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1. Fixing global warming is more important than astronomy.
2. What I’m interested in is the conversations going on about the Anthropocene and what it means to view ourselves as a part of Earth’s geological history.
3. Whenever I see a nighttime picture of Earth from space, with its glowing lights, I am stirred by its beauty.
4. There is a real danger of unintended consequences, of encouraging people to give up. Pessimism, if it becomes a habit, can reinforce a narrative of unstoppable decline. If there is nothing we can do, that releases us from our obligations.
5. We’ve almost been wiped out as a species many times, going back millions of years, and we’ve survived by reinventing ourselves and enlarging our circles of awareness, inventing new technologies and social structures.
6. There are other planets besides the Earth and Mars. I’d like to remind you that studying Venus is vital to understanding life elsewhere.
7. We’re going to get off fossil fuels, no question. We may not do it quickly enough to avoid some pain, and I’m quite worried about that. But by the 22nd century, there’s no way we’ll be on fossil fuels.
8. The reason you see so many volcanoes on Venus is partly due to the fact that there’s virtually no erosion there. So on Venus, you’re seeing features, some of which are hundreds of millions of years old on the surface. On Earth, we do not see any surface features nearly that old — you only see much more recent features.
9. Why should we consider defining intelligence as something global and as something that hasn’t actually yet appeared on Earth? It may be useful for envisioning the future of our own civilization and any others that may be out there among the stars. It might give us something to strive for.
10. Through space-based climate studies, my colleagues and I have learned that a stable and comfortable climate is not something to take for granted.
11. Earth’s biosphere gave birth to humans and our thoughts, which are now reshaping its planetary cycles. A planet with brains? Fancy that.
12. There’s eco-pragmatism, where you recognize, ‘Yeah, we live on a planet that’s permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that’s an illusion, and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.’
13. Humanity has at least a dim, and growing, cognisance of the effects of its presence on this planet. The possibility that we might integrate that awareness into how we interface with the Earth system is one that should give us hope.
14. You cannot study other planets without referring to Earth and without applying the techniques and the insights of Earth science. And you cannot really do a good job understanding the Earth without the insights from planetary exploration.
15. Titan has rivers and lakes of liquid methane and ethane, methane weather systems of clouds and storms that mirror Earth’s hydrologic cycle, and seasonal cycles that rival Earth’s in complexity.
16. I’m a strong advocate of new missions to Venus.
17. I think that an advanced planetary civilization will modify their own planets to be more stable, to prevent asteroid impacts and dangerous climate fluctuations.
18. Even cynical, selfish people will realize, one way or the other, that it’s not in their self-interest to act in self-destructive ways.
19. NASA, and all the other spacefaring nations of the world, have agreed to a set of ‘planetary-protection’ principles, aimed at preventing the accidental contamination of another habitable world with organisms from Earth.
20. Responsible global behaviour is ultimately an act of self-preservation of, by, and for the global beast that modern technological humanity has become.