But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.

Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born.

Numeracy: 1. The art of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning amounts to variables in order that practical decisions may be reach. 2. That aspect of education (beyond mere literacy) which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.

We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.

An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.