Quotes about Carbon

You must have carbon. Arsenic, boron, and silicon are the only other elements on which complex molecules can be based, but arsenic and boron are relatively rare and, where concentrated, poisonous to life, and silicon can hold together no more than about a hundred amino acids. Only carbon yields the chemical bonding stability and bonding complexity that life requires. Given the constraints of physics and chemistry, we now know that physical life must be carbon-based.

You're never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

The most effective tree-related strategy for climate change is to stop cutting down so many of the trees we already have.

Because every bit of carbon we put into the atmosphere adds to the greenhouse effect. There's no getting around physics.

We already know the emissions number; it's 51 billion tons each year. As for the cost of removing a ton of carbon from the air, that figure hasn't been firmly established, but it's at least $200 per ton. With some innovation, I think we can realistically expect it to get down to $100 per ton, so that's the number I'll use. That gives us the following equation: 51 billion tons per year x $100 per ton = $5.1 trillion per year

Fifty-one billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere every year.

The struggle against poverty in the world and the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions all has a single, very simple solution... Here it is: Put a price on carbon.

I think it's harder for people than it should be. But as more and more of us become carbon neutral and change the patterns in our lives to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, we are now beginning to see the changes in policy that are needed.