Quotes by Charles C. Mann - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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There are several types of greenhouse gasses, but carbon dioxide is the most important.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Carbon
Carbon Dioxide
Important The Most Important Most
Greenhouse
Types
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The human propensity is to believe that flukes of good fortune will never come to an end.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Believe
Ends
Flukes
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The Japanese drive on the left side of the road. Most streets literally do not have names.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Names
Sides
Streets
Japanese
Literally
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A world with a sudden limit on air travel would be tremendously different from the one we live in now.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Travel
Air
Air Travel
Different
Would Be
Limit
Sudden
Tremendously
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There are serious worries about unconventional gas and oil, especially those concerning the environment.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Gas
Unconventional
Concerning
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The embrace of a new technology by ordinary people leads inevitably to its embrace by people of malign intent.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Technology
Embrace
New Technology
Ordinary
Ordinary People
People
Technology People New
Inevitably
Intent
Leads
Malign
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Compared with U.S. cities, Japanese cities bend over backward to help foreigners. The countryside is another matter.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Cities
Countryside
Foreigners
Helping
Matter
Backward
Bend
Japanese
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The Japanese are great at inventing complex systems of rules, and not so great at explaining those rules to foreign visitors.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Complex Systems
Explaining
Inventing
Visitors
Complex
Japanese
Systems
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Not only are utilities switching from coal and oil to gas, but also trucking, schoolbuses, garbage trucks, and even taxi fleets.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Coal
Garbage
Switching
Taxi
Trucks
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Japanese maps tend to come in two varieties: small, schematic, and bewildering; and large, fantastically detailed, and bewildering.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Maps
Two
Variety
Bewildering
Detailed
Japanese
Schematic
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All parents remember the moment when they first held their children - the tiny crumpled face, an entire new person, emerging from the hospital blanket.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Blanket
Emerging
Tiny
Held
Hospital
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As an issue, climate change was unlucky: when nonspecialists first became aware of it in the 1990s, environmental attitudes had already become tribal political markers.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Environmental
Climate
Climate Change
Markers
Unlucky
Attitudes
Tribal
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Indeed, for all Donald Trump's railing about the efforts to curb climate change, nobody in his administration seems to have paid any attention to what they actually are.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Administration
Climate Change
Curb
Donald
Efforts
Indeed
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A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Asian
Bunch
Europe
Gunpowder
Innovation
Paper
Silk
Technological
Innovations
Occurred
Plow
Road
Shocks
Via
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Seoul and Shanghai, Jaipur and Jakarta; shining skyscrapers, pricey hotels, traffic-jammed streets ablaze with neon - all were built atop a foundation of laboratory-bred rice.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Rice
Shanghai
Streets
Hotels
Skyscrapers
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Smartphones can relay patients' data to hospital computers in a continuous stream. Doctors can alter treatment regimens remotely, instead of making patients come in for a visit.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Computers
Data
Doctors
Smartphones
Treatment
Alter
Continuous
Hospital
Patients
Relay
Stream
Visit
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You know how in movies the new president comes in and promises to perform sweeping actions with a stroke of a pen? The Administrative Procedure Act is designed to thwart this sort of maneuver.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Administrative
Designed
Maneuver
Pen
Procedure
Promises
Stroke
Thwart
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Cash-strapped cities in nations from Argentina to Albania have begun to turn over their municipal water systems to Big Water, often under lease arrangements that can continue in force for decades.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Albania
Argentina
Arrangements
Cities
Decades
Lease
Begun
Municipal
Systems
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The queue of activists, interest groups, and ordinary people wringing their hands over what a President Donald Trump might do in office is long, and environmentalists are at the front of the line.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Ordinary
Ordinary People
Activists
Donald
Donald Trump
Environmentalists
Queue
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Canceling the climate pact will loudly demonstrate Trump's willingness to fight - an important step for the White House because, on a concrete level, few tools are available to revive the coal industry.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Available
Coal
Concrete
Pact
Revive
Tools
White House
Willingness
Demonstrate
Important Step
Loudly
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Americans are willing to cheer on politicians who denounce bureaucratic overreach and job-killing red tape in abstract terms. But they turn out to like specific regulations against toxic chemicals in their drinking water.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Abstract
Chemicals
Drinking
Drinking Water
Red Tape
Tape
Toxic
Bureaucratic
Denounce
Regulations
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Artificial lighting, air-conditioning, and automobiles, all powered by fossil fuels, swaddle us in our giddy modernity. In our ergonomic chairs and acoustical-panel cubicles, we sit cozy as kings atop 300 years of flaming carbon.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Artificial
Carbon
Chairs
Cozy
Giddy
Lighting
Modernity
Automobiles
Flaming
Fossil
Fossil Fuels
Fuels
Powered
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Some Western states have collaborative water agreements with Indian tribes - Washington state, for instance, monitors a number of its rivers to protect spawning salmon, which are promised to native peoples under 19th-century treaties.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Indian
Instance
Native
Rivers
Salmon
States
Treaties
Tribes
Western
Agreements
Washington
Number
Promised
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By the 1980s, businesses had realized that environmental issues had a price tag. Increasingly, they balked. Reflexively, the anticorporate Left pivoted; Earth Day, erstwhile snow job, became an opportunity to denounce capitalist greed.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Opportunity
