There's no happy ending where we prevent climate change any more. Now the question is, is it going to be a miserable century or an impossible one, and what comes after that.

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.

what you do every day is what forms your mind and precious few of us can or would spend most days outdoors.

I think communities of faith are extremely important in this question. I think that all faith communities share a common and unusual distinction in our time of being the only institutions left that can posit some goal other than accumulation for human existence. I think that's enormously important because it is that drive for consumption more than anything else that fuels the environmental devastation around us.

I did very much like [Barack] Obama's attack on fossil fuel subsidies for fossil fuel companies. We asked for that in demonstrations and petitions, and now we'll try to push it forward.

Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem, for two reasons. One is the habits of the West in terms of consumption. The other is the incredible iniquity between poor countries and rich countries on this planet.

In the States, I think, the syllogism goes like this: 'free markets solve all problems. Free markets aren't solving global warming, QED global warming is not a problem'. It's not a very good syllogism but it's emotionally comforting if you're in that world.