There Are Substitutes For Oil; There Is

Your Children Should Have It Impressed Upon Them That Their Adult Life-style Will Bear Very Little Resemblance To Yours And That They Should Now Be Acquiring Knowledge, Skills, Values, And Tastes That Will Sustain Them In Less Materially Affluent Circumstances. On The Other Hand, The Fresh Insights And Imaginations Of Your Children May Help You Find A Viable Future While There's Still Time.

Most Of The Scientists I Know Think Civilization Is Teetering On The Brink Of A Global Disaster. They Just Don't Know When It's Going To Hit. I Don't Have The Answer To That Either. I'm Scared As Hell.

The Main Thing Is, And Of Course This Is A Pedant Talking, We Should Start Our Education On These Issues In Kindergarten. Instead Of Saying, "see Spot Run," We Ought To Say, "see The Plant Grow In The Sun." We Ought To Explain What Runs The Weather In The Third Or Fourth Grade To Start Out With.

I Kind Of Like Carbon Taxes Because We Already Know How To Apply Them. We Already Have Apparatus In Place. When We Talk About These Other Solutions - Like A Billion Tons Of Iron Filings In The Ocean Or Putting Sunshades Between Us And The Sun - They're Huge. We Have No Idea If They Will Work. We Have No Idea What Their Nasty Consequences Might Be. And It's Unlikely We Can Do Them Anyway.

I Don't Think Scientists Can Dictate From Above What We Should Do, Because It's Not A Matter Of Scientific Decision. If You Want To Have Everybody Living Like A Beverly Hills Millionaire, Then 2 Billion People Might Be Too Many. If We Want To Have A Battery-chicken Kind Of World, With Everybody Having An Absolute Minimum Diet, You Might Be Able To Support 10 Billion.