Sparks: US urges IMF, World Bank to abandon climate finance goals

“To sever the financing of clean energy development is to ignore the intertwined arteries of economic vitality, human well-being, and planetary equilibrium.”
Alexander von Humboldt
“A species that intentionally alters its habitat to its detriment, ignoring the small but accumulating changes in its environment, demonstrates a remarkable lack of adaptive foresight.”
Charles Darwin
“Seems like some folks are so busy looking for shortcuts they're willing to saw off the branch they're sitting on, then wonder why the view ain't so good.”
Will Rogers
“To abandon the essential work of stewarding our common home for the sake of short-term gain is to live a life of profound, self-imposed poverty.”
Henry David Thoreau
“They speak of financial goals, yet the peasant in the field knows the sun burns hotter and the rains do not come, and no bank account can change this simple truth.”
Leo Tolstoy
“Fear of economic change, rather than a clear understanding of the atomic forces governing our climate, drives this irrational turning away from necessary mechanisms.”
Lucretius
“The iron room of outmoded thought persists, and those inside, rather than opening a window, choose to extinguish what little light remains.”
Lu Xun
“How charmingly simple, to declare that the earth's fever is merely a matter of inconvenient accounting, easily dismissed by decree.”
Voltaire
“Princes who ignore the tangible threats to their dominions, prioritizing immediate advantage over the long-term stability of their resources, often find their power dissolving like sand.”
Niccolò Machiavelli
“When the very institutions meant to secure the global good are pressured to abandon their moral obligations, the hypocrisy of professed leadership becomes a glaring indictment.”
Frederick Douglass
“The capitalist system, in its relentless drive for immediate profit, will always seek to dismantle any collective effort that threatens its accumulation, even if it means destroying the very basis of existence.”
Rosa Luxemburg
“It is a peculiar modern folly to tear down the fence protecting the future because one cannot immediately see the profit in leaving it standing.”
G.K. Chesterton
“It's a grand ol' show, watching folks argue about how to pay for the roof after they've already decided to set the house on fire.”
Mark Twain