We are very much social creatures who model ourselves on one another.

I had no identity [when I was 27] - I was terrified that somebody would ask me what I was doing, and I would have no answer.

What was so moving for [Diane Wilson], and also for me, is that she felt the Bay itself was like her grandmother. She said, "I don't think there's a woman alive who would give up fighting for her child, or her mother, or her grandmother."

When we say we have "hit the limits," we are saying that nature is the problem, when in fact the limits we have hit are the limits of destruction and waste, not nature.

We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas guzzling automobiles. Big cars made sense only when oil was cheap; grain-fed meat makes sense only because the true costs of producing it are not counted.

I understand, of course, that grain-fed meat is not the cause of the world hunger problem - and eating some of it doesn't directly take food out of the mouths of starving people - but it is, to me, a symbol and a symptom of the basic irrationality of a food system that's divorced from human needs. Therefore, using less meat can be an important way to take responsibility. Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.

This is the first generation to know that the choices we're making have ultimate consequences. It's a time when you either choose life or you choose death ... Going along with the current order means that you're choosing death.