This [climate change] is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one?

I've never really had much of a career plan, and interesting opportunities kept cropping up.

We will not overcome world poverty unless we manage climate change successfully. I've spent my life as a development economist, and it's crystal clear that we succeed or fail on winning the battle against world poverty and managing climate change together. If we fail on one, we fail on the other.

It's very important that there should be cross-fertilisation between government and academia. Both parties can benefit from having a better understanding of how the other works.

Climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen

Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen...We risk damages on a scale larger than the two world wars of the last century.

If coal is going to be used, the only response - because it is the dirtiest of all fuels - is that we have to learn how to do carbon capture and storage and we have to learn how to do it quickly on a commercial scale.