I used to love the world as it was. One evening I looked out of a 17th-floor window overlooking the City of London and saw perfection in everything I could see. Lights stretched to the horizon, and in those few square miles I saw so much possibility.

Yet change is inevitable, and my view of the world has changed. Times have changed, or so it seems if one pays too much attention to the news. Increasingly, I'm aware of the ills of the world.

There's a lot we have to fix together, and I hope that we can do our fair share before passing the torch to our children. Seven billion (and counting) souls on an increasingly crowded and unstable spaceship. Even if we could get off we have no other home.

What we painted through the centuries we are pissing away in our exuberance. Safe to say, I'm not complacent about the state of the world any more. I have two wishes for the planet, and everyone who travels on it:

• That we learn to be good stewards of the Earth
• That we overcome our addiction to consumption