I became a vegetarian 55 years ago, and I think it's one of the more important behavioral changes I ever took. The more I see of the beef industry and so on, I believe that to be true.

I think that consumerism is intrinsically a pretty flawed social system.

Behavioral change is more important than individual product choices. They both have a role to play.

I think consumerism breeds dissatisfaction, and I think that the advertisers play to that. So I cannot be comfortable with that. On the other hand, the cornucopia of products and innovation - I love Apple, for example. That's a temple of consumerism in many ways.

I became a vegetarian 55 years ago, and I think it's one of the more important behavioral changes I ever took. The more I see of the beef industry and so on, I believe that to be true.

So, you could call me optimistic and hopeful and probably just a little bit naïve, but I'm coming from the space that the best way to predict the future is to get out there and just do it yourself.

The path to relative economic, social and ecological sustainability is guaranteed to be littered with failures of every nature and scale. If we recognize them and learn from them, the transition will proceed faster and in more resource-efficient ways. If, on the other hand, we prefer the short-term comfort of burying our failures, or of blaming scapegoats, the transition will be significantly slowed, or could even be derailed completely.