When I arrived on the planet, there were only two billion. Wildlife was more abundant, we were less so; now the situation is reversed.

Most of life on Earth has a deep past, much deeper than ours. And we have benefited from the distillation of all preceding history, call it evolutionary history if you will.

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.

Eating wildlife is probably not the smartest thing that we can do in terms of maintaining the integrity of natural systems.

We are blessed with a place that is open to the universe and, despite this, supports this very thin envelope of air we call atmosphere, which holds just the right amount of oxygen for us to breathe.

Fortunately, we know more about the problems that we have than in all preceding history. We know now the consequences of the things that we put into the air, into the water - of the way we treat life on Earth.

Humans are the only creatures with the ability to dive deep in the sea, fly high in the sky, send instant messages around the globe, reflect on the past, assess the present and imagine the future.