Quotes by Ramez Naam

You have to be able to generate usable energy without greenhouse gas emissions, and you have to be able to do it cheaply if you want people to choose that approach. That means new technologies.

If you had no new technology, and you powered society as we do today - mostly by fossil fuels - you'd have only two choices: Doom yourself to horrific climate change by burning all that carbon and releasing all that CO2. Or power down society, reducing total energy usage around the planet.

Everything in nature is not just a straight up. It's an S-curve. It arises for a while until it hits some physical limitation, and then it plateaus again.

People are wired for lots of things. We're wired for novelty. We're wired for humor. We're wired for new pieces of information that surprise us in some way or add value to our lives. We're wired for fear.

Americans mostly now believe the climate is changing. They believe that humans are causing it, and they believe that it is a risk. But in surveys, Americans are not willing to pay higher energy prices to tackle the problem.

People are sources not just of consumption but of innovation.

Many of the most science-fictional tools to fight climate change are untested, are almost impossible to truly test at planetary scale - we only have one planet after all. We're better off cutting our emissions so we don't need them.

In some ways, technology keeps on enhancing us, and we embrace it.

We are cyborgs already. If you learn to read, it causes permanent changes to the structure of your brain for your entire life.

We know the climate is changing. We don't know if it will be really bad or nearly apocalyptic. Both are within the realm of possibility.