Zac Goldsmith
19 quotes
Biography
Frank Zacharias Robin Goldsmith, Baron Goldsmith of Richmond Park is a British politician, life peer and journalist who served as Minister of State for Overseas Territories, Commonwealth, Energy, Climate and Environment from September 2022 to June 2023. A member of the Conservative Party, he was its candidate at the 2016 London mayoral election and was Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond Park from 2010 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019.
"Every man today is afraid he's firing blanks; it's becoming very much harder for humans to reproduce. According to Danish research, we now have the sperm count of a hamster."
"[On disorder and untidiness of his office at The Ecologist] This place is like a Swiss watch compared to my house - at least until Sheherazade moved in."
"I think whatever I was doing I would be pretty fanatical, but I find it hard to imagine how you can't be fanatical about these issues. We're facing extinction . . . and I can be driven to an unbelievable, uncontrollable anger by what's happening today."
"In 10 years' time, I might be an eco terrorist. But I'll take the most effective path, whatever that is."
"[On Tony Blair, then Labour prime minister] Wouldn't trust him with my dog. Wouldn't trust him with my budgerigar."
"[On William Hague, then Conservative party leader] I'd have to drug myself before I voted for him. Get drunk beforehand. And then wash myself afterwards."
"If the magazine collapsed, if the world was going to self-destruct, I would just sink my hands into the mud and live like a pig. Not in a negative sense [...] I mean, I love pigs."
"I can't be bought. I don't need to be bought. I'm not a careerist. I don't need to have a career in politics. I'm in a very, very luxurious position, but I am in a position of strength. I think I have been selected by Cameron, within the context of that understanding."
"There are all kinds of problems with the European Union but nevertheless these things are possible. How can putting a tax on aviation fuel and going through that negotiation process be any harder? It's clearly not harder than establishing a European Union."
"[On the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) policy in London] You can make the case that it’s a clumsy policy, that it’s going to affect people who can least afford it. There are all kinds of arguments made about that and lots of policies relating to the environment and climate change. [...] The job of governments and politicians is to find the solutions that are going to be the least painful, most effective, and if that requires you to rethink individual policies then go for it. But what I think is not negotiable, is the overarching challenge that we face."
"A pound invested in energy efficiency buys seven times more energy solution than a pound invested in nuclear power."
"Politicians usually get the blame for dragging their feet on environmental issues. And fair enough. Most of them do just that. But the blame isn't theirs alone. For politicians afraid of losing votes, a bristling media waiting to transform good green ideas into monsters is a colossal disincentive."
"We always hear from newspapers that while people understand the environmental challenge, they are unwilling to stomach the solutions. The trouble is, we only ever hear about the solutions from the media, and for whatever reason, they are almost always caricatured beyond recognition. If there's no appetite for green, it's not surprising."
"By uploading 40 years of 'Ecologist' editions online, we will be creating the world's most extensive ecological archive. 'The Ecologist' will continue to set the environmental and political agenda here and abroad."
"Politics colours everything, and anyone who wants change is necessarily political. As an environmental campaigner more or less since I left school in the early '90s, I have always been involved in lobbying, campaigning and pushing for changes."
"'Green' is likely to be a big issue in the 2008 U.S. presidential election - largely in response to George Bush's suicidal refusal to engage with environmental issues."
"Sense About Science is much more than an innocent fact-checking service. It is a spin-off of a bizarre political network that began life as the ultra-left Revolutionary Communist Party and switched over to extreme corporate libertarianism when it launched 'Living Marxism' magazine in the late eighties."
"A number of countries around the world, and indeed the E.U. as a whole, have chosen not to allow the import from the U.S. of beef from cows fed a diet that includes the hormone ractopamine, because of the fairly grave health concerns."
"GM has never been about feeding the world or tackling environmental problems. It is and has always been about control of the global food economy by a tiny handful of giant corporations. It's not wicked to question that process. It is wicked not to."