For the sake of our health, our children and grandchildren and even our economic well-being, we must make protecting the planet our top priority.

We can no longer tolerate what's going on in Ottawa and Edmonton. What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there's a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they're doing is a criminal act.

If we humans are good at anything, it’s thinking we’ve got a terrific idea and going for it without acknowledging the potential consequences or our own ignorance.

There are some things in the world we can't change- gravity, entropy, the speed of light, and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity for our health and well-being. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere.

My parents survived the Great Depression and brought me up to live within my means, save some for tomorrow, share and don't be greedy, work hard for the necessities in life knowing that money does not make you better or more important than anyone else. So, extravagance has been bred out of my DNA.

We have altered the physical, chemical and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale. We have left no part of the globe untouched.

Less than 10% of the fuel energy burned in automobiles is translated into forward motion of the vehicle and even then most of this energy is needed to move the vehicle itself, which typically weighs 20 times more than its passengers.