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The difference between what all the people can do individually and the global consumption of nonrenewable resources is huge. The tension is... what will it take to get people to act in concert? There isn't any additive solution to the problem. It will be both governmental and social because that's the scale of the problem.

We're not trying to reinvent the wheel; for any environmental organization to claim sole responsibility for any kind of victory is insane, because everybody attacks these problems as a group.

Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.

Even the government understands that the environmental challenge is so big that no single agency can handle it. It needs collaboration among all the stakeholders - companies, governments, NGOs and the public. Public accountability will be the ultimate driving force.

Environmental activism against the resource industry is widespread all over the world, but at the same time we have to realise that these are basic materials on which civilisation depends. We need to tap natural resources in a sustainable manner.

We need to start looking at having a way of managing the whole ecosystem, because you can't pick away at it piece by piece, you have to truly start being coordinated and managing our resources as a system. We haven't gotten to that point yet.

All human endeavor, all human civilization, is the act of solving collective action problems. Should we put out our own fires, or should we have a fire department? Should we build roads, or should we hack our way through the woods from one factory to another?