This week I’ve come across several quotes from various sources that struck me as noteworthy, so I compiled a short list below. The second green revolution is gaining steam and it’s exciting.

• “If environmental policy is not good business policy, you will not get 60 votes [needed to pass the Cap and Trade Bill in the Senate]. The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead.”

- Lindsey Graham, (R-SC); Source: New York Times

• “Human beings change their behavior only when danger is imminent or when there is money at stake. For many Americans, global warming remains personally remote. Which means that commerce—or, to keep liberals happy, let’s call it commerce with a conscience—is our best hope. Energy technology could well be the successor to information technology as the next great engine of economic growth—and we surely need that engine.”

-  Jon Meacham; Source: Newsweek

• “The path to energy security, environmental progress, and economic growth is neither short nor smooth nor straight. The global-warming true believers who want instant results are destined to be disappointed, and the deniers who try to undermine the scientific consensus or the skeptics who cynically say large-scale change is politically, economically, and culturally impossible are being unhelpful.”

-   Jon Meacham; Source: Newsweek

• Discussing a sentence in Al Gore’s new book in an article by Sharon Begley: “The chapter is an astute analysis of the psychological barriers that keep most Americans from taking the threat of climate change seriously, his acknowledgment that emotion, not just reason, drives the decisions people make. The sentence is this: ‘Simply laying out the facts won’t work.’ “

• From the same article by Sharon Begley: “In a poll, [Al Gore] says, 80 percent of CEOs and CFOs said they would not spend money to make their factories more efficient and save money in the long run if it hurt their next-quarter bottom line. “That,” says Gore, “is functionally insane.”

While the climate change bill is still being debated, three senators have come together to try to save the legislation and get it passed in the Senate: Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-SC), and Sen. Joe Lieberman, (I-CT). Congress, businessmen, and the public all sense the need to radically change the crucial energy base that runs our economy and society. Disgust with security risks due to dependence on foreign oil, a need for a new economic growth engine, worry over losing out to other countries in leading the next economic boom, environmental and climate change concerns, and the financial crisis and recession have all come together to push America toward another one of its great re-inventions.

- Justin Manger