When your science runs into a policy roadblock, all of a sudden the science starts to disappear.
We are letting the extractive energy industries turn the world inside out.
I don’t believe we’re only motivated by our own self-interests. Often out of crisis comes this enormous wellspring of generosity and motivation.
When youre cornered, there are two things you can do: move or fight.
We’re not living in a society that science actually dominates the conversation. We’re living in a situation where some science is allowed and a lot of it’s about policy.
What we’ve got is the wholesale embrace of fracking domestically, internationally and for export. And this couldn’t be further from what we really need to do to address climate change.
The first line in the first ‘Gasland’ is: ‘I’m not a pessimist. I’ve always had a great deal of faith in people that we won’t succumb to frenzy or rage or greed. That we’ll figure out a solution without destroying the things that we love.’ I have not lost that sense.
I have to have faith that we’re going to succeed in transforming where we get our energy from. The big worry is whether or not we’re going to do it before it’s too late. And I think nobody knows the answer to that.
There are regulations all over the spectrum that have to be done to the existing situation right now. But the only policy that makes sense is a nationwide moratorium: no new fracking, no new fracked wells.
Every single dollar spent lobbying a legislator on behalf of oil and gas is a toxic dollar that undermines public health and safety laws that protect Americans. That’s contamination of the political system.
I’m a night owl, and luckily my profession supports that. The best ideas come to me in the dead of night.
We should be moving vigorously towards renewable energy. The technology of which is right here right now.
When you live in a watershed area, in a pristine area, and you could watch this whole place fall apart in front of your eyes, you don’t sell your soul for a buck.
Sometimes I feel like there isn’t enough Prozac in the world to make Environmental Protection Agency people feel better about their jobs. They’re going out there, they’re trying to protect Americans and then time and time and time again they get their knees cut off at the policy level.
They’re a lot of great scientists and their mission is to protect people. It’s the Environmental Protection Agency, but it’s really a people protection agency. And they’re out there trying to do their job and do the science.
When the natural gas industry was knocking on my door, they were knocking on the door of millions of people. And that became something that Americans really needed to focus on.
In a couple of decades you have half of the wells that are drilled right now, and you’re talking about numbers in the millions of wells drilled, leaking. That’s a huge crisis in terms of water contamination. There’s no way to fix that problem.
I really hate to be Debbie Downer right now, because everyone would love to say, “Yeah, we’re finally doing something on climate!”
It’s remarkable to watch the president, with all the weight of his ability to command rhetoric with the bully pulpit behind him, make a clear speech about climate change and why that’s so important for us all to focus on. And that is a rather remarkable thing to see. It’s enormously powerful.
It is an incredibly hopeful experience watching communities come together and actually reassemble democracy. The democracy’s been taken away from us. But they’re reinventing democracy out there in rural Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, in Pittsburgh.