Energy
conservation is the foundation of energy independence.
-- Thomas H. Allen
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The
two most abundant forms of power on earth are
solar and wind, and they're getting cheaper
and cheaper…
~ Ed
Begley, Jr.
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Under
the rule of the "free market" ideology, we have
gone through two decades of an energy crisis
without an effective energy policy. Because
of an easy and thoughtless reliance on imported
oil, we have no adequate policy for the conservation
of gasoline and other petroleum products. We
have no adequate policy for the development
or use of other, less harmful forms of energy.
We have no adequate system of public transportation.
-- Wendell
Berry
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With
its array of gadgets and machines, all powered by
energies that are destructive of land or air or water,
and connected to work, market, school, recreation,
etc., by gasoline engines, the modern home is a veritable
factory of waste and destruction. It is the mainstay
of the economy of money. But within the economies
of energy and nature, it is a catastrophe. It takes
in the world’s goods and converts them into garbage,
sewage, and noxious fumes—for none of which have we
found a use.
-- Wendell
Berry
This
curious faith is predicated on the notion that we
will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy:
domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear
power, solar energy, and so on. This is fantastical
because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not
scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character.
We don’t know how to use energy or what to use it
for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is
characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human
energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel
energy.
-- Wendell
Berry
The
problems are our lives. In the "developed" countries,
at least, the large problems occur because all of
us are living either partly wrong or almost entirely
wrong. It was not just the greed of corporate shareholders
and the hubris of corporate executives that put the
fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was
also our demand that energy be cheap and plentiful.
-- Wendell
Berry
Biofuels
are the future of energy in this nation and around
the world
-- Rod Blagojevich
We've
embarked on the beginning of the last days of the
age of oil. Embrace the future and recognize the growing
demand for a wide range of fuels or ignore reality
and slowly—but surely—be left behind.
-- Mike Bowlin, chairman and CEO of ARCO (now BP)
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I
believe that the average guy in the street will
give up a great deal, if he really understands
the cost of not giving it up. In fact, we may
find that, while we're drastically cutting our
energy consumption, we're actually raising our
standard of living.
-- David
R. Brower
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The
foundation is being laid for the emergence of both
wind and solar cells as cornerstones of the new energy
economy.
-- -Lester A. Brown, Michael Renner, Brian Halweil
We
want to see…the efficient production and use of energy,
so that the products we produce and the way we produce
them pose no threat to the world's natural environment…economic
development…so that more and more of the world's population
can enjoy…the things which the energy industry supplies…(and)
a society in which ideas and knowledge move freely.
-- John Browne, Group Chief Executive, British Petroleum
Company
The
word "energy" incidentally equates with the Greek
word for "challenge." I think there is much to learn
in thinking of our federal energy problem in that
light. Further, it is important for us to think of
energy in terms of a gift of life.
-- Thomas Carr
Energy
will be the immediate test of our ability
to unite this Nation, and it can also be the
standard around which we rally. On the battlefield
of energy we can win for our Nation a new
confidence, and we can seize control again
of our common destiny.
~ Jimmy
Carter
We
simply must balance our demand for energy
with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting
now we can control our future instead of letting
the future control us.
~ Jimmy
Carter
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Hydrogen
is the most common element in the universe, and has
the potential to become an inexpensive source of energy
for neighborhoods, light and heavy duty vehicles,
and industry.
-- Charlie Dent
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I
urge individuals around the world to stand up,
and ask local leaders, if they haven't already,
to pledge to purchase cleaner cars, build green
facilities, and buy green power like wind or solar
energy. Our actions may determine if we become
a casualty in the war for a habitable planet for
generations to come.
~ Leonardo
DiCaprio |
"The
use of plant oil as fuel may seem insignificant
today. But such products can in time become
just as important as kerosene and these coal-tar-products
of today."
~ Rudolf
Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine, which
originally ran on peanut oil.
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"I'd
put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source
of power! I hope we don't have to wait 'til oil and
coal run out before we tackle that."
~ Thomas Edison (1847–1931)
Since
I do not forsee that atomic energy is to be
a great boon for a long time, I have to say
that for the present it is a menace. Perhaps
it is well that it should be. It may intimidate
the human race into bringing order into its
international affairs, which, without the presence
of fear, it would not do.
--
Albert
Einstein
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"The
sunshine that strikes American roads each year
contains more energy than all the fossil fuels
used by the entire world."
~ Denis
Hayes
"An
acre of windy prairie could produce between
$4,000 and 10,000 worth of electricity per year
– which is far more than the value of the land’s
crop of corn or wheat."
~ Denis
Hayes
"America
has the technology and resources to meet all
its energy needs while safeguarding the earth's
climate. The urgent question now is, 'Do we
have the will?' At least one city does, and
I'm proud to live in it."
~ Denis
Hayes
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We
can dream together a dream of a better world,
an ever-renewing, organic-based earth-community.
I believe we can achieve a large part of it
in our lifetime.
