Top 26 Quotes & Sayings by John Holdren

Issues of energy, climate change, nuclear arms control and non-proliferation are all big deals. These are problems that we have to get right globally, not just nationally, and there are big benefits in cooperating, in terms of sharing costs, in terms of sharing risks, in terms of propagating the best answers.

I don't like the term 'global warming,' because it's misleading. It implies something that's mainly about temperature, that's gradual, and that's uniform across the planet. And in fact, temperature is only one of the things that's changing.

I think we ultimately ought to look to put all uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing, if any is done, under multinational control. Those are the two technologies by which nuclear energy can be translated into nuclear weapons programmes.

The whole climate is changing: the winds, the ocean currents, the storm patterns, snow packs, snowmelt, flooding, droughts. Temperature is just a bit of it.

Wildfires are a result of temperature conditions, of soil moisture conditions; and, of course, something has to start it.

My understanding is that Exxon, in particular, did fund a variety of small think tanks to generate what amounts to propaganda against understanding of what climate change was doing, the human role in causing it.

When I need to see the president, I make a request directly to his scheduler. I don't have to ask anybody's permission to see the president except the president. Some weeks, I see him multiple times. Some weeks, I don't see him at all.

It is economically irrational to exclude large environmental costs from the balance sheets of the producers and the consumers. You are only kidding yourself if you export those costs on to society as a whole.

Any objective look at what science has to say about climate change ought to be sufficient to persuade reasonable people that the climate is changing and that humans are responsible for a substantial part of that - and that these changes are doing harm and will continue to do more harm unless we start to reduce our emissions.

People are seeing the impact of climate change around them in extraordinary patterns of floods and droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and powerful storms.

The e-mails are mainly about a controversy over a particular data set and the ways a particular small group of scientists have displayed that dataset.

Reliable and affordable energy is essential for meeting basic human needs and fueling economic growth, but many of the most difficult and dangerous environmental problems at every level of economic development arise from the harvesting, transport, processing, and conversion of energy

To date, there has been no serious attempt in Western countries to use laws to control excessive population growth, although there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated.

Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to choose our own and our descendants’ destiny. Failing to choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catastrophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right choices could lead to a much better world.

The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.

The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.

In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people, most - than most proposals for involuntarily fertility control.

The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.

There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.

If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility — just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns — providing they are not denied equal protection

A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States...De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation...Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.

Only one rational path is open to us - simultaneous de-development of the [overdeveloped countries] and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDCs), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between. By de-development we mean lower per-capita energy consumption, fewer gadgets, and the abolition of planned obsolescence.

A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.

A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States… [we] must design a stable, low-consumption economy.

We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one - whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen - is hardly grounds for complacency.)