William H. Calvin Quotes

Stopping emissions growth represents the most minimal of do-something responses.

Anyone who would tackle our current addiction to fossil fuels is going to have to maneuver around denial.

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.

You can always spot the pioneers by the arrows in their backs.

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.

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.

Unless we redesign our civilization in numerous ways, all of the science in the world won’t save us.

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.

Our CO2 mixes with everyone else’s within a year, then hangs around for centuries like a shroud.

Even if we stop the growth, we’d still be adding a constant amount of fossil carbon to the atmosphere each year.

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.

Trusting your energy policy to the fossil fuel lobby is like trusting your health care system to the tobacco lobby.