Doing all we can to combat climate change comes with numerous benefits, from reducing pollution and associated health care costs to strengthening and diversifying the economy by shifting to renewable energy, among other measures.

Over and over, we hear politicians say they can't spend our tax dollars on environmental protection when the economy is so fragile.

Because we aren't certain about the effects of GMOs, we must consider one of the guiding principles in science, the precautionary principle. Under this principle, if a policy or action could harm human health or the environment, we must not proceed until we know for sure what the impact will be. And it is up to those proposing the action or policy to prove that it is not harmful.

You would have thought that our first priority would be to ask what the ecologists are finding out, because we have to live within the conditions and principles they define. Instead, we've elevated the economy above ecology.

It is clear that while science provides insights into the complexity of the world around us, those insights...present a fractured mosaic rather than a seamless whole. There are profound limits to science that must be recognized if we are to minimize the destructive consequences of using the powers provided by scientific discovery.

We all live downstream

For the first time since life appeared on earth, one species- us- is single-handedly altering the physical, chemical and biological nature of earth. We have become a force of nature