The biggest weakness of the green-consumer movement, always, is that we tend to pick the easy-to-do things because that's where we can most readily engage people. It doesn't cost them very much to switch products or whatever it happens to be.

I'm worried about greenwashing. I think we should come down on it very, very hard, whether it's with criminal intent or actively deceptive.

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.

The biggest weakness of the green-consumer movement, always, is that we tend to pick the easy-to-do things because that's where we can most readily engage people. It doesn't cost them very much to switch products or whatever it happens to be.

Companies watch what consumers are doing like a hawk. Just as one letter to a politician can signal an insipient problem, for companies, a trend where people are beginning to switch away from one of their key products to a rival offering on the basis of either claims or real improvements on performance, that's significant.

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.