Some recent occurrences such as the BSE disaster and even perhaps - dare I mention it - the present severe weather conditions in our country are, I have no doubt, the consequences of mankind's arrogant disregard of the delicate balance of nature. We have to find a way of ensuring that our remarkable and seemingly beneficial advances in technology do not just become the agents of our own destruction.

Forests ... are in fact the world's air-conditioning system-the very lungs of the planet-and help to store the largest body of freshwater on the planet ... essential to produce food for our planet's growing population. The rainforests of the world also provide the livelihoods of more than a billion of the poorest people on this Earth... In simple terms, the rainforests, which encircle the world, are our very life-support system-and we are on the verge of switching it off.

You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.

While the demand for organic food outstrips supply, we happen to know that 77 percent of consumers don't want genetically engineered crops grown in this country. Consumers can choose whether or not to buy organic produce. Genetically modified ingredients will deny us choice in the long run.

Climate change should be seen as the greatest challenge to face man and treated as a much bigger priority in the United Kingdom.

The simple fact is that the world is not paying for the services the forests provide. At the moment, they are worth more dead than alive-for soya, for beef, for palm oil and for logging, feeding the demand from other countries. ... I think we need to be clear that the drivers of rainforest destruction do not originate in the rainforest nations, but in the more developed countries which, unwittingly or not, have caused climate change.

We don't, in a sensible world, want to hand on an increasingly dysfunctional world to our grandchildren.