For comprehensive Earth action, an all-of-the-Earth representative democracy is required. That is, a global parliament.

There's a presumption that somehow you calculate beforehand whether something is going to be good politically or not. I simply don't.

Exxon, Coca-Cola, BHP Billiton and News Corporation have much more say in organising the global agenda than the planet's 5 billion mature-age voters without a ballot box.

I think I could have been quite difficult to fathom as a youngster, this kid who didn't talk about himself very much.

Whereas our common past, out of Africa, saw a global diaspora of humankind, our common future depends on a global coming together and consensus, resulting in a more equitable distribution of the Earth's largesse. When Africa, which gave us the wealth of life, has that debt returned, the world will have come of age.

We people of the Earth exist because our potential was there in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, as the universe exploded into being.

I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected.