The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner and it's starting to break down.

No generation before us has faced a decade of choices that will so profoundly impact the course of life on this planet as those we now face. And no generation before us has had the opportunity to enrich the future so vastly.

The human response it calls for is truly heroic, requiring nothing short of rewiring the entire planet with a new generation of clean-energy technologies - and doing that very soon... Are we, as a species, capable of that kind of deliberate global response?

The Arctic is the planet's air conditioner and it's starting to break down.

It will be politics that determines the material welfare of future generations: the pace at which we advance toward "our destination of economic bliss," andnperhaps, whether we continue to advance at all.

One hundred years ago, visionary political leaders from the Progressive Era established a system of national forests and parks in our country that are the envy of the world and today are the treasure of an entire nation. Why not a similar, global vision for our generation?

Stabilizing the climate is not about saving the human species... Stabilizing the climate is a precious opportunity to pass on to all future human beings gifts of immense value, gifts that, once gone, will be beyond the imagination and skill of humanity to recreate.