I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems - climate crisis, species extinction, water and energy shortage - we surely do. But ultimately we knock them down.
Many scientists would argue that we are now in what is called Extinction, and it's caused by this perfect extinction storm: climate change, habitat loss, pollution, unsustainable exploitation of species and habitat resources, and of course, human population explosion. All of these factors work together and conspire to drive a species to extinction on our planet, every half an hour.
The earth has continued to change, from rapid climatic changes that have caused the glaciers and the ice sheets to basically bulldoze the landscape and cause species compression in the tropics and cause mass species extinction - you know, all these huge changes. In terms of evolution, every species is doomed to eventual extinction. The natural world is constantly changing. So, to deal with "environmental problems," in quotes, totally misses the issue. That is not the way we want to define our problem if we're going to find our solution.
Overpopulation in the United States will become THE single greatest issue facing Americans in the 21st century. We either solve it proactively or nature will solve it brutally for us via water shortages, energy crisis, air pollution, gridlock, species extinction and worse.
Everything adds up to a major crisis. Humanity is faced with a global energy crisis ... The core of the crisis lies in the increasing shortage of oil.
Although two thirds of our planet is water, we face an acute water shortage. The water crisis is the most pervasive , most severe, and most invisible dimension of the ecological devastation of the earth.
We are living in the beginning of a mass extinction and our climate is breaking down.
Our nation has abundant clean energy resources, and tapping them will generate jobs, make the air safer to breathe, and tackle climate change - the greatest environmental crisis of our time.
But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.
The present convergence of crises - in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment, and more - is a birth crisis, expelling us from the old world into a new.
Climate change is not a major issue because it will cause sea level rises or temperature increases, since we know how to live at higher elevations and regulate the temperature within our homes. It is a major issue because ecosystems are finding it difficult to adapt to the rapidity of the climate and environmental changes and are dying off, thereby accelerating the species extinction that is already underway due to our consumption habits.
I have a sense of mission on this climate crisis, and I'm trying to pour all the energy I have into it. And I hope that I, along with others, can catalyze the emergence of real solutions to the climate crisis. I think we're making a lot of progress. I think we're going to win this, but it matters how quickly we win it. So I'm focused on that.
There is good reason to believe that we have already entered the Sixth Extinction, a period of destruction of species on a massive scale, comparable to the Fifth Extinction 65 million years ago, when three-quarters of the species on earth were destroyed, apparently by a huge asteroid.
Shortage of time is not your problem. Shortage of money is not your problem. Shortage of Connection to the Energy that creates worlds is at the heart of all sensations of shortage that you are experiencing.
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
With our evolved busy hands and our evolved busy brains, in an extraordinarily short period of time we've managed to alter the earth with such geologic-forcing effects that we ourselves are forces of nature. Climate change, ocean acidification, the sixth mass extinction of species.
There is no sense in meddling with the extinction of polar bears, not when so many more pressing human problems await. Until there's ironclad proof of how and why extinction works, and how much evil we've done to hasten it along, I'm going to save my emotional anguish for dying and suffering members of my own species.