Quotes from Apen + Commentary

By Lara Hansen’s
WWF

Highlights from the Aspen Environmental Forum- snippets to make you engage…

Day One

“Take care of mother Earth and mother Earth will take care of you”
-Roland McCook

“Go my son, make your people proud of you”
-traditional invocation, presented by C.J. Bradford

Created a “colaboratory on renewable energy”
- Colorado Governor William Ritter, state who’s home has been the historical home to the now grossly underfunded national renewable energy laboratory

Day Two
“Plan B- 1) Stabilize the Climate, 2) Stabilize Population, 3) Eradicate poverty/Raise living conditions, 4) Restore ecosystems”
-Lester Brown, speaking on the threats to our future

“There is no box”
- Amory Lovins, as quoted by Lester Brown

“We’ve been doing what Enron did on a much larger scale. We’ve been leaving costs off the books.”
-Lester Brown on the cause of climate change

No private cars were sold in the United States during much of WW2 because the government needed the auto manufacturing facilities to make the planes that were needed to fight the war. Roosevelt banned private car sales. Like the auto manufacturers of WW2, the media and communications are the key to fighting the threats of today.
-Lester Brown

“Saving civilization is not a spectator sport. Its not just buying a compact fluorescent light bulb, not just about efficiency. These actions won’t do any good if the energy still comes from coal fired power plants. Everyone of us must be involved.”
-Lester Brown (Saving civilization also does not require color commentary. Today we have too many people talking about the problem and the potential solutions, and not enough people actually doing the work.)

“Let’s focus on the fire (energy use), not the smoke (emissions).”
-Randy Udall

“We won’t stop global warming to save the environment, we’ll do it to save prosperity.”
-Randy Udall

“I’m a believer in optionality”
-Marvin Odum (OK, I don’t actually know what this means but it certainly does allow you to take pause.)

“The right price of carbon is certainly not zero.”
-Amory Lovins

“The biggest problem our next president has is how to continue to run this civilization.”
-Randy Udall

” Oil shale has half the energy of Cap’n Crunch.”
-Randy Udall (not clear if that is original or crunchberry flavored, giving it the benefit of the doubt it would be original with its 10% higher energy yield)

“Energy is the original currency.”
-Randy Udall

“The US$ is losing value because we are sending our dollars overseas for energy.”
-Randy Udall

“Energy Ethic- we’ve never paired those words.”
-Randy Udall

“Its still an open question as to whether or not this country has the ‘right stuff’ on this.”
-Randy Udall

Majora Carter is the future of this country.

“Real change requires real change.”

                -Newt Gingrich, as channeled by Van Jones

Day Three

“The solution will be an emergent self-organizing response.” – James Kunstler

“Feast on the banquet of consequences.”  -Robert Louis Stephenson, as channeled by James Kunstler

Other thoughts:

Since when is getting 30 miles per gallon a laudable accomplishment? If you are going to advertise an accomplishment make it triple digits!

There is an opportunity right now for an energy company, seven of which were in the top dozen revenue generating companies in the world in 2006, to take the leap and use these revues to change the marketplace, developing the energy sources we need for the future. Not just for their future, but for the future of human society.

Clean, renewable energy.

Technology won’t get us out of the state we are in. Technology got us here and now we need to get us out of this. Technology might be part of a future solution, but we can’t just wait for it.

The goal of stopping climate change is worth the sacrifice.