Take air quality in the United States today: It's about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars.

African cavalry mounted on rhinos or hippos would have made mincemeat of European cavalry mounted on horses. But it couldnt happen.

No government is here forever. And there are other forces - the most potent force in our society, in fact, big business - doing good for the environment.

All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable use.

The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.

To dismiss the current extinction wave on the grounds that extinctions are normal events is like ignoring a genocidal massacre on the grounds that every human is bound to die at some time anyway.

With the MacArthur grant, I realized that people have high expectations of me, that they were placing me in this group of achievers. I compared what Id actually achieved in my life with what I would like to achieve and what other people have achieved, and I found that comparison depressing.