Technology is incredibly powerful. And in many ways, the sky is the limit in terms of what you can actually accomplish with the right science and the right technology.

Playing God is actually the highest expression of human nature. The urges to improve ourselves, to master our environment, and to set our children on the best path possible have been the fundamental driving forces of all of human history. Without these urges to ‘play God’, the world as we know it wouldn’t exist today.

Doom yourself to horrific climate change by burning all that carbon and releasing all that CO2. Or power down society, reducing total energy usage around the planet. One leads to ecological collapse. The other is a reversion, in many ways, to poverty.

If you want to feed the planet and keep the forests we have, you need to be able to grow roughly twice as much food per acre around the world. How do you do that? New technology.

Just like you could dump oil into the Cuyahoga in the 60s and let someone else foot the bill, today you can pump CO2 into the atmosphere and let the whole world foot the bill.

If the incentives are aligned right - towards better preservation and restoration of nature and natural resources - then you'll see a tremendous amount of activity in that direction.

Ozone and climate are global issues, and it's hard to find a way in which the benefits of shutting down carbon emissions are going to pay for themselves for any given power-plant, say.