Critical Mass Quotes

“What you see around you is the result of thousands upon thousands of years of human experience. Knowledge and wisdom passed down to us from all our ancestors. And while the crisis back on Earth may be human-made, the story of life is the story of crises. Of facing them. Adapting and surviving. There have always been blights and pestilences that challenged our forebears. It now falls to us to use the knowledge they bequeathed us, to find a path to flourishing.” She gazed at the lush plants. “Here we have begun the process of learning how to build from scratch the biosphere from which we evolved—to build, beyond Earth, environments consisting of hundreds of thousands of interacting species—bacteria, fungi, invertebrates, plants, mammals, fish, birds, and more. This will be the key to safeguarding Earth’s legacy, of which humanity is just one small part.”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass

“Yes, space will challenge us, have no doubt, but this is the very challenge humanity needs to cure us of our propensity for bullshit—because space is where bullshit goes to die. Out there only facts and competence keep you alive. Superstition, uneducated guesses, and comforting lies are what must go extinct. Not us.”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass

“Because increased mining to obtain the lithium, cobalt, and rare Earth minerals used in electric vehicle production is devastating ecosystems worldwide, and also releasing vast amounts of carbon as forests are leveled and water sources polluted with heavy metals. Likewise, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and electric motors all require those same ecologically devastating rare Earth metals for their manufacture. It turns out that ‘green energy’ is not so green.”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass

“even if today we reduced carbon emissions to zero—and we’re far from that—the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere will cause the Earth to keep warming for a century or more.”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass

“Even the ruins left behind by bankrupt fossil fuel companies continue to pollute. There are twenty-nine million abandoned, uncapped oil and gas wells around the world—each one of them spewing the emissions of fifteen hundred automobiles. Sealing them would require trillions and take decades.”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass

“It’s hard nowadays to get people to believe things. At least good things.”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass

“Free people have a natural advantage on frontiers. Authoritarian subjects wait for permission, but free people take action and innovate. They can rapidly expand human presence in cislunar space—before totalitarian powers seize the L-points and hold them against us.”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass

“And saving human civilization is how we remain indispensable. We cannot bomb our way to security in the twenty-first century. Instead, we must build—and in new domains.”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass

“>> "is this cup half empty or half full, Mr. Tighe?"
<< "It's completely full if you include the air" —James Tighe”
― Daniel Suarez, Critical Mass