A citizen of an advanced industrialized nation consumes in six months the energy and raw materials that have to last the citizen of a developing country his entire lifetime.

I am convinced the prophets of doom have to be taken seriously.

A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmental damaging consumption patterns.

Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.

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.

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.

Nothing less than the fate of the planet is at stake... No place on the planet can remain an island of affluence in a sea of misery.