Occupation: Population Biologist Birth: May 29, 1932
People have to decide, first of all, how they'd like to live, and how secure they want to be from disaster. After that, scientists can help determine….
Sometimes I think the Congress feels that if you only decided tomorrow to switch to wind power that in two years we'd be getting 80 percent of our el….
I thought if the climate was heating that CO2 was the only forcing, and it would be late in the century before we had trouble. Now that we know about….
I'm sort of optimistic about what we could do, but I'm very pessimistic about what we will do. I can't tell you that Al Gore's 10-year plan is imposs….
All scientists who've looked at it know we have to phase away from burning fossil fuels. That means we've got to put a lot of effort into alternate e….
We've all got to get together and demand something better out of our government and out of each other. We've got a system that's making us working ha….
Historically, things were moving in a pretty good direction until the Reagan presidency. And then it all got reversed. The Mexico City policy was ins….
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 -….
Recycling helps make people feel involved, and in some cases can be useful. Although you've got to do careful life history studies of what you're rec….
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….
Here's the scientific community saying, fundamentally, "If we don't change our ways, we're screwed." And they got no attention at all. Even though th….
I see harm reduction as a way of engaging people as part of that path to recovery..
There's all of this stuff where we have so much debate over nonsense; it could be cured if we had a better educational system, if we trained people t….
It turns out the population issue is an easier thing to deal with than the consumption issue. Some obvious extremes in consumption we can deal with. ….
With taxes, if they aren't working right, we can change them with a stroke of the pen. It's basically a market-type mechanism. People make their own ….
Woman should have the choice whether to have an abortion or not, but I like what Bill Clinton said: It ought to be safe and rare. You don't want to o….
I don't like the idea of teaching religion in schools, and creation is not my thing, but that's a trivial point compared to saving the creation. I'd ….
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 Spo….
We're never all going to agree with each other. We have to learn to value the diversity. It's one of the presumable principles of our government that….
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 li….
There are lots of excellent analysts out there. John Holdren at the Harvard Kennedy School, who was just president of the American Association for th….