Of all the waste we generate, plastic bags are perhaps the greatest symbol of our throwaway society. They are used, then forgotten, and they leave a terrible legacy.

In North America, more than half of all children travel to school by bus. We need a similar programme in London.

A pound invested in energy efficiency buys seven times more energy solution than a pound invested in nuclear power.

Politicians usually get the blame for dragging their feet on environmental issues. And fair enough. Most of them do just that. But the blame isn't theirs alone. For politicians afraid of losing votes, a bristling media waiting to transform good green ideas into monsters is a colossal disincentive.

A number of countries around the world, and indeed the E.U. as a whole, have chosen not to allow the import from the U.S. of beef from cows fed a diet that includes the hormone ractopamine, because of the fairly grave health concerns.

GM has never been about feeding the world or tackling environmental problems. It is and has always been about control of the global food economy by a tiny handful of giant corporations. It's not wicked to question that process. It is wicked not to.

We always hear from newspapers that while people understand the environmental challenge, they are unwilling to stomach the solutions. The trouble is, we only ever hear about the solutions from the media, and for whatever reason, they are almost always caricatured beyond recognition. If there's no appetite for green, it's not surprising.

By uploading 40 years of 'Ecologist' editions online, we will be creating the world's most extensive ecological archive. 'The Ecologist' will continue to set the environmental and political agenda here and abroad.

Politics colours everything, and anyone who wants change is necessarily political. As an environmental campaigner more or less since I left school in the early '90s, I have always been involved in lobbying, campaigning and pushing for changes.

'Green' is likely to be a big issue in the 2008 U.S. presidential election - largely in response to George Bush's suicidal refusal to engage with environmental issues.