It's baffling why the issues relating to climate change - [which] have far more obvious and tangible and much more clear-cut evidence about the cause - have been slower for people to accept as a given.

If Darwin could see what we now see, what we now know about the ocean, about the atmosphere, about the nature of life, as we now understand it, about the importance of microbes - I think he would just beam with joy that many of the thoughts and the glimpses of the majesty of life on Earth that he had during his life, now magnified many times over.

There's something missing about how we're informing the youngsters coming along about what matters in the world. We teach them the numbers and the letters, but we fail to communicate the importance of our connection to the living world.

You should ask where your food is coming from.

No water, no life. No blue, no green.

Historically, girls have not been encouraged to be scientists, to be explorers, and there's a social kind of constraint, of course. Having the responsibility, a disproportionate part of the responsibility, for caring for families, caring for children. I know this challenge from firsthand experience because I have three children and four grandsons.And some of the time I have spent as a scientist and as an explorer has meant choosing to not be with my children and grandchildren as much as I might otherwise have done had I not been a scientist, an explorer.

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.