The climate, the economic situation, rising birth rates; none of these things give me a lot of hope or reason to be optimistic.

Do we really require so many gardening programmes, makeover programmes or celebrity chefs?

All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.

There are perfectly good independent small nations.

Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.

The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.

I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it.