William H. Calvin Quotes
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Climate change has a very high procrastination penalty that just grows with each passing year of inaction - rather like what happens if you don't pay off your credit card. But for climate, there is no such thing as a fresh start from bankruptcy.
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Trusting your energy policy to the fossil fuel lobby is like trusting your health care system to the tobacco lobby.
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Countries that innovate first get the new jobs, developing an economic edge over the C-free laggards that end up having to later import the technology.
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Carbon-free energy is simply something we have to do. The time for talk is past. If we turn around net carbon emissions by 2020 rather than 2040, we get another 2° of fever rather than 3° - and that's a big difference.
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You can always spot the pioneers by the arrows in their backs.
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Unless we redesign our civilization in numerous ways, all of the science in the world won't save us.
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If we don't start thinking big about the CO2 problem, we may miss our opportunity to stop a climate runaway that will trash the habitable parts of the earth.
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The real focus needs to be on political action to stop this runaway train, real soon.
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Since Serengeti-scale savanna scenes are only one or two million years old, our earliest after-the-apes ancestors didn't move into this scene so much as they evolved with it, as the slower climate changes and uplift produced more grass and less forest.
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It's going to be like herding stray cats, and the political leaders who can do it will be remembered as the same kind of geniuses who pulled off the American Revolution.
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Perhaps we should put up posters in such places reminding people that where they stand was underwater the last time that the Earth ran a 3°F fever.
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Even if we stop the growth, we'd still be adding a constant amount of fossil carbon to the atmosphere each year.
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Carrying on as usual carries enormous risks, condemning today's students to a world of constant insecurity and frequent catastrophes.
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Anyone who would tackle our current addiction to fossil fuels is going to have to maneuver around denial.
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Stopping emissions growth represents the most minimal of do-something responses.
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Our CO2 mixes with everyone else's within a year, then hangs around for centuries like a shroud.
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