David G. Victor

[On climate change and global action] Well, ultimately this is something that requires all of industry, all people everywhere in the world to take action. And that's one of the reasons why we haven't made more progress so far. So really hard problem of, of collective action building international agreements, getting countries to line up.

[On climate action] Well, individuals can take some action. There are roles for protests, a market actions and things like that, but it's very hard to see how this problem is going to get solved without governments acting. And it looks here in the United States. The lack of action by the federal government has led to states to do a lot more. And so I think you've see all around the world, all this kind of clutching and gearing and efforts to figure out how we would compensate for the fact that many national governments aren't doing enough.

[On the ability of those with greater economic resources to adapt to climate impacts] I think some people who live in that environment [coastal California] are willing to spend huge resources to protect themselves with bigger fire breaks, with different kinds of materials, with private fire services, which are now emerging including connected to the insurance industry. And so if you're willing to pay for it, I think people could actually last a long time out in that environment.

[On wildfires in California and climate impacts] The measures we take to protect structures in the middle of the forest in communities that have been burned. That might involve simple things like much bigger firebreaks. It might involve much more active identification of fires early on. And then the next thing you know you're in effect managing the entire wood ecosystem because of your concerns about fire.

[On green technology] The clean tech boom was based partly on the idea that new innovations in clean tech will scale quickly.

[On a new method of generating electricity from cold air] I’m concerned that this device probably is not competitive with other ways of generating energy at night or providing energy at night — namely having a solar panel with a battery pack connected with it.

[On the breadth of energy resources needed for decarbonization] What we see from the energy models is if you remove one of those options, then the costs for controlling [carbon] go up and the feasibility of cutting carbon quickly goes down. If you care about carbon, you’ve got to take nuclear seriously as one of many options.

[On the security risks of climate change] The classic definition [of state security] has been around conflict—threats to human life from armed aggression—which includes intrastate components such as dissident groups and civil war, and then, of course, when states go to war with each other.... [But climate change may induce conflict] to happen in places that are already living on the edge.

[On President Trump's White House speech on "America's environmental leadership" on July 8, 2019] This speech is a true ‘1984’ moment.