Ramez Naam
Ramez Naam is a computer scientist and author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promice of Biological Enhancement. He is a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and blogs at Unbridled Speculation. He lives in Seattle, where he is currently working on his next book The Infinite Resource: Human Innovation and Overcoming the Challenges of a Finite Planet.
Can we capture all the world's carbon emissions?
Carbon capture tech would require huge scale, but could give the world needed time.
Capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has major challenges, but it can be done at a price that would not destroy our economy. Doing so would give us more time to find ways to switch to inherently zero-carbon methods of powering our civilization.
The Moore's Law of solar energy
Solar cost per watt is dropping on an exponential curve, and will drop below coal by 2020.
If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the Earth, we would have access to 6X as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions.