"How much does it take to reduce emissions? In principle, nothing much. No invention is pending, no launch window has to be waited for, no breakthrough in materials science is required, no treaty has to be signed by anyone who does not want to sign it. What is required is that a very large number of people desire less than they currently desire, and that is the one thing no engineer can deliver and no summit can negotiate. So the simple route goes untried, and in its place arrive proposals of escalating magnificence."

"This was a climate catastrophe, and not the first; the very same valley was struck in almost this way a year ago, and the whole Himalayan arc now does this two and three times a season. The word, then, is available, and it is accurate, and still it is the one word we will not say plainly. That refusal deserves more attention than the flood itself, because the refusal is the disease, and the flood only its symptom."