We are not, of course, optimistic about our chances of success. Some form of ecocatastrophe, if not thermonuclear war, seems almost certain to overtake us before the end of the century. (The inability to forecast exactly which one - whether plague, famine, the poisoning of the oceans, drastic climatic change, or some disaster entirely unforeseen - is hardly grounds for complacency.)

Wildfires are a result of temperature conditions, of soil moisture conditions; and, of course, something has to start it.

A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States… [we] must design a stable, low-consumption economy.

Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to choose our own and our descendants’ destiny. Failing to choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catastrophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right choices could lead to a much better world.

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people, most - than most proposals for involuntarily fertility control.

A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.

The e-mails are mainly about a controversy over a particular data set and the ways a particular small group of scientists have displayed that dataset.