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

On almost every environmental issue I care about, in fact, I've been wrong at one point or another. I used to think that climate change was no big deal, that most environmental problems were massive exaggerations, that oil reserves were effectively unlimited, and more.

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.

When it comes to trying to manage how our entire planet-wide market and all the people and businesses in it deal with nature and our natural resources - we first and foremost need to change the incentives.

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 was much more of a naïve techno-optimist than I am now. I still believe that technology can help us come out of this situation with a richer humanity with less impact on the planet, but now I think it has to be paired with effective policy in order to achieve that.

When you're managing a large number of people, you learn that incentives matter tremendously. You really want people to be rewarded for doing the right thing for the customers and the organization.