When the forest and the city are functionally indistinguishable, then we know we have reached sustainability.

If the age of the Earth were a calendar year and today were a breath before midnight on New Year's Eve, we showed up a scant fifteen minutes ago, and all of recorded history has blinked by in the last sixty seconds. Luckily for us, our planet-mates--the fantastic meshwork of plants, animals, and microbes--have been patiently perfecting their wares since March, an incredible 3.8 billion years since the first bacteria. ...After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.

Biologically inspired materials could revolutionize materials science. People looking at spider silk and abalone shells are looking for new ways to make materials better, cheaper, and with less toxic byproducts.

Organisms dont think of CO2 as a poison. Plants and organisms that make shells, coral, think of it as a building block.

The real survivors are the Earth inhabitants that have lived millions of years without consuming their ecological capital, the base from which all abundance flows.

Cooperation in the most natural thing in the world

Virtually all native cultures that have survived without fouling their nests have acknowledged that nature knows best, and have had the humility to ask the bears and wolves and ravens and redwoods for guidance.