I was a compulsive eater in my late teens and until I wrote Diet for a Small Planet, so I know what it feels like when food becomes a threat.

I never like to use those terms [like pessimistic].

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.

Approaches to growing food that align with nature changed human relationships.

What an extraordinary time to be alive. We're the first people on our planet to have real choice: we can continue killing each other, wiping out other species, spoiling our nest. Yet on every continent a revolution in human dignity is emerging. It is re-knitting community and our ties to the earth. So we do have a choice. We can choose death; or we can choose life.

The good life is not about avoiding fear. Just the opposite.

[O]ur greatest contributions to the cause of freedom and development overseas is not what we do over there, but what we do right here at home.