what are you doing to save the world? what are we doing to save the world?

is there any insight into what's most important to tell the rest of the world to change the current course taking us toward catastrophe? below are a couple of suggestions to build from.

EcoGeek: Since you stress mind-change so heavily as an element of future survival, can you point to a single change that seems to you key?

DQ: One idea that survived the middle ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment to flourish into the present age is this: that humans belong to an order of being that is separate from (and higher than) the rest of the living community. This is, to my mind, the most dangerous idea extant today, and it's literally going to kill us if we don't get rid of it. Earthworms are more important to the life of this planet than humans are, and if earthworms disappear, we humans will follow very soon after. It's vital that we get it into our heads that we are members of a community and dependent on that community the same way every other member is. We cannot exist apart from it. We don't "own" that community. We aren't custodians of it (it takes care of itself and did so successfully for billions of years before our appearance). We need it, absolutely and forever; it doesn't need us. If there are still people here in 200 years, they will know this without the slightest doubt.

EG: No organism (to my knowledge) has ever intentionally decreased or halted it's population growth. Is this actually possible, or are we reduced to hoping for a minor apocalypse now, in order to avoid a major one later?

DQ: It is indeed possible. Malthus imagined that our food production increases whenever our population increases. The point I've been at pains to make is that, like all other species, our population increases whenever whenever we increase food production. Food production is under our control; if we cease increasing food production, then our population will of necessity cease to grow. If x amount of food is needed to sustain a population of 6.5 billion of us, then that population can't grow to 10 billion if we continue to produce only x amount of food. People are made of food and nothing else. You can't make them out of moonlight.

EG: You've often stated that it's not a new technology or "program" that will sustain humanity into the next century, but rather massive a sea change in the way that we think and live. What strategy do you use when trying to win over people who don't see any advantage to changing?

DQ: I have no strategy for such a thing. I don't know how to make the blind see.

EG: Regardless of what you may think, many of us have found your work to be eye-opening. When do you think the tipping point for environmental consciousness, for sustainable living, will be reached? When will it become mainstream to "save the world"?

DQ: What I've said is that if there are still people here in 200 years, they won't be living the way we do, because if people go on living the way we do, then there will be no people here in 200 years. If there are still people here in 200 years, they won't be thinking the way we do, because if people go on thinking the way we do, then they will go on living the way we do? and there will be no people here in 200 years. You could probably cut that down to 100 years. I would say that the tipping point is probably going to have to occur in the next 25 to 50 years? more likely 25 than 50.