We're still under the weight of this impression that the ocean is too big to fail, that the planet is too big to fail.

Only two percent of the ocean is fully protected right now.

'Green' issues at last are attracting serious attention, owing to critically important links between the environment and the economy, health, and our security.

When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.

We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently.

Fish from all over the world, from deep in the sea, wind up in countries from Germany to Japan. That is just crazy.

We want to believe that we can continue doing what we've done for the past thousand years and not worry about the consequences coming back to us.