Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.

in a world where only a minor portion of the land is really well suited to agriculture, man is using much of the best land with dubious efficiency.

Our heavily meat-centered culture is at the very heart of our waste of the earth's productivity.

Recent breakthroughs in science show we have just the capacities we need to face our planet's challenges. We're "soft-wired" for cooperation, empathy, fairness, along with a deep need to "make a dent," as social philosopher Erich Fromm put it. My hunch is that one reason depression is a global pandemic is that the dominant mental map denies so many of us expression of these deep needs and capacities.

I think we are at a new evolutionary stage. We evolved in tight-knit tribes in which we faced death if we didn't have the support of the rest of the tribe.

If we cannot know what's possible, then we are free to do that which is pulling our hearts and that which is life serving.

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.