Even the best climate change quotes about the environment aren’t solutions to this crisis.
However, they can inspire action and remind us what’s at stake.
In this post, we scoured the web for the best quotes about climate change, saving the environment, and sustainability.
And, hopefully, these will motivate you to keep up the good fight – or encourage you to take it up if you haven’t already!
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Here are the best climate change quotes and inspirational quotes about the environment:
We are all living together on a single planet, which is threatened by our own actions. And if you don’t have some kind of global cooperation, nationalism is just not on the right level to tackle the problems, whether it’s climate change or whether it’s technological disruption.
Yuval Noah Harari
This is not a partisan debate; it is a human one. Clean air and water, and a livable climate are inalienable human rights. And solving this crisis is not a question of politics. It is our moral obligation.
Leonardo DiCaprio
If you really think that the environment is less important than the economy, try holding your breath while you count your money.
Guy McPherson
Climate change is sometimes misunderstood as being about changes in the weather. In reality, it is about changes in our very way of life.
Paul Polman
You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Jane Goodall
I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.
Greta Thunberg
Related Read: 7 Simple (But Effective) Ways to Beat Climate Change
By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited… The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.
Bill Gates
We can’t take climate change and put it on the back burner. If we don’t address climate change, we won’t be around as humans.
Conrad Anker
We have a single mission: to protect and hand on the planet to the next generation.
François Hollande
We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we are the last generation that can do something about it.
Jay Inslee
The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein
The time is past when humankind thought it could selfishly draw on exhaustible resources. We know now the world is not a commodity, is not a source of revenue; it’s a common good, it’s our heritage. And the consequences of climate change are fully known now – we’re not talking about theories anymore, we’re talking about certainties.
François Hollande
I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe mankind has looked at climate change in the same way, as if it were fiction.
Leonardo DiCaprio
Related Read: How to Save the Planet by Sharing Ideas on Climate Action
Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.
Sylvia Earle
Climate change is a global problem. The planet is warming because of the growing level of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. If this trend continues, truly catastrophic consequences are likely to ensue from rising sea levels to reduced water availability, to more heat waves and fires.
Malcolm Turnbull
While the problem can sometimes seem overwhelming, we can turn things around — but we must move beyond climate talk to climate action.
Ted Turner
We cannot burn our way to the future. We cannot pretend the danger does not exist — or dismiss it because it affects someone else.
Ban Ki-moon
Men argue. Nature acts.
Voltaire
The environment is where we all meet; where all of us have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share.
Lady Bird Johnson
The future will be green or not at all.
Jonathon Porritt
If we pollute the air, water and soil that keep us alive and well, and destroy the biodiversity that allows natural systems to function, no amount of money will save us.
David Suzuki
Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse.
Desmond Tutu
We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to.
Terri Swearingen
Related Read: How Does Recycling Help the Environment? (& 10+ Materials to Recycle)
All things share the same breath — the beast, the tree, the man. The air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
Chief Seattle
Climate change, if unchecked, is an urgent threat to health, food supplies, biodiversity, and livelihoods across the globe.
John F. Kerry
I’m often asked whether I believe in global warming. I now just reply with the question: Do you believe in gravity?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course.
Ban Ki-moon
Climate change isn’t something in the future. That narrative is fundamentally flawed because there are millions impacted and so many displaced already. That is the new inconvenient truth that no one wants to hear.
Aneesa Khan
There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.
David Attenborough
Climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and I think this is perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing us.
Bill Nye
We are running out of time, and we must have a planetary solution to a planetary crisis.
Al Gore
Related Read: 15 Earth Day Tips to Support the Environment & Stop Climate Change
Wind and other clean, renewable energy will help end our reliance on fossil fuels and combat the severe threat that climate change poses to humans and wildlife alike.
Frances Beinecke
Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security, and women’s empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.
Ban Ki-moon
People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.
Desmond Tutu
The Earth is a fine place and worth fighting for.
