Under communism, prices were not allowed to reflect economic reality. Under capitalism, prices don't reflect ecological reality. In the long run, the capitalist flaw -- if uncorrected -- may prove to be the more catastrophic.

Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours.

Sustainability requires that we demand enduring quality. Steve Strong has a slide presentation pointing out that much of Oxford was built 800 years ago. What are we building today that will be here 800 years from now? If something like that emerged from this recession, it would help justify the hardship so many people are currently experiencing.

An acre of windy prairie could produce between $4,000 and 10,000 worth of electricity per year - which is far more than the value of the land's crop of corn or wheat.

There are a few obvious consequences and perhaps one subtle possibility. One obvious thing is that, to stimulate the economy, President Obama has committed to creating millions of green jobs that will leave a legacy - much as Roosevelt's public works did during the new deal.

I would love to see a fundamental re-thinking of whether we truly want to be the world's largest debtor nation, feeding an insatiable desire for mall-crawling with cheaply made crap from all over the world.

As a student of conservation biology, I believe that characteristics with survival value will ultimately prevail. There is no survival value in pessimism. If you think failure is inevitable, that view will probably become self-fulfilling.