In the process of natural selection, then, any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.

If religion and science could be united on the common ground of biological conservation, the problem would be soon solved. If there is any moral precept shared by people of all beliefs, it is that we owe ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment.

There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

Every ecosystem, even a small one, is sustainable because it has certain ensembles and conditions and influences that are unique to it. And the biological ensembles are almost certainly, even the most modest ones, in the thousands of species. We don't know what's involved in the models - not even the beginnings. And yet we're trying to make a sustainable world, which has to include the natural world. The human species is triumphant, but it's got to get a grip. It's got to come to understand what's happened, why we're this way and what we're doing.

And pigs may fly. And we may be able to terraform and send surface populations to Mars. And Jesus may come next week anyway, so it doesn't matter one way or the other. All these crazy things run through people's minds.

This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms - folded them into its genes - and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady.

The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.