I [have become] convinced of three things: 1. To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to get to zero {net emissions by the year 2050}. 2. We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter. 3. And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way.

Countries around the world are aiming to achieve a goal of zero carbon emissions by 2050, and public transportation is a key to achieving that goal. As such, we need to set a long-term goal for railway infrastructure as well.

Deploying today’s renewables and improving transmission couldn’t be more important. . . . Unless we use large amounts of nuclear energy . . . every path to zero in the United States will require us to install as much wind and solar power as we can build and find room for. . . . [M]ost countries aren’t as lucky as the United States when it comes to solar and wind resources. . . . That’s why, even as we deploy, deploy, deploy solar and wind, the world is going to need some new clean electricity inventions too.

At Cop28, there are many who are convinced that we face a climate catastrophe in the next few decades if net zero is not delivered. Well, I say we are certain to have an economic and societal catastrophe if we persist in trying to reach that goal by 2050. Humanity cannot bear it.

Our leaders need political willpower to cut down emissions and become a net-zero, carbon-neutral country by 2035 or 2050. I understand developing countries have a bigger challenge. India also is a big country with a large population; our government faces a lot of challenges to set a deadline to achieve global commitments, but we need to increase the speed. I’m very much optimistic that if developed countries stand together with those developing countries, we can easily achieve the Paris Climate Agreement before the deadline. The biggest problem is that our leaders don’t trust each other. If they trust each other, we can easily fight the global climate crisis with a concrete action plan.

We need to take measures collectively to ensure your generation can adapt to what is now an inevitable process of global warming. The only way for us to adapt, is to restrict the extent of it. This requires political decisions. We need to target carbon neutrality by 2050. This should be a challenge that occupies you over the next 30 years.

We must halve emissions over the next ten years, and then again by 2050, to achieve a climate neutral world economy – only this can save our future.

The most important thing is to say, we've got to be 50% off fossil fuels by 2030. And this is what we have to do every year, we've got to mandate reductions year after year after year, if we're serious about it.

We should spend the next decade focusing on the technologies, [governmental] policies and market structures that will put us on the path to eliminating greenhouse gases by 2050. It's hard to think of a better response to a miserable [year of COVID-19 disruptions during] 2020 than spending the next ten years dedicating ourselves to this ambitious goal.

I think even a lot of really committed environmentalists, they think, well, if everybody drives an electric car, and we have all LED lights, and and you know, that somehow everything will be fine. No, it's not going to be that simple. Reduction of our fossil fuel use by 2030. Everything is going to change and we can't go on in this hyper consuming way. There going to be massive changes.

[W]ith transportation, the zero-carbon future is basically this: Use electricity to run all the vehicles we can, and get cheap alternative fuels for the rest. In the first group are passenger cars and trucks, light and medium trucks, and buses. In the second group are long-distance trucks, trains, airplanes, and container ships.

If we do nothing, we still get to a post-carbon future, but it will be bleak. However, if we plan the transition, we can have a world that supports robust communities of healthy, creative people and ecosystems with millions of other species.

The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world’s governments finally bring the engineers to the fore... I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke. ... the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely. “I don’t really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion... Tell us engineers the desired ‘specs’ and the timeline, and we’ll get the job done.” This is not bravado. ... The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot.

We need to change our economy and our politics if we want to shift to a low-emissions society-our economy because we need to create a system of production that prioritizes human needs rather than increasing consumption, and our politics, because to make this change, we need to take control from a corporate system that has every interest in perpetuating itself. (page 30)