http://www.greenplanetawards.org/ VIP QUOTES AD – Climate Change If the future of the world depended on me, what would I do? Ban Ki-moon: The hour is late, it’s time to decide. I’m quite confident that you will make the choice wisely. In addressing global warming issues, the scientists have made it quite clear Prince Charles: Climate change, as a self inflicted wound, if you like… Rajendra Pachauri: …can wipe out the very meager assets. Al Gore : We have a climate crisis that is a planetary emergency. Maneka Gandhi: We are so, so close to the red line, that perhaps we may wake up tomorrow and find that there is nothing to save after all. James Hansen: We have reached a point where we have a real emergency. Kofi Annan: The message should be clear, climate change must take its place along those threats like conflict, poverty. Jose Manuel Barroso: Climate change is responsible for conflicts that can only deepen in the future if we don’t act as soon as possible. Bill Clinton: It (Climate Change) is the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it. Louis Michel: You will have a catastrophe added to another catastrophe. Ken Livingstone: Climate change means catastrophically violent weather. Arnold Schwarzenegger:…like wild fires and devastation. Antonio Villaraigosa: Rising sea levels. Jeffrey Sachs: Rising food prices. Condoleezza Rice: To the spread of disease. Prince Charles: The North Polar ice cap is melting so fast. But what seems to me to be important is that some of the effects we are witnessing now are happening twice as fast as scientists were predicting just five years ago. George Bush: A report issued earlier this year by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded both that global temperatures are rising, (and) that this is caused largely by human activities. Rajendra Pachauri: And if you look at the 4th assessment report of the IPCC, we’ve assessed several stabilization scenarios. Yvo de Boer: In 2010, there could already be as many as 50 million environmentally displaced persons due to climate change, desertification and deforestation. Henriettta H. Fore: Experts tell us that the situation underlying the crisis is not a temporary one. Robert Zoellick: And it is getting more and more difficult every day. Ken Livingstone:… and there is no guarantee that human civilization can survive. Prince Charles: The doomsday clock of climate change is ticking ever faster towards midnight; we are simply not reacting quickly enough. Hilary Benn: Do we need to move faster to answer the question? Yes we do! Because we have less time than we thought we had. Rajendra Pachauri: So climate change is obviously going to have a major negative impact. Achim Steiner: The scale and the pace of environmental change at the beginning of the 21st Century are a serious wake up call to us as human beings on this planet. Michael Bloomberg: We know without a doubt that global warming is a reality and the question today is not “is it happening?” and not “is it bad?”, but what are we going to do about it? Ban ki-Moon: We are all part of the problem of global warming. Let us all be part of the solution. Yvo de Boer: The challenge you face is to prove to people that you are serious about adaptation to the unavoidable. Rajendra Pachauri: Meat production and consumption is hugely intensive in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. Marianne Thieme: …more than all cars, trucks and ships added together. Maneka Gandhi: Unless we change our food choices, nothing else matters, because it is meat that is destroying most of our forests, it is meat that pollutes the waters, it is meat that is creating disease which leads to all our money being diverted to hospitals. So it is the first choice for any body who wants to save the Earth. David Miller: The food we eat and how it is grown and the kind of food we eat matters a lot. Ronan Lee: Everything comes with an environmental price, beef production in particular. Rajendra Pachauri: We consume far too much meat in this world! Marianne Thieme: There’s where the climate problem is: our meat consumption! Rajendra Pachauri:…something that’s harmful even for human health! David Miller: I do eat a lot of vegetarian meals; I think that’s something we can all do. Andrew Bartlett: That’s one of the easiest ways that we can make an immediate and quite substantial impact. Ronan Lee: There are some wonderful environmental benefits in terms of taking a couple of steps lower down the food chain. Hilary Benn: And the choice we face is a really simple one actually. Marianne Thieme: Just for one day or more than that, become a vegetarian. Condoleezza Rice: Let us approach climate change not simply as a looming future threat, but as a present opportunity to work together. Antonio Villaraigosa: The time for action is now. Hilary Benn: What can I, what can the government do to help? What can you do to help? How can we do this together? Gavin Newsom: And it’s about what we do from this point on and this point forward. Matt Petersen: Individuals can take action. Helen Clark: We have to play our part. Kofi Annan: And as individuals through the choices we make, the purchases we make… Dr. James Hansen: If we once understand this and take the necessary actions, then we actually have a much better situation. Rajendra Pachauri: …and if you eat less meat, you will be healthier and so will the planet! Dalai Lama: Then, there’s some kind of realization of individual responsibility to take care of this planet. Richard Branson: Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world and it’s really in our hands whether our children inherit the same world. Ken Livingstone: That is our duty, so that our children can have a decent quality of life on this planet. Prince Charles: We cannot be anything less than courageous and revolutionary in our approach to tackling climate change. Rajendra Pachauri: It’s a win-win situation if you eat less meat! Hilary Benn: Living in harmony with the natural world is the only way for the future, 9 billion people, one planet, one chance to get it right. Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung Bin: Today, if we want to reduce CO2 emissions, the vegetarian lifestyle is absolutely a very effective way. The difference between a vegetarian diet and a meat diet is the reduction in CO2 emissions, which is almost 3 times as high with a meat diet. Furthermore, the vegetarian diet is very good for our health. Rajendra Pachauri: Go Veg, Be Green and Save our planet.