We're finally going to get the bill for the Industrial Age. If the projections are right, it's going to be a big one: the ecological collapse of the planet.

What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.

The antitrust litigation currently in the federal courts in the U.S. against Monsanto will be the test case in the life sciences, just as the Microsoft case was the test case in the information sciences.

The greenhouse crisis is the bill coming due for the Industrial Revolution. It's not an accident. It's the logical outcome of our world view - the idea that we can control the forces of nature, that we can have short-term expedient gains without paying for them, that there are no limits to exploitation of the environment, that we can produce and consume faster than nature's ability to replenish.

It may be that everything the life science companies are telling us will turn out to be right, and there's no problem here whatsoever. That defies logic.

Solar and wind are now cheaper in many places than some fossil fuels and within the next two years, three, four, five years at the most. What the exponential curve does isn't going to go away. It is totally over for fossil fuels and nuclear. Nuclear's actually gone out.

If I were Mark Zuckerberg or any of these guys, I would say, "My God. How does the world expect us to deal with this?" I mean, it's too big a responsibility; I think they're going to welcome this. They'll maybe keep it in the private sector, but they'll welcome some form of regulatory operation because they've been so successful that they are a global, public good. Everyone needs them.