We, all of us in the First World, have participated in something of a binge, a half century of unbelievable prosperity and ease. We may have had some intuition that it was a binge and the earth couldn't support it, but aside from the easy things (biodegradable detergent, slightly smaller cars) we didn't do much. We didn't turn our lives around to prevent it. Our sadness is almost an aesthetic response - appropriate because we have marred a great, mad, profligate work of art, taken a hammer to the most perfectly proportioned of sculptures.

We've built a new Earth. It's not as nice as the old one; it's the greatest mistake humans have ever made, one that we will pay for literally forever.

We've been given a warning by science, and a wake-up call by nature; it is up to us now to heed them.

Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free.

There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions.

I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.

Those of us in the west have figured out a lot of ways to damage the lives of poor people in this country and around the world over the years.