There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.
The urgency derives from the nearness of climate tipping points.
I’m no longer sceptical. I no longer have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world.
We have found that material possessions don't provide
as much enduring happiness as the pursuit of life experiences.
First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally
end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible.
Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism.
Everything lost can be found, except for time wasted.
We have to face the reality of climate change. It is arguably the biggest threat we are facing today.
Denmark and the UK are in agreement that our future prosperity depends on stimulating green growth, and getting off the oil hook.
Many governments are giving subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption that encourage greenhouse gas emissions,
at the same time as they are spending on projects to promote clean energy.
This is a wasteful use of scarce budget resources.
We've got to find another way of producing energy.
The truth is that the overwhelming majority of species on this planet – including our own –
are utterly dependent on the complicated systems that Nature has provided,
and we ignore this reality at our absolute peril.
For me, solving the climate-change challenge is not as simple as “cutting CO2”. It is global,
it is multi-faceted and it is inter-related with unresolved challenges spanning right across the
international discourse – from trade and poverty reduction, to food security and environmental degradation
Ending fuel subsidies could cut greenhouse gas emissions 10%.
Earth is crammed with heaven and every bush aflame with God.
But only those who see take off their shoes.
Even without taking into account
uncertainties over future carbon absorption we
are heading for a rapid increase in greenhouse
gas stock accumulation. In effect, we are
opening the taps to increase the fl ow of water
into an already overfl owing bath. Th e overfl ow
is refl ected in the rate at which CO2 is entering
and being locked into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The power of
choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.
Climate change is a global commons problem.
To know and to not act is to not know.
The world is taking steps towards facing the existential challenge to survival,
meanwhile the US, virtually alone,
is racing towards destruction with enthusiasm & dedication.
The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it.
If we emit carbon, we’ll have to do something to capture it and we’ll have to include these costs in the price of energy.
If we continue releasing CO2 into the air, we’re doing something stupid.
There’s something astronomers use called the Drake equation, and that asks,
“What is the probability that there is a planet out there that we could communicate with that has intelligent life?”
And the biggest uncertainty in that has nothing to do with astronomy.
It has to do with the lifetime of a civilization. How long does it take it to destroy itself?
So if you have intelligent thing for a thousand years, the chances we’ll have to communicate with another planet,
on the timescale of billions of years,
it becomes almost certainly not possible.
I don’t know how long it’s going to be before people really wake up. I suspect we’re going to have to wait until the impacts grow larger.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose political future is not very clear,
is the only world leader who’s really been able to do anything.
