By looking at climate change as a clean energy generation problem, we're setting ourselves up not to solve it.

Powerful people doing bad things LIKE cynical, despairing citizens.

In almost all city governments in America, the small group of people who don't want change are able to block change.

If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.

Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience.

There's no law of physics that says we have to be an unsustainable society - in fact, quite the opposite. The planet's ready to work with us if we're ready to think differently, but we do have to make that jump and start to do things in new ways.

Cabbies in particular seem to like discussing the fate the Earth.