Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1947 and 1974 (in the US), crop losses due to pests have...remained at an estimated 33%. Losses due to insects alone have nearly doubled, ...from 7% in the 1942-1951 period to about 13% in 1974.

My children threw me a life line: "Return to your roots - food - and rewrite your first book, Diet for a Small Planet." I learned that if I could just show up, in this case, if I could just get myself out of bed, get to the computer in my tiny office at MIT, and start writing, help would start arriving.

What has dawned on me is that focusing on the "finite planet" frame sends a message that we have gone as far as Nature can take us and therefore we need to give power to forces outside Nature.

What we need to get right is not focusing on the fear associated with quantity - not enough, scarcity, and lack - and moving instead to a worldview that explores quality and connectedness.

What is different and exciting is how much we have learned. We learned we were right that we don't need the chemical model of agriculture. We know so much more about the life of soil now and we understand how plants synergistically work together with microbes and animals to create healthy conditions.

That's what happened when my own life crumbled. The people who came into my life bolstered me to take more risks, to be even more true to myself.

The problem is that our whole tribe - if you will, the larger community of humanity itself - is on a death march ecologically and in terms of the intensification of violence and conflict.