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

A teacher told me this story some time ago: She asked her students to line up in order of how much power they thought they had relative to the others in the class, and they all fought to be last in line. They didn't want to acknowledge that they had personal power.

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.

No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry... If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy.

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

Hunger is a people-made phenomenon, so the central issue is power: the power of those who make the decisions about what is grown and who, or what, it's grown for.

Every time you take a step and walk with your fear, you'll never know the impact. But you can be certain somebody's watching, and that courage is contagious.