Denis Hayes Years Quotations

We need a firm cap on carbon emissions from fossil fuels. No coal, oil, or gas could enter the economy until the buyer had a permit. All permits would be auctioned by the federal government, and the number of permits auctioned would be decreased by three percent per year. Permits could be traded, but they could not be created out of whole cloth by companies that plant forests or dump iron filings at sea.

We've made some heroic efforts, but the Earth as a whole is in worse shape today than 30 years ago, ... There's been 30 more years of greenhouses gases, species extinctions and population growth.

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.

There really wasn't an environmental movement 30 years ago. The Sierra Club national office in 1969 consisted of one full-time volunteer.

The sunshine that strikes American roads each year contains more energy than all the fossil fuels used by the entire world.

Sustainability requires that we demand enduring quality. Steve Strong has a slide presentation pointing out that much of Oxford was built 800 years ago. What are we building today that will be here 800 years from now? If something like that emerged from this recession, it would help justify the hardship so many people are currently experiencing.

By the year 2000, such renewable energy sources could provide 40 percent of the global energy budget; by 2025, humanity could obtain 75 percent of its energy from solar resources.