He also discusses the contributions made by the Reith 2000 lecturers.
All species have a deep survival instinct.
They do everything they can to secure their own survival chances. And that's as true of humans as it is of the Siberian tiger or the lowliest of bacteria. Which means, quite simply, living on this planet as if we intended to go on living here forever. It was only about thirty years ago that it started to dawn on people that our survival instinct had somehow got buried in the pursuit of ever-greater material prosperity. To generate that prosperity we were literally laying waste to the planet, tearing down forests, damming rivers, polluting the air, eroding top soil, warming the atmosphere, depleting fish stocks, and covering everything with concrete and tarmac.