The main thing is, and of course this is a pedant talking, we should start our education on these issues in kindergarten. Instead of saying, "See Spot run," we ought to say, "See the plant grow in the sun." We ought to explain what runs the weather in the third or fourth grade to start out with.

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.

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

The National Academy of Sciences would be unable to give a unanimous decision if asked whether the sun would rise tomorrow.

There are a lot of signs. One of the things that makes me most nervous is the disappearance of the frogs. They're going downhill all over the planet. Frogs are susceptible to all kinds of problems, because they require water to breed and their skin is very porous. Their condition is nerve racking.

If we were redesigning around people instead of around automobiles, which I think the market is more or less going to do, although too slowly, than I'd be a lot cheerier.

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.