Ramez Naam

“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.”

“Genetically modified organism (GMO) foods are feared and hated by environmentalists and the public alike. Yet the scientific assessment of GMOs is remarkably different. Every major scientific evaluation of GMO technology has concluded that GMOs are safe for human consumption and are a benefit to the environment.”

“I've always been fascinated by the brain. I wrote a lot about brain-tech in my first non-fiction book, 'More Than Human.' So when I decided to write science fiction, that was the technology I gravitated towards.”

“I have an 'office,' technically. I never use it. I work on a couch in my living room, with my laptop on my lap, looking out the windows. I love space and green things. And I'm an incredibly casual person. I slouch. I close the laptop and just lie on the couch for a while if I need to think. I put my feet up on a table while I type.”

“But Nita had always seen having a child as selfish. Why bring another soul into this world, she'd say, when there are so many out there that need our help?”

“Threats that could wipe out the bulk of life on earth abound. Planetary catastrophe could come in the form of a killer asteroid impact, the eruption of massive supervolcanoes, a nearby gamma ray burst that sterilizes the earth, or by human-driven environmental collapse.”

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

“In a VR setting, you tilt your head up, and you really have the vertigo and the sense that it goes up to infinity, and it's like you're in New York City or Dubai, and you're looking up at a giant skyscraper. You have a sense of awe.”

“We have to slow down the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane from coal burning, oil and eventually natural gas... And the best ways to do that are energy efficiency and a switch to renewables.”

“I absolutely hated 'Gattaca.' I left the theater shaking my head because the science in the film was just terrible. No genetic test will ever tell you how many heartbeats you have left. No genetic test will ever be more accurate in telling an employer how well you'll do at a job than your performance at a past job would be.”

“Ideas come mostly bottoms-up. They come when you have a free flow of ideas and you have people able to combine multiple ideas into one concept... And you've got to have competition, too. You've got to say, 'We're going to have 10 different ideas, nine of them are going to fail, and the one that does the best is going to move forward.'”

“The total amount of energy we use every year - from coal, oil, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, and everything else - is dwarfed by the amount of solar energy hitting the planet each year.”

“In the end, our minds and their ability to create new ideas are the ultimate source of all human wealth. That's a resource nearly without limit.”

“We're going to lose more species, acidify the oceans more, do damage that it will take millions of years - if not longer - to unwind. Exactly how much damage will we do? How deep will those scars run? We don't know yet. But we will turn the ship.”

“Every state that addresses climate change emboldens the others, just as shifting public attitudes embolden politicians and, arguably, the court system.”

“We're fortunate enough to live on a planet that's bathed in thousands of times more energy than we use and that's stocked with thousands of times more water, raw materials, and even food-growing potential than we need.”

“Wild fish are under threat of extinction because they're hunted to feed us. Yet land animals that we farm are under no threat of extinction. Shifting from hunting fish to farming fish - where the farmers have the incentive to keep their stocks healthy - could do a tremendous amount of good for wild fish.”

“The accumulated knowledge of materials, computing, electromagnetism, product design, and all the rest that we've learned over the last several centuries converts a few ounces of raw materials worth mere pennies into a device with more computing power than the entire planet possessed fifty years ago.”

“We must learn to set our emotions aside and embrace what science tells us. GMOs and nuclear power are two of the most effective and most important green technologies we have. If - after looking at the data - you aren't in favour of using them responsibly, you aren't an environmentalist.”

“Orange juice from concentrate is labeled. Food coloring Red #5 is labeled. Fish are labeled as to whether they've been previously frozen. To a consumer, there's no plausible reason why these factors should be on a food ingredient label while the presence of GMOs shouldn't be.”