Klaus Lackner Quotes

The problem with cap-and-trade and programs such as carbon capture and storage is that they all assume that business as usual can continue. The financial meltdown and peak oil has pretty much demonstrated that business as usual's not going to work.

Enlightened self-interest from those involved in hydrocarbons should lead to the support of technologies enabling the clean use of hydrocarbons, such as carbon capture and storage, and not to the defence of deniers and cranks.

By taxing CO2, firms and households would have an incentive to retrofit for the world of the future. The tax would also provide firms with incentives to innovate in ways that reduce energy usage and emissions - giving them a dynamic competitive advantage.

The challenge of pollution and global warming is no longer the science, or the rate of innovation, but the rate of implementation: We have the clean solutions; now let's bundle them and install them.

Most Americans are more concerned about the economy and job creation. And they can't understand why the Obama administration or the Democrat majority in Congress wants to pass a bill like the cap-and-trade tax that will cost us jobs, that will hurt our economy, that will drive up costs for families, as well as for small businesses.

If we invest in researching and developing energy technology, we'll do some real good in the long run, rather than just making ourselves feel good today. But climate change is not the only challenge of the 21st century, and for many other global problems we have low-cost, durable solutions.

Solar power, wind power, the way forward is to collaborate with nature - it's the only way we are going to get to the other end of the 21st century.

When it comes to dealing with the world's climate and energy challenges, I have a simple rule: change America, change the world.

As a scientist, I clearly see the potential for harnessing the power of nature.

The challenge of global warming should stimulate a whole raft of manifestly benign innovations - for conserving energy and generating it by 'clean' means (biofuels, innovative renewables, carbon sequestration, and nuclear fusion).

Job creation is a choice. Investing in cleaner, greener technologies that allow us to strike a more sustainable balance with the other living systems of this earth - this, too, is a choice.

New York and Connecticut belong to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to cut carbon emissions, and New York City has been a leader in energy efficiency.

There are some that feel like human activity is the cause for carbon emissions, and because of that, we need to revert to where we were in the 1870s for carbon emissions. I just choose to disagree with that.

I have advocated an entirely different approach than cap and tax, which would be worldwide in application and which emphasizes technology as a way of reducing total emissions.

If we want to address global warming, along with the other environmental problems associated with our continued rush to burn our precious fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we must learn to use our resources more wisely, kick our addiction, and quickly start turning to sources of energy that have fewer negative impacts.

Some solutions are relatively simple and would provide economic benefits: implementing measures to conserve energy, putting a price on carbon through taxes and cap-and-trade and shifting from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources.

Putting a tax on carbon could be an effective approach for curbing global warming pollution.

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it's the right thing to do. It's economics 101, elementary stuff.

For the U.S., I think we should have a carbon tax, for environmental reasons.

The low carbon economy is at the leading edge of a structural shift now taking place globally.

It seems like every week we are considering bills that would make it harder to limit the amount of carbon we are dumping into our atmosphere, and prevent implementation of clean technologies. The voters who sent us here deserve better.

The crusade to convince us that global warming can only be dealt with by wealth destruction and higher energy prices began with an effort to 'raise awareness,' which turned into some delicate nanny-state prodding before efforts to artificially inflate prices.

We always hear from newspapers that while people understand the environmental challenge, they are unwilling to stomach the solutions. The trouble is, we only ever hear about the solutions from the media, and for whatever reason, they are almost always caricatured beyond recognition. If there's no appetite for green, it's not surprising.

If you have a carbon cap and trade system, there'd be an agreed-to limit the amount of carbon we emit. That changes the economic picture for fossil technologies and for the renewable technologies. It makes the renewable technologies more attractive and the fossils less attractive.

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.