A Quote by Jimmy Carter

Americans long thought that nature could take care of itself-or that if it did not, the consequences were someone else's problem. As we know now, that assumption was wrong; none of us is a stranger to environmental problems.
He's the leader on this team, I know when Baltimore let us have him, they thought they were giving us a problem. I'll take problems like that anytime.
On almost every environmental issue I care about, in fact, I've been wrong at one point or another. I used to think that climate change was no big deal, that most environmental problems were massive exaggerations, that oil reserves were effectively unlimited, and more.
When the memory of one's predecessors is buried, the assumption persists that there were none and each generation of women believes itself to be faced with the burden of doing everything for the first time. And if no one ever did it beforewhy do we think we can succeed now?
The 'environmental crisis' has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last five hundred years that nature is merely a supply of 'raw materials,' and that we may safely possess those materials by taking them.... And so we will be wrong if we attempt to correct what we perceive as 'environmental' problems without correcting the economic oversimplification that caused them.
You almost have to step outside yourself and look at you as if you were someone else you really care about and really want to protect. Would you let someone take advantage of that person? Would you let someone use that person you really care about? Or would you speak up for them? If it was someone else you care about, you'd say something. I know you would. Okay, now put yourself back in that body. That person is you. Stand up and tell 'em, "Enough!
We have this attitude in America of, 'Someone else is going to fix the problem.' That's what the majority of Americans have. Or, 'I'm just going to go online and sign this petition, and that will take care of it.' That's doesn't do it.
Dancing in speakeasies was a job, and none of us knew for sure who were gangsters. No one told us, so how could we know? My mother used to come and take me home. We thought nothing of walking home together at two in the morning.
We think the problem is out there, when the problem is really in here - who we are and how we experience the world around us. The acoustic ecologist listens, as the primary sense, to the world around us, and I believe that they have a significant contribution to make to all environmental groups who think that they're solving environmental problems, when we're actually all on a spiritual pilgrimage.
It just doesn't occur to an American that someone else will solve their problems. Americans take pride in solving problems for themselves. And if we fail, we get back up and try again. It's what we do. It's who we are.
Canadians know that the promise of a recession didn't happen because of anything we did here. If you look at all the causes of the recession, problems in mortgage markets, the problems in the banking sector, the problems in government finance in countries like Greece, none of those problems were in present Canada.
We have to take care about nature as much as nature is taking care about us. Nature is very kind with us. And if you want to enjoy the gifts of nature and the promises of nature, we have to defer to nature and its needs, its rules, its norms.
We've got all these politicians talking about better health care and what all, but believe me, we're not going to have the money to take care of sick people.. or anyone else as far as I'm concerned.. if we don't fix our energy problem right now. I've got an idea what to do. It might not be a perfect idea, but hell, none of my best ideas have been perfect.
We have a lot of argument about laws but none of it solves the problem. Let's examine what happened, why did we miss the Tsarnaev brothers, why did we miss the San Bernardino couple? It wasn't because we had stopped collected metadata it was because, I think, as someone who comes from the technology world, we were using the wrong algorithms.
We now know from a Princeton study that Superfund sites are causing higher rates of birth defects. We now know that there's no excusing the lack of moral urgency to do something about this environmental crisis. We see Flint, Michigan, for example, and the attention it's gotten, but what most Americans don't seem to realize is that this lead problem is not confined to just Flint. There are over 3,000 jurisdictions that have twice the lead levels in people's blood than Flint does. We're now seeing more people being exposed to the truth about environmental injustice in our country.
We could have saved Wall Street without putting our future in jeopardy. I predicted that there would be all-around consequences - in the long run as well as in the short run. People are now saying we can't afford health care reform because we spent all the money on the banks. So, in effect, we're saying that it's better that we give rich bankers a couple of trillion than giving ordinary Americans access to health care.
I grew up Presbyterian. Presbyterians thought the Methodists were wrong. Catholics thought all Protestants were wrong. The Jews thought the Christians were wrong. So, what I'm financing is humility. I want people to realize that you shouldn't think you know it all.
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