The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments.

Developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class-involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing-are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.

We need what I have often called an ecological approach to the management of these resources and we do not have that now. We have the inertia of past habits, unsustainable habits.

Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?

I believe we are going to move into a situation where the more effective conferences will be smaller, more specialized, more focused, with occasional large gatherings to get the attention of the larger world.

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.

Anyone who is seriously interested in me would usually do a little more homework and realise that the extreme criticisms are almost exclusively ideologically based.