Katrina opened a good door and Al Gore went through it with his movie.

TV is sometimes accused of encouraging fantasies. Its real problem, though, is that it encourages-enforces, almost-a brute realism. It is anti-Utopian in the extreme. We're discouraged from thinking that, except for a few new products, there might be a better way of doing things.

Pat Robertson had decided that global warming was real and we need to do something about it struck me as powerful evidence that the Holy Spirit is hard at work in this question.

Probably nothing that we have ever managed to do quite equals the basic undermining of the physical stability of the planet on which most of the world's poor people depend.

If we all used clotheslines, we could save 30 million tons of coal a year, or shut down 15 nuclear power plants. And you don't have to wait to start. Yours could be up by this afternoon. To be specific, buy 50 feet of clothesline and a $3 bag of clothespins and become a solar energy pioneer.

To me the analogy [to climate change] is... doctors worry a lot about cholesterol. And if you go to the doctor, and the doctor says "oh, your life would be happier if you ate a different diet and exercised" people pay no attention.

In my own faith tradition, these questions have been very important. It has always been easiest for me to apprehend God in the natural world. I love to go to church, but when I really want to feel the presence of the divine I'm more likely to head up into the mountains.