Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.

Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart—the mutations that make us the sort of creature that could wipe out its nearest relative, then dig up its bones and reassemble its genome.

Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.

Humans will eventually become extinct. People treat that as a radical thing to say. But the fossil record shows us that everything eventually becomes extinct.

We have all this Paleolithic art that suggests that our ancestors really venerated animals and that they depended on wild animals to survive - as opposed to domesticated animals that we depend on. Would it radically change things if we had more rhinos in our midst? I kind of suspect it would.

People sometimes say we need to be really almost on a wartime footing if you want to change. Our whole economy is based on burning fossil fuels, which is taking CO2 out of the ground and putting it up into the air.

Most of us live in parts of the world where we don't expect to see much, and we wouldn't necessarily notice things that are crashing.