Status Updates From Heat: How to Stop the Plane...

“Accepting that we no longer possess the powers of angels or of devils, that the world no longer exists for our delectation, demands that we do something few people in the rich world have done for many years: recognize that progress now depends upon the exercise of fewer opportunities.”

“Confronted with the twin disasters of climate change and an impending oil peak, it is hard to see how anyone could justify the assertion that the need to drive a car which can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 4.5 seconds…overrides the Ethiopians’ need to avoid recurrent famines…”.

Honestly, most of the information in chapter 6 was beyond my comprehension. But I have learned to be careful about which numbers to trust.

“There are two reasons why cheating is so common in the nuclear industry. The first is that it is much cheaper to handle radioactive materials badly than to handle them well. The second is that the nuclear operators have the perfect excuse - security - for withholding inconvenient facts from the public.”

“We would do well to ask why governments seem to find it so easy to raise the money required to wreck the biosphere, and so difficult to raise the money required to save it.”