If we had about 100 years, that sort of slow cultural conversion would be exactly the thing to do. But physics is calling the tune here. We've got to respond to a timetable that physics has set for us.

Remember...this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas...This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.

Oil companies are radical because they're willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

It is unbelievably sad and ironic that the first victims of global warming are almost all going to come from places that are producing virtually none of the problem.

If there's horrible flooding in Pakistan or a horrible heat wave in Texas, we're no longer able to call it an act of God, or a natural disaster, or something like that, the way we could have through all of human history until 35 or 40 years ago.

In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They'll just ask, "So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?"

In the scientific community, the debate is over, for all intents and purposes, about whether or not the planet is heating and who is causing it. In fact, it's more or less been over since 1995.