The people who see the population explosion in the Malthusian way - as a geometric progression - forget that population growth is not a biological issue. People are not increasing in numbers out of stupidity and ignorance. Population growth is an ecological phenomenon linked very intimately to other issues, such as the usurpation of the resources which allow people to live.

Seed is not just the source of life. It is the very foundation of our being.

We could replace people with fossil fuels, have higher and higher levels of industrialization, of agriculture, of production, without thinking of the green-house gases we were admitting, and climate change is really the pollution of the engineering paradigm, when fossil fuels drove industrialism. To now offer that same mindset as a solution is to not take seriously what Einstein said: that you can't solve the problems by using the same mindset that caused them.

I saw brilliant ideas coming out of the [Chipko] movement that needed better articulation, that needed elaboration and systematic analysis. I just followed that and it's been very exciting.

Governments have a favorite phrase: “lean and mean.” But they’ve been made very, very fat for corporate interests.

I think we will become disenchanted with the glamour of globalization.

To create the protection for the corporations, government is actually growing bigger than ever before, in every part of the world. Yet it’s growing extremely thin as a protector of people.