many of the small organic producers who are expected to lead the reinvention of the food system can barely make ends meet

If there was ever a time to ponder the long-term consequences of our spending habits, it’s in the wake of the worst economic crisis in decades, which was fueled by rampant consumer borrowing.

cognitive scientists now define the ability to play a game as the distinguishing cognitive trait of the human brain

my benchmark for the games I want to help create is that they should only be games that serve a humanitarian purpose, that give people a chance to tackle urgent problems like poverty, that lead to world peace.

Finally the apocalyptic tone sometimes used in attempts to drive a message home can further hinder the case for constructive action. Too often, it promotes either cynicism or apathy among those who cannot relate these disaster scenarios to their own personal experience.

he issues scientists think most important often seem abstract and far removed from the day-to-day concerns of ordinary people

sloppy scientific reasoning can have a broad and lasting impact

embed this scientific evidence into viable but sustainable economic growth and development strategies

The small organic farm greatly discomforts the corporate/industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet.  Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.  Thomas Jefferson said he didn't think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.  It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can't be bullied because they can feed their own faces.

Massive industrial conglomerates that look upon people as anonymous passive serfs, obedient cogs in a mechanistic world, now control far too many aspects of human existence.

"Corporate social responsibility asked the question: what is the impact of this business on the world? Sustainable business asks the question: what is the impact of the world on this business?"

"Companies are asking how they can be socially responsible in a way that also moves the business forward. It's no longer about having one corporate social responsibility guy who is supposed to be the moral compass for the company, like a chaplain in an Army regiment. It's about making sustainable business the standard operating procedure."

"Sustainable business has faced the ultimate double whammy of the credit crunch and the total damp squib that was Copenhagen. If climate change was the great driver for corporate social responsibility, then that driver seems to have stalled."

initiatives also increase employee loyalty

"If governments provide a strong legal framework that aligns incentives with business, then you have something you could call sustainability. If not, then corporate social responsibility will just be glacé cherries on an unsustainable cake."

National Parks are often view by Americans as the emblem of nature—even with roads running through them clogged with traffic.

The evidence for personal amnesia comes from an analysis of the responses of those people who thought that the bird fauna of the area had not changed

evidence of “generational amnesia

Personal amnesia is when people forget how things used to be during the course of their own lives, for example they may not remember that things which are rarely sighted now were once common

over one-third of participants had a static view

“If we don't realize what we are losing we stand the risk of sleepwalking through the destruction of the natural world without taking action to remedy the situation,”

in the western United States wolves have been locally extinct for so long that no one remembers when they were plentiful. As far the community is concerned wolves are not a part of the natural environment

The problem is especially exacerbated when scientific data is not available regarding past conditions of an ecosystem

human perception of nature is subject to all sorts of failings, due to short life spans, poor communication (generational amnesia), and unreliable memory(personal amnesia)

put the big developing economies on a cleaner and greener path to prosperity

provide assistance for the vulnerable countries

how we can work together to disseminate and develop technology and knowledge

the proportion of fossil fuel emissions absorbed by the oceans since 2000 may have declined by as much as 10 per cent