No one is an environmentalist by birth. It is only your path, your life, your travels that awaken you.

After Hurricane Katrina, over New Orleans, my helicopter crashed and the pilot and I were only saved because we fell on the roof of a flooded house that absorbed the shock. When the helicopter was spiraling downward out of control, I didn't expect to survive at all.

The fact is that seven per cent of the global population emits 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, and the proportions are the same for the use of energy and raw materials, meat, wood, etc. Simply put, an infinitesimal minority consumes the most and imposes damage on the overwhelming majority, while asking it to change.

I wanted to be a scientist. I did a thesis on lions. But I realised photography can show things writing can't. Lions were my professor of photography.

To have success in your professional life is not so hard. To succeed as a man is more difficult.

No one is an environmentalist by birth. It is only your path, your life, your travels that awaken you.

For nearly two years, I was flying above the planet with my camera. I knew straight away that this was something important to do, just at this moment, a portrait of the planet for the millennium year. I worked in 80 countries, fighting for money all the time.