Make Earth Day Every Day.” While we might not always live up to this ideal, I try to keep this quote from Denis Hayes, founder of the Earth Day Network and president of Seattle’s Bullitt Foundation, in mind when I need a little extra motivation to be a better environmentalist: “Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours.

Zeroes are important. A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. A trillion seconds ago was 30,000 BC, and early humans were using stone tools.

The sunshine that strikes American roads each year contains more energy than all the fossil fuels used by the entire world.

By the year 2000, such renewable energy sources could provide 40 percent of the global energy budget; by 2025, humanity could obtain 75 percent of its energy from solar resources.

That said, I'm embarrassed and furious that so many coal-state Democrats in the U.S. Senate are paralyzing international progress to protect the short term interests of a dying industry that ravages the environment from mine to slag heap.

There really wasn't an environmental movement 30 years ago. The Sierra Club national office in 1969 consisted of one full-time volunteer.

Environmentally, business in America in 1970 was very similar to business in China today. Even if a CEO wanted to be a responsible corporate citizen, he (and they were all "he's" then) simply couldn't invest a billion dollars in pollution controls to produce a product that was indistinguishable from those of his competitors. His products would be priced out of the market. Passing laws that created a clean, level playing field for whole industries had to be a core focus of the 1970s.