5: Jane Flegal of UC Berkeley, and Dr. Andrew Maynard of Arizona State University

In a world where ideology informs decision-making and policy-makers have little understanding of what is plausible when it comes to negative emissions technology, challenging doesn’t even begin to describe the task of reversing climate change. In this top-down approach, a small number of academics, activists and politicians are making the decisions for 7.5 billion people—and spending a lot of time arguing hypotheticals rather than taking action.