There are scarcities in drinking water when you pollute the groundwater with nitrates. There is a scarcity in diversity when you create huge cornfields with the same strain of corn so that when one disease strikes - which happened in the United States in the 70s - all the cornfields in the country are wiped out. That was the first time the U.S. realized the value of diversity in agriculture and began to discuss genetic resources and their conservation.

The idea of engineering is an idea of mastery. And today the role that we are being asked to play is a role based on informed humanity.

Earth Democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation, and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict, fear and hatred.

I did physics because of my love of nature. As a young student of science, I was taught that physics was the way to learn nature. So my travels through physics really are the same urges that make me travel through ecology.

Population control is not an issue involving contraceptives for third world women. It is an issue of ecological justice.

Every farmer must go to the seed industry every year to buy their seed and pay an 80 percent royalty to a corporation. Over-the-fence exchanges have started to be treated as crimes. Or, if you need a biological pest control, you can no longer use the need seed in your back yard. Instead you have to depend on the Grace Corporation or some other entity. That kind of dependency basically leads to increased poverty and increased ecological destruction.

Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.