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.

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

Science and policy-making thrive on challenge and questioning; they are vital to the health of inquiry and democracy.

Enlightened self-interest from those involved in hydrocarbons should lead to the support of technologies enabling the clean use of hydrocarbons, such as carbon capture and storage, and not to the defence of deniers and cranks.

I do think that climate change is real. And I think that it's something that we have to deal with. But I also think it has to be a balance. And, you know, as governor of South Carolina, that was what I did.

If you had no new technology, and you powered society as we do today - mostly by fossil fuels - you'd have only two choices: 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.

Evolution, climate change, and the construction of the physical universe down to its atoms are processes that we measure in millions or billions of years.

Every film, regardless of being a success or a failure or anything in between, teaches you something. You might not sometimes realise what it taught you, but down the line, there would be a lesson in it.