Ernest Hemingway
We must face up to an inescapable reality: the challenges of sustainability simply overwhelm the adequacy of our responses. With some honorable exceptions, our responses are too few, too little, and too late.
Kofi A. Annan
The cost of our success is the exhaustion of natural resources, leading to energy crises, climate change, pollution, and the destruction of our habitat. If you exhaust natural resources, there will be nothing left for your children. If we continue in the same direction, humankind is headed for some frightful ordeals, if not extinction.
Christian de Duve
There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent threat of a changing climate.
Barack Obama
Related Read: 10 Ways to Support the SDGs Without Spending Any Money
The climate is changing. The proper political debate would be how to deal with these risks.
Steven Chu
This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
Greta Thunberg
This powerful climate change quote comes from Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN Climate Action Summit. Greta’s passion and honesty always shine through, making her one of the most influential environmental champions of our time.
Here’s the full video of that climate quote for full context:
Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism.
David King
A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The warnings about global warming have been extremely clear for a long time. We are facing a global climate crisis. It is deepening. We are entering a period of consequences.
Al Gore
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
Native American Proverb
Related Read: Here’s How to Support Black Lives Matter (5 Simple but Effective Actions)
One of the biggest obstacles to making a start on climate change is that it has become a cliché before it has even been understood.
Tim Flannery
If you don’t act against climate change, then no matter how much money you leave for your children, it’ll not even cover their healthcare bills, due to living in an unhealthy planet.
Abhijit Naskar
The clear and present danger of climate change means we cannot burn our way to prosperity. We already rely too heavily on fossil fuels and we need to find a new, sustainable path to the future we want. We need a clean industrial revolution.
Ban Ki-moon
The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say – we will never forgive you.
Greta Thunberg
The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.
Barack Obama
As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but the exceptions can kill you, and climate change is one of those exceptions.
Al Gore
Climate change, in some regions, has aggravated conflict over scarce land, and could well trigger large-scale migration in the decades ahead. And rising sea levels put at risk the very survival of all small island states. These and other implications for peace and security have implications for the United Nations itself.
Ban Ki-moon
Related Read: 25 Small Acts You Can Do to Have a Great Impact
I have long understood that climate change is not only an environmental issue – it is a humanitarian, economic, health, and justice issue as well.
Frances Beinecke
Anybody who doesn’t see the impact of climate change is really, and I would say, myopic. They don’t see the reality. It’s so evident that we are destroying Mother Earth. This is not the problem of one country or a few countries: it is the problem of mankind. We need to work together to stop this. Otherwise, our future generations will simply disappear.
Juan Manuel Santos
Climate change does not respect border; it does not respect who you are – rich and poor, small and big. Therefore, this is what we call ‘global challenges,’ which require global solidarity.
Ban Ki-moon
Climate change isn’t an ‘issue’ to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message — spoken in the language of fires, floods, droughts, and extinctions — telling us that we need an entirely new economic model and a new way of sharing this planet. Telling us we need to evolve.
Naomi Klein
We must now agree on a binding review mechanism under international law, so that this century can credibly be called a century of decarbonization.
Angela Merkel
Related Read: 25+ Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes on Equality, Change & the Rule of Law
We cannot compromise with the earth; we cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change, so we must compromise with one another.
Gordon Brown
Climate change is the environmental challenge of this generation, and it is imperative that we act before it’s too late.
John Delaney
That’s all our top environment quotes about climate change, sustainability, global warming, and saving the Earth for now, and we hope they help motivate you into action! Check out our other articles on social impact to start or continue making meaningful change.
If you have any questions, feedback, or other great climate change quotes, let us know in the comment section just below, and thank you for reading!
One last thing:
If you’re looking for a college to attend or support taking climate action, don’t overlook the University Of Dundee!
The University of Dundee is one of the UK’s top 20 universities (The Guardian University Guide 2021) and is classed as top in the UK for climate action (Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings 2021). Their core purpose revolves around transforming lives and working locally and globally through the creation, sharing, and application of knowledge.