“If every country committed to spending 0.05 per cent of GDP on researching non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, that would cost $25 billion a year, and it would do a lot more than massive carbon cuts to fight warming and save lives.”

I tentatively believe in a god. I was brought up in a fairly religious home. I think the world is compatible with reincarnation, karma, all that stuff.

There is something wrong with saying we should start using renewables now, while they are still incredibly expensive.

On average, global warming is not going to harm the developing world.

The second thing is, if you want to do something about global warming, you have to think much more long-term.

The Kyoto treaty has an estimated cost of between US$150 and $350 billion a year, starting in 2010.

We worry about the seemingly ever-increasing number of natural catastrophes. Yet this is mainly a consequence of CNN.

I found university a little dispiriting. I thought I would enter the great halls of Plato, but instead I entered the halls of an intellectual sausage factory. I wanted to do something not on the main course, and chose the environment.

Across Europe, there are six times more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths…by 2050…Warmer temperatures will save 1.4 million lives each year.

Of course, the world is full of problems. But on the other hand it’s important to get the sense… are we generally moving in the right direction or the wrong direction?

The only thing that will really change global warming in the long run is if we radically increase the speed with which we get alternative technologies to deal with climate change.

To prepare adequately for the challenge of global warming, we must acknowledge both the good and the bad that it will bring.

Money spent on carbon cuts is money we can’t use for effective investments in food aid, micronutrients, HIV/AIDS prevention, health and education infrastructure, and clean water and sanitation.

Surely the biggest problem we have in the world is that we all die. But we don’t have a technology to solve that, right? So the point is not to prioritize problems; the point is to prioritize solutions to problems.

So it’s mainly a question of helping the Third World overcome the effects of global warming.

I think it’s great that we have organisations like Greenpeace. In a pluralistic society, we want to have people who point out all the problems that the Earth could encounter. But we need to understand that they are not presenting a full and rounded view.

Nobody wanted to buy a computer in 1950, but once they got cheap, everyone bought them.

Politics are a smooth file, which cuts gradually, and attains its end by slow progression.

Because there are so many shows on and because I’ve been so hands-on – I’ve had a piece on almost every single week – I don’t know how to cut back on that. You really can’t.

There is nothing sadder than the cheerful letters of the dead, expressing hopes that were never fulfilled, ambitions that were never achieved, dreams cut off before they could come to fruition.

Most Young Kings Get Their Heads Cut Off.

Scouting is a man’s job cut down to a boy’s size.

I was king of the mountain for a long time, well, I don’t want that no more.

The nearer the cutting off point lies to the main force of the enemy, the more immediate the effect; whereas the closer to the strategic base it takes place, the greater the effect.

Gaza is often described as ‘the world’s largest open air prison’ because no-one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons – they don’t have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost every day.