or personal income tax.

It used to be an article of faith held across parliament that the government should be 'technology neutral' to achieve cost-effective decarbonisation.

Most people are surprised to find out that the myth of the crowded little island is just that - a myth.

Our view has been that unless stringent environmental tests can be passed by would-be frackers, then no fracking should take place.

U.K. aid spending in India is that it ensures that we are able to work with our partners to develop their markets, business and enterprise, to boost labour standards and rights and, ultimately, to boost the incomes of the poorest which, in the long term, boosts demand for British goods and services.

We have never believed that any potential future benefits from fracking make it acceptable for the government to bulldoze over the concerns of local communities or the very real environmental dangers that can occur as a result of weak safeguards controlling the technical process.

As the oceans get hotter, corals also become heat-stressed and expel the algae that live on their skeletons, resulting in coral bleaching events that can wipe out entire reefs. This destroys the habitat that supports a quarter of all marine life.

Science tells us we need to keep the majority of fossil fuels in the ground, and that we must urgently invest in renewable energy, and other alternative industries. Doing so would create millions of jobs, ensure a fair transition for fossil fuel workers into new industries, and avert the most catastrophic climate breakdown.

The more we engage with others, the more we find people with whom we do not share the values and truths that we consider so fundamental. In virtual places, by contrast, we are able to select the precise individuals with whom we associate to ensure that we obtain the affirmation we require.

Climate change is a threat to the conditions in which our economy can function at all.

Labour's Climate Change Act and our other reforms, including the Green Investment Bank, have been the foundation for the huge growth of Britain's green industries.

The Paris Agreement makes it impossible for any country or any sector to say climate change isn't their problem. It has created unprecedented momentum for all sectors in all countries to take action and be part of the solution.

Most trade agreements arise from a desire to liberalise trade - making it easier to sell goods and services into one another's markets. Brexit will not.

The shipping industry plays a fundamental role in boosting global trade and prosperity. Maritime leaders have rightly recognised the need to invest in more energy-efficient vessels and to apply measures like slow-steaming. But to ensure a level playing field, collective action is urgently needed across the sector.

The unpopularity of raising corporate or personal income tax has been a straight jacket constraining Labour's thinking on how best to invest and grow the economy.

It is hard to imagine a world without bees. It would be even harder to live in it.

Climate change is real and anthropogenic; and the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC has left the deniers little room for manoeuvre, but they are swiftly morphing into a new breed that accept the climate is changing but like to suggest this may have positive benefits.

In the Labour Party we are absolutely united in our belief that shipping must define its 'fair share' of tackling climate change, and develop an emissions reduction plan for the sector.

Dictators have an old trick to assess the strength of their opposition: they say something patently untrue, and then look to see who mindlessly repeats it. Those who do, they recognise as their true supporters.

Treaties negotiated with foreign powers create binding obligations on future generations that cannot be repealed in the way that domestic law can. As a consequence, the most rigorous process should be in place to scrutinise such treaties before they ever come to be ratified.

Fracking locks the U.K. into an industry that is based on fossil fuels long after our country needs to have moved to renewables.

We all know the principle that the polluter pays? Well one day I got to wondering why it is that the polluter seems to get away with it quite so often! Then it occurred to me that if the polluter is going to pay, somebody needs to tell him how much. The proper valuation of natural capital will enable us to say how much.

The Paris Agreement is a highly significant step in tackling climate change - but a piece of paper will not save the world. It is not 'job done.'