Compared with the awesome might and eternal power of the ocean, no human being can fail to be reminded of their own insignificance.

I am a rolling stone, never in one place for very long.

I just used to have a really normal life, working in an office.

The Milky Way swooped diagonally across the heavens, reminding me of my utter insignificance, and at the same time my complete interconnection with everything. I was just a tiny speck of consciousness, and yet I was consciousness itself.

Ocean rowing is very much what you make it. Rowing technique is pretty irrelevant on the ocean. It's the psychology that's important.

The bigger the challenge, the bigger the sense of accomplishment when you get to the end of it.

So let's raise the tone of the debate. Too often at the moment we look like schoolchildren squabbling over a toy - our most precious toy, the Earth. And the danger is that as we pull in opposite directions in our global tug of war, the Earth will end up broken - or at least unable to sustain human life. That is the worst case scenario - or maybe, from the Earth's point of view, the best.