Chinese are already more on board than we are. China is the only country that actually discussed in formal government documents how important it is to control the size of your populations if you’re going to limit emissions.

It turns out the population issue is an easier thing to deal with than the consumption issue. Some obvious extremes in consumption we can deal with. The standard cure for a stuttering economy is to go out and buy an SUV and three more refrigerators. That's obviously not the way to go.

We've all got to get together and demand something better out of our government and out of each other. We've got a system that's making us working harder, and isn't giving us satisfaction. We've got to sit down and decide what the hell we really want to be as human beings.

Overall, The Population Bomb was probably too optimistic. I was writing about climate change - Anne and I actually wrote the book. We discussed whether or not you'd have to take a gondola to the Empire State Building, and that sort of thing, but we didn't know at the time whether the climate change would be in the direction of heating or cooling. We just didn't know enough about it.

Most of the scientists I know think civilization is teetering on the brink of a global disaster. They just don't know when it's going to hit. I don't have the answer to that either. I'm scared as hell.

I see harm reduction as a way of engaging people as part of that path to recovery.

Historically, things were moving in a pretty good direction until the Reagan presidency. And then it all got reversed. The Mexico City policy was instituted - the idea of wrecking the environment for this generation's profit and forgetting about our gets got firmly embedded. I'm sad to say the Clinton administration didn't turn it around and the Bush administration, well, I think they're the worst administration we've ever had, and I used to be a Republican.