You've got to be fairly solemn [about the environment]. I mean the mere notion that there are three times as many people on Earth as there were when I started making television. How can the Earth accommodate them? When people, including politicians, set their faces against looking at the consequences-it's just unbelievable that anyone could ignore it.

You can only get really unpopular decisions through if the electorate is convinced of the value of the environment. That's what natural history programmes should be for.

Crying wolf is a real danger.

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.

To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see. The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't believe that.

I think a major element of jetlag is psychological. Nobody ever tells me what time it is at home.

I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.