Environmental
Capitalist
Earth
Environmental Issues
Greed
Left
Snow
Tag
Job
Became
Businesses
Denounce
Increasingly
Price
Realized
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The way I think of it, economics and ecology occupy two intellectual silos, isolated from each other. Even when they do take each other into consideration, it's not uncommon for ecologists to spout absolute nonsense about economics, and vice versa.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Consideration
Ecology
Intellectual
Isolated
Nonsense
Thinking
Two
Uncommon
Vice Versa
Absolute
Occupy
Versa
Vice
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The legal fight over climate change begins in the United States with the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977. Under the Act, the E.P.A. is required to publish a list of 'stationary sources' of air pollution, of which the most important are power plants.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Legal
Air Pollution
Clean Air
Climate Change
Pollution
Power Plants
Stationary
Amendment
Begins
List
Plants
Required
Sources
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Under the Paris agreement, every one of the 147 signatories issues what is called an 'intended nationally determined contribution' (INDC), which amounts to a promise that the nation will take certain actions to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by a certain date.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Contribution
Determined
Emissions
Promise
Date
Intended
Reduce
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Historically, large-scale global trade has served two functions: 1) the exchange of goods between willing sellers and buyers described in Econ 101 textbooks; 2) as a tool of state aggrandizement, in which the private parties are stand-ins for governmental interests.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Buyers
Goods
Large Scale
Party
Sellers
Textbooks
Trade
Two
Willing
Exchange
Functions
Global
Historically
Interests
Parties
Private
Served
Tool
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Obama issued a slew of executive orders about climate change during the eight years of his presidency. Inexplicably, President Trump revoked about half of them but left the other half in place. Since Obama's orders were intertwined, it's unclear exactly what applies.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Climate Change
Intertwined
Presidency
Unclear
Change Climate Climate Change
Exactly What
Executive
Orders
President Trump
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Scientists have established huge numbers of links between particular diseases and snippets of DNA, but in the great majority of cases, this has not yet been translated into treatments that can help cure patients. These treatments will come - tomorrow, or the day after.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Cases
Dna
Huge Numbers
Links
Majority
Numbers
Tomorrow
Established
Cure
Diseases
Great Majority
Patients
Scientists
Translated
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Farmers can't plant much more land because almost every accessible acre of arable soil is already in use. Nor can the use of fertilizer be increased: it is already being overused everywhere except some parts of Africa, and the runoff is polluting rivers, lakes, and oceans.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Fertilizer
Lakes
Overused
Plant
Rivers
Soil
Acre
Increased
Oceans
Polluting
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Prediction is a mug's game, but taking the side of water polluters has not been a winning political strategy for 50 years. Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II all undertook to weaken water regulations in the name of economic growth. They left office; the regulations remained.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Economic Growth
Mug
Strategy
Prediction
Presidents
Reagan
Regulations
Remained
Weaken
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Big Water makes an argument straight out of Economics 101. The best way to deliver water to people's homes efficiently, the water barons argue, is to put the process in the hands of the market. If water is scarce, then raise the price - let the law of supply and demand take over!
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Best Way
Process
Scarce
Water
Deliver
Efficiently
Homes
Market
Price
Raise
Supply
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The Paris pact was correctly described by its opponents - greens and anti-greens alike - as toothless. But it was also the first time that nations around the world had officially agreed that climate change was a problem and that concrete steps should be taken to avoid its worst effects.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Climate
Climate Change
Concrete
Effects
Opponents
Pact
Steps
Time Change World
Agreed
Alike
Change Time World
Correctly
Greens
Officially
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So many wells have been dug in Changzhou that its groundwater has been over-exploited, and the local ground level has sunk by two feet. The city has officially banned new wells and mandated the installation of pollution controls, but China's endemic corruption ensures that neither measure has much meaning.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Banned
Installation
Pollution
Dug
Endemic
Measure
Officially
Sunk
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A smartphone links patients' bodies and doctors' computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual's internal organs in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Computers
Connected
Devices
Digital
Doctors
Earth
Hands
Individual
Links
Management
Online
Organs
Smartphones
Anywhere
Bodies
Could
Hacker
Internal
Put
Patients
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Major power and telephone grids have long been controlled by computer networks, but now similar systems are embedded in such mundane objects as electric meters, alarm clocks, home refrigerators and thermostats, video cameras, bathroom scales, and Christmas-tree lights - all of which are, or soon will be, accessible remotely.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Home
Bathroom
Cameras
Computer
Electric
Embedded
Light
Long
Mundane
Scales
Video
Accessible
Alarm
Clocks
Networks
Lights
Remotely
Similar
Systems
Telephone
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Rather than forcing local factories to clean up after themselves, Changzhou decided to outsource the job of managing its water supply to a French company named Veolia - one of a handful of corporate giants now scrambling to take over city water systems around the planet, especially in the often polluted and water-short developing world.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Corporate
Developing
Factories
Giants
Handful
Named
Clean Up
Developing World
Forcing
Outsource
Polluted
Supply
Systems
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In 1491 the Inka ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great’s expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the cresting Ottoman Empire, bigger than the Triple Alliance (as the Aztec empire is more precisely known), bigger by far than any European state, the Inka dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo.
Charles C. Mann / Journalist
Aztec
Powerful
Russia
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