I do genuinely believe that the political system is not linear. When it reaches a tipping point fashioned by a critical mass of opinion, the slow pace of change we're used to will no longer be the norm. I see a lot of signs every day that we're moving closer and closer to that tipping point.

...2009 saw the eighth 'ten-year flood' of Fargo, North Dakota, since 1989. In Iowa, Cedar Rapids was hit last year by a flood that exceeded the 500-year flood plain. All-time flood records are being broken in areas throughout the world.

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.

When politics is too slow, change has to come from culture.

Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months.

Pollution should never be the price of prosperity.

I drive a hybrid, and we've changed our light bulbs and windows and installed solar panels and geothermal ground source heat pumps and most everything else.