In order to solve the climate crisis, we need to solve the democracy crisis.

We're operating this planet like a business in liquidation.

Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now.

As president, I will bring all the parties and stakeholders together. I am going to come up with a solution that respects the environment and does not cause an upheaval in the economy.

My parents were true believers in the efficacy of American constitutional democracy, and I was thoroughly inculcated with reverence for what we the people are capable of doing. The complication in that simple narrative is that as I got older, the Vietnam War shook my confidence in how our democracy was working. I ended up serving in that war, but it started with a lie, and I was very proud of my father for being one of its earliest opponents.

Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination.

Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.