Quotes

People are overwhelmed looking up at the Mount Everest of environmental challenges that we face. But you put one foot in front of the other and you recognize that not everyone is Sir Edmund Hillary.

My father also encouraged my love of nature. He urged me to become a Cub Scout, and later a Boy Scout, and I found I really liked being outdoors.

The environmental crisis is all a result of rushing.

Some would call me an environmentalist. I don't know why. I reuse the water that falls in my backyard in the winter. I reuse the trash and clippings I produce for mulch. I reuse the rain that falls on my roof, and I reuse the sun that shines on my house for energy. I guess you could call me a strategic opportunist as much as an environmentalist.

If you're not buying recycled products, you're not really recycling.

I'm not a wealthy person because I was never a star. I was a working actor and a supporting actor.

I was a typical Valley teen, in smoggy Van Nuys.

I can trace my environmentally-friendly lifestyle back to my childhood. My father was a conservative Republican that liked to 'conserve'.

As someone who has grown up living in Southern California, I know all too well about the costs and scarcities of water.

We run around so much - with the best intentions: I want to save the rain forest. I've gotta clean up the oceans. I've gotta save the dolphins. All worthy efforts, but if you're not centered and you don't have the serenity in your life you need to accomplish that task, you're not going to do a very good job.

I started composting in 1970 by taking my food scraps out behind where I lived and burying them in a hole next to the railroad tracks - and green things started to grow there!

I ride my bike for transportation a great deal - occasionally I ride it for fun. But I also have a generator bike that's hooked up to my solar battery pack, so if I ride 15 minutes hard on my bike, that's enough energy to toast toast, or power my computer.

I bought my first electric car in 1970. Its top speed was 15 mph and it had just a 15 mile range - it was essentially a golf cart with a windshield wiper and a horn.

For my own health, I thought it was better to eat a plant based diet. I'm going to be 60 soon and I have boundless energy and I feel really good, so I'm all for it.

For decades, community colleges have been the backbone of American workforce training. Because they are nimble and closely attuned to local community needs, they are inherently positioned to be influential leaders of the movement for a sustainable economy.

California has always led the way on environmental protection and always reaped the benefits, pioneering everything from catalytic convertors on cars to stationary source reduction.

By 1990, I went back to no gasoline; I was just riding around on my bike, taking the bus. I had a tiny little electric car that didn't go very far or very fast. People thought I'd lost my mind. Even my own family thought I'd lost my mind.

When I was single, I was down to $100 of power a year.

The film 'Tapped' illustrates quite clearly how we've been getting 'soaked' for years by the bottled water industry.

People don't want to give up their SUVs. They don't want to turn the thermostat down in the winter and up in the summer.

One of the regular intervals of meditation in my life, believe it or not, is in my car.

My favorite form of transportation is walking. I live in a neighborhood where you can walk to restaurants, banks and shops.

Los Angeles is a city known as much for its sun as for its stars and its dirty air.

I've lived a slower and less expensive life going off the grid, and I'm happier because of it.

I've been in movies with Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson - but I was on The Simpsons (1989), and finally, in the eyes of my children, I was a star.

It takes less land to grow a pound of broccoli than it does a pound of beef. Less land to grow a pound of grain than a pound of beef. Less water, less energy.

I'm a strong proponent of green tech for anyone who can afford it, having spent the last 40 years working toward achieving a smaller and smaller eco-impact for myself.

[before he worked with Norman Lloyd on St. Elsewhere (1982)]: Norman directed me in a mystery show on television with Fritz Weaver, Sigourney's dad - I really liked Norman a lot and have great respect for him.

[on his on- and off-screen chemistry with Norman Lloyd, who played Dr. Daniel Auschlander]: I worked with Norman Lloyd the actor and Norman Lloyd the director, and no one informed me better on the art of storytelling than that talented man. He is a constant inspiration, and my eternal friend.

[Of Norman Lloyd]: Not only did I enjoy working with him, but I see him, fairly regularly, I just had dinner with him, 4 nights ago. We had dinner together at Sarah Nichols's house, his neighbor of mine and friend of his. We had a lovely time and reminisced - he's unbelievable. He's going to be 100 years old, this year, and still very active, getting around on his own. He's a force of nature, so Norman Lloyd was somebody I idolized. When I was quite young, wow James Dean is great and this is one and that. Now look at Janis Joplin, what a great voice and Jim Morrison, those people left us so young, like my point of view has change somewhere, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, saying, 'No, you idolized Jimmy Stewart, Gloria Swanson.' The people that have families and happiness and a long, economy life. You know, Norman Lloyd, he wasn't much older than me, when I did 'St. Elsewhere,' and I went 'These are my role models, now, people had a long/happy life and continued to be creative.' Those are my role models, not the people that left us, so early and I'm sorry they did, I don't mean to trifle with that, but, my role models changed from the people who had an incredible, brief spurt of creativity and life, but to people that went the distance, they became my role models at some point in my early 30s really.