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.

But as environment minister I am very interested in a thriving German automobile industry because I can only pay for the rising costs of environmental protection at home and abroad if there are people in Germany with jobs and who pay taxes.

New Zealand needs to balance its environmental responsibilities with its economic opportunities because the risk is that if you don't do that - and you want to lead the world - then you might end up getting unintended consequences.

Have we failed to slow global warming pollution in part because climate and environmental activists have been too polite and well behaved?

Americans don't pay much attention to environmental issues because they aren't sexy. I mean cleaning up coal plants and reining in outlaw frackers is hugely important work but it doesn't get anybody's pulse racing.

We had some major successes and we did so because the country embraced the spirit of Earth Day and embraced this concept that we have to have forward-looking visionary environmental policy and energy policy in this country.

In Kenya women are the first victims of environmental degradation because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water who fetch firewood who provide food for their families.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public and the new is always alarming.

In Holland they have come to precisely the same conclusion. There they have adopted a system of secular education because they have found it impracticable to unite the religious bodies in any system of combined religious instruction.

I know there are things I did in education that will never be reversed. I have not done that in film yet because I have only been here for about nine months.