You have to be willing to spend an awful lot in that R&D phase before you see the benefits. When you look at the companies that have really won customers over in technology - say, Apple and Google - you find that they spend billions of dollars on R&D each year, often spending that much on a product before they ever make a dime back in profits.

TNC was once limited by the resources it could directly marshal to buy land. But teaching people a new idea is incredibly more scalable.

Agriculture is the #1 source of deforestation. By some estimates it accounts for 80% of the forests chopped down in the tropics.

In the food case in particular, one of the technologies that could help there - genetic technologies that could create better crops with higher yields and less need for water and fertilizer - is tremendously feared. Very little of that fear is scientifically grounded.

I think the environmental movement is now so large and diverse that it's hard to talk of it as a single entity.

Playing God is actually the highest expression of human nature. The urges to improve ourselves, to master our environment, and to set our children on the best path possible have been the fundamental driving forces of all of human history. Without these urges to ‘play God’, the world as we know it wouldn’t exist today.

We have climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from human power and transportation infrastructure. At the same time, we have 2 billion people who live in energy poverty.