- [on lighting up as part of his role in 'Tora'] I figured if Pierre Berton could roll a joint and smoke it on Rick Mercer's show, I could pretend I was smoking a joint in a small movie.
- [on the global warming controversy] Scientists are being portrayed by much of the power structure in politics and business as having a vested interest - that they're just out to get more grant money by exaggerating the threats.
- [observation, 2013] Environmentalism has failed. Many of the battles we fought thirty or thirty-five years ago, that we celebrated as enormous successes, the same battles have started again. We fundamentally failed to use those battles to shift the paradigm. And that's been the failure of environmentalism.
- [on the Blue Dot Tour, 2014] I have been in this game for a long time - over fifty years - and over that time we have won a lot of victories. But we have failed as environmentalists to show people why we are fighting for these issues. Our hope is to galvanize a grass-roots movement about the important things in life. If you don't have air for three minutes you are dead. If you breathe polluted air you are sick. These need to be guaranteed as rights in our constitution.
- Guess who's really embraced the green economy. It's China. Nine out of ten solar panels is made in China. They're building windmills. They're really working on that green economy because they're killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese. Go to Beijing in the winter and it's outrageous people have to live in air like that. They're paying a huge price for their economic growth using that low-grade fossil fuel.
- [on the difficulty of getting the discourse to move from the economy to the environment] That's the big challenge. The economy has set the frame for too long. I think going for the constitutional amendment really changes the whole thing.. No CEOS, no politician can say, 'I'm not in favor of a clean environment - clear air, clean water, and clean energy'.
- We're in deep, deep doo-doo. And the leading experts have been telling us for over 40 years. This is what we've come to. The next stage after this, there are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don't pay attention to what's going on.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content