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Climate Change Quotes
Page 67
“The heart of the issue is not the emission of CO2, but where CO2 goes, and what it does when it gets there. Utilizing only CO2 emission reductions as the acceptable mechanism to prevent future harm is an illusionary and false trail to a better future.”
This Spaceship Earth – Houle and Rumage
I am always struck by how successful we have been at hitting the bull’s-eye of the wrong target.
– Joel Salatin
We often preoccupy ourselves with symptoms, whereas if we went to the root cause of the problem we would be able to overcome the problems once and for all.
-Wangari Maathai
The current approach to resolving Climate Change is to focus on the reduction of CO2 emissions. It is an understandable, yet insufficient approach. There is a lesson from childhood that applies to this topic, but it is a tough lesson to learn. The lesson is, being less bad is not the same as being good.
-“This Spaceship Earth” Houle and Rumage
Disasters are beginning to affect communities at an alarming pace, the result of increased development in harm’s way as well as changing climate conditions…. Our current natural disaster policy framework focuses heavily on responding to disasters, rather than putting protective measures in place to reduce our vulnerability and limit a disaster’s impact.
-SmarterSafer
Climate change poses another significant challenge for the United States and the world at large. As greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels are rising, average global temperatures are increasing, and severe weather patterns are accelerating. …Climate change may exacerbate water scarcity and lead to sharp increases in food costs. The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions–conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.
-The 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review
The issue we have today is the predominance of all the twentieth-century physical constructs that dominate the world…. We can’t simply start anew with new structures, transportation systems, and cities, leaving what exists behind. There is simply no room when the landscape is covered with twentieth century constructs. Simply put, for the first time in the history of humanity we don’t have a blank canvas on which to paint a new picture. Painting and creation of the new has to be infused back into the old. We must develop the vision of the twenty-first century, then turn and face the landscape dealt us by the twentieth-century and retrofit it.
-David Houle from “Entering the Shift Age” (2013)
In fact, we are now living in a dually perceived reality. While we live in the twenty-first century, we seem to hold- most people very strongly- to the “way things are” as what is real. Much of our daily lives have been habituated to this twentieth century reality…. We simply accept what we have known all or most of our lives as reality…Acceptance of something is, to some degree, acquiescence to it.
-David Houle from “Entering the Shift Age” (2013)
The twenty-first century will be the Earth Century. It will be during this century that humanity faces the reality of whether it wants to destroy itself and much of what exists on this magnificent planet or not. Assuming we make essential course corrections, future historians will write about the Earth Century as a turning point in human history.
-David Houle from “Entering the Shift Age” (2013)
It is in this, the second decade of the 21st century, that we must change our thinking about our relationship with the only planet we have. We have to face forward. The past is gone, and so must its ways of thinking. We have to face the future, and create future facing ways of thinking and acting. When, or as, we do that, then this current decade will become known as the first decade of 21st century thought, and bring us into the Earth Century.
-“This Spaceship Earth” Houle and Rumage
