The best course of action may not be sustainable development but a sustainable retreat. On a battlefield when the odds against winning are seen as insuperable, a well-planned retreat is usually the best option. The need for such a retreat seems ever more confirmed as I write now, by a concentration of potentially disastrous changes—to the climate, the economy, and the numbers of humans and their fellow-traveling species.

From James Lovelock’s A Rough Ride to the Future, New York: The Overlook Press, 2015, p. 3.