The best of times and the worst of times, updated, with Ramez Naam

Our guest in this episode, Ramez Naam, is described on his website as “climate tech investor, clean energy advocate, and award-winning author”. But that hardly starts to convey the range of deep knowledge that Ramez brings to a wide variety of fields. It was his 2013 book, “The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet”, that first alerted David to the breadth of scope of his insight about future possibilities – both good possibilities and bad possibilities. He still vividly remembers its opening words, quoting Charles Dickens from “The Tale of Two Cities”:

Quote: “‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times’ – the opening line of Charles Dickens’s 1859 masterpiece applies equally well to our present era. We live in unprecedented wealth and comfort, with capabilities undreamt of in previous ages. We live in a world facing unprecedented global risks—risks to our continued prosperity, to our survival, and to the health of our planet itself. We might think of our current situation as ‘A Tale of Two Earths’.” End quote.

12 years after the publication of “The Infinite Resource”, it seems that the Earth has become even better, but also even worse. Where does this leave the power of ideas? Or do we need more than ideas, as ominous storm clouds continue to gather on the horizon?

Selected follow-ups:

• Ramez Naam - personal website
• The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet
• The Nexus Trilogy (Nexus Crux Apex)
• Jesse Jenkins (Princeton)
• Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet - book by Mark Lynas
• 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo - Wikipedia
• We cool Earth, with reflective clouds - Make Sunsets
• Direct Air Capture (DAC) - Wikipedia
• Frontier: An advance market commitment to accelerate carbon removal
• Toward a Responsible Solar Geoengineering Research Program - by David Keith
• South Korea scales down plans for nuclear power
• Microsoft chooses infamous nuclear site for AI power
• Machines of Loving Grace: How AI Could Transform the World for the Better - Essay by Dario Amodei

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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