What pleases me most is that sustainable development is on almost everybody's agenda now.

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.

Either we reduce the world's population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally

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.

Don't accept that you can't make a difference. Because if you can't make a difference, you won't make a difference, and if you put a multiplier on that we will continue on an unsustainable pathway.

The Prime Minister of India, at a meeting that I co-chaired a few months ago, stated that any development that is not sustainable is not development.

I am retired from all my official roles, but I am still very active. I have close relationships at the U.N. I don't have any role at the U.N, but I'm still quite cooperative with a number of U.N. activities, in particular to China and that region.