Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.

Not to say that corporations are perfect today, but even grand corporations like Dupont have made immense progress in translating some of their past environmentally damaging practices into new profit opportunities.

The Earth Charter is important as an expression of the commitment of people throughout the Earth to evoke their own deepest moral, spiritual and ethical principles in the task of ensuring a sustainable future for those who inhabit the Earth now and those who will follow us on the Earth.

Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.

One of the things that Ive always thought I would like to do is to develop an environmental index. Then people can measure their own environmental performance on an index as they do in other ways.

We owe at least this much to future generations, from whom we have borrowed a fragile planet called Earth.

The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.