~ Randy
Hayes
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It
is evident that the fortunes of the world's human
population, for better or for worse, are inextricably
interrelated with the use that is made of energy resources.
-- M. King Hubbert
Renewable
energy also creates more jobs than other sources of
energy - most of these will be created in the struggling
manufacturing sector, which will pioneer the new energy
future by investment that allows manufacturers to
retool and adopt new technologies and methods.
-- Jay Inslee
We
had some major successes and we did so because the
country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced
this concept that we have to have forward-looking,
visionary environmental policy and energy policy in
this country.
-- Jay Inslee
"Solar
is cost effective right now. When you consider the
cost to our health from air pollution, solar is just
as competitive as any other energy source."
~ Thomas P. Kay
Right
now, other frightening imperatives have distracted
us so far from the program of benevolence toward our
planet that it seems we might just try to burn the
whole world for fuel to keep ourselves guarded and
cozy. But that is not the expressed will of our people.
Most of us do understand, when we can calm down and
think clearly, that whether we are at peace or at
war, the lives that hang in the balance are not just
ours but the millions more that create the support
system and biological context for humanity. More and
more of us are listening for the silent alarm, stopping
in our tracks, wishing to salvage the parts of this
earth we haven’t yet wrecked.
-- Barbara Kingsolver
"Rely
on renewable energy flows that are always there whether
we use them or not, such as, sun, wind and vegetation:
on energy income, not depletable energy capital."
~ Amory Lovins
Drilling
in the Refuge is completely unnecessary when we could
improve the average fuel economy of cars, minivans
and SUV's by just 3 miles a gallon and save more oil
within 10 years than we could ever produce from the
Arctic Refuge…
-- Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey
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Breaking
America's oil addiction would not lead to a
future of sackcloth and ashes.
-- Colman
McCarthy
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The
use of solar energy has not been opened up because
the oil industry does not own the sun.
~ Ralph
Nader
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Federal
policy over the past century has largely failed to
promote an energy system based on safe, secure, economically
affordable, and environmentally benign energy sources.
The tax code, budget appropriations, and regulatory
processes overwhelmingly have been used to subsidize
dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. The
result: increased sickness and premature deaths, depleted
family budgets, acid rain destruction of lakes, forests,
and crops, oil spill contamination, polluted rivers
and loss of aquatic species and the long-term peril
of climate change and radioactive waste dumps–not
to mention a dependency on external energy supplies.
~ Ralph
Nader
We
believe that part of the answer lies in pricing energy
on the basis of its full costs to society. One reason
we use energy so lavishly today is that the price
of energy does not include all of the social costs
of producing it. The costs incurred in protecting
the environment and the health and safety of workers,
for example, are part of the real costs of producing
energy—but they are not now all included in the price
of the product.
-- Richard Nixon
Alternative
energy is a future idea whose time is past. Renewable
energy is a future idea whose time has come.
-- Bill Penden
I
have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing
the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war,
we would have had solar energy centuries ago.
~ Sir George Porter
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"If
we want energy security, then we have to reduce
our appetite for fossil fuels. There's no other
way. Other issues may crowd the headlines, but
this is our fundamental challenge. Big challenges
require bold action and leadership. To get the
United States off fossil fuels in this uneasy
national climate of terrorism and conflict in
the Persian Gulf, we must treat the issue with
the urgence and persistance it deserves. The
measure of our success will be the condition
on which we leave the world for the next generation.
~ Robert
Redford
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It's
time we stopped turning up our noses at the nation's
garbage dumps and started appreciating them for what
they really are -- the municipal mines, forests, oil
wells and energy sources of the future!
-- Max Spendlove
The
US government knows that conventional oil is running
out fast. According to a report on oil shales and
unconventional oil supplies prepared by the US office
of petroleum reserves last year, "world oil reserves
are being depleted three times as fast as they are
being discovered. Oil is being produced from past
discoveries, but the reserves are not being fully
replaced. Remaining oil reserves of individual oil
companies must continue to shrink. The disparity between
increasing production and declining discoveries can
only have one outcome: a practical supply limit will
be reached and future supply to meet conventional
oil demand will not be available.
-- John Vidal
Here's
what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil
fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey,
our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get
what little is left of what we're hooked on.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
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"The
Age of Oil has really exhausted its usefulness,
and it has actually become a danger to our lives
and our ability to survive on the planet."
-- Dennis
Weaver
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…our
perception of the "energy crisis" is different from
many. We feel that Americans have had too much fuel
available, that less will be better. I see it as the
"effects of too much energy" crisis. With our bigger-is-better,
disposable, nonrenewable energy past, I wonder if,
in squandering fuel, we have not also subverted self-reliance,
neighborly concern, the active appreciation of balance
and harmony. I think confronting this legacy of too
much, too soon would be the proper response to the
energy crisis.
-- Steven C. Wilson, Etheos Mountain Agriculture Institute
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"Energy
Policy will be and should be driven by environmental
policy in the future."
~ Timothy
Wirth
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