Ramez Naam Quotes
Agriculture is the #1 source of deforestation. By some estimates it accounts for 80% of the forests chopped down in the tropics.
I decided five years ago that I wanted to truly understand, for myself, what the state of the planet was, and when I dug into it, what I found was quite different than I'd imagined.
That, to me, is a kind of brilliant environmental ju-jitsu - using the energy of the market and the profit-motive to get businesses to invest in preserving and improving natural systems.
When you're managing a large number of people, you learn that incentives matter tremendously. You really want people to be rewarded for doing the right thing for the customers and the organization.
New technology lets you grow the resource pie, which is the only way you can get out between that pincer of rising consumption (as we end poverty) and environmental and natural resource depletion.
Just like you could dump oil into the Cuyahoga in the 60s and let someone else foot the bill, today you can pump CO2 into the atmosphere and let the whole world foot the bill.
I think the environmental movement is now so large and diverse that it's hard to talk of it as a single entity.
Technology is incredibly powerful. And in many ways, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can actually accomplish with the right science and the right technology.
Unfortunately, in the environment, I don't see as much willingness to invest heavily in R&D as I do in consumer technology. And that's a pity.
We have climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from human power and transportation infrastructure. At the same time, we have 2 billion people who live in energy poverty.
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.
If you want to feed the planet and keep the forests we have, you need to be able to grow roughly twice as much food per acre around the world. How do you do that? New technology.
Whatever my current beliefs are, on any topic, they're all open to being changed by the right facts and the right evidence.
If the incentives are aligned right - towards better preservation and restoration of nature and natural resources - then you'll see a tremendous amount of activity in that direction.
If your incentives are set up wrong - if for some reason you reward people for behavior that's actually bad for your customers or your organization - then you're going to encourage that behavior.
The more widely you can spread this notion of achieving ROI by preserving and improving ecosystems, the better.
TNC was once limited by the resources it could directly marshal to buy land. But teaching people a new idea is incredibly more scalable.
By focusing on teaching businesses about the ROI they can achieve by preserving and investing in nature, you're expanding the scope of the impact you can have.
Ozone and climate are global issues, and it's hard to find a way in which the benefits of shutting down carbon emissions are going to pay for themselves for any given power-plant, say.
Often we need to use policy to level the playing field, or to be sure that a technology is managed in a responsible way.
Producing food to eat is the single most destructive environmental activity humans engage in.
Technology is vital. We have to have development in new technology if we're going to solve these environmental problems without throwing humanity back in poverty.
Environmental concern is a phenomena that tends to rise in a nation after a certain level of wealth.
Solar power is going to be absolutely essential to meeting growing energy demands while staving off climate change.
Every attempt through history to limit the definition of humanity has been a prelude to the subjugation, degradation, and slaughter of innocents.
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?
