William H. Calvin Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

Unless we redesign our civilization in numerous ways, all of the science in the world won't save us.

William H. Calvin
Trusting your energy policy to the fossil fuel lobby is like trusting your health care system to the tobacco lobby.

William H. Calvin
Anyone who would tackle our current addiction to fossil fuels is going to have to maneuver around denial.

William H. Calvin
Even if we stop the growth, we'd still be adding a constant amount of fossil carbon to the atmosphere each year.

William H. Calvin
If we don't start thinking big about the CO2 problem, we may miss our opportunity to stop a climate runaway that will trash the habitable parts of the earth.

William H. Calvin
It's going to be like herding stray cats, and the political leaders who can do it will be remembered as the same kind of geniuses who pulled off the American Revolution.

William H. Calvin
Since Serengeti-scale savanna scenes are only one or two million years old, our earliest after-the-apes ancestors didn't move into this scene so much as they evolved with it, as the slower climate changes and uplift produced more grass and less forest.

William H. Calvin
Stopping emissions growth represents the most minimal of do-something responses.

William H. Calvin
Our CO2 mixes with everyone else's within a year, then hangs around for centuries like a shroud.

William H. Calvin
The real focus needs to be on political action to stop this runaway train, real soon.

William H. Calvin
Quantum mechanics is probably essential to consciousness in about the same way as crystals were once essential to radios, or spark plugs are still essential to traffic jams. Necessary, but not sufficient.

William H. Calvin
Science doesn't merely empower us, as in seeding better technologies; it also helps prevent trouble in the first place. Knowledge can be like a vaccine, immunizing you against false fears and bad moves.

William H. Calvin