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?

In the year 2007, seals, otters, lions, turtles, frogs, apes, snakes, butterflies, polar bears, cheetahs, whales are disappearing along with their variously furnished homes: cloud forests, rain forests, ice pack, boreal forests, coral reefs, forests of deciduous trees, conifer and palm.

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.

We stand at a moment in history without precedent. Decisions that are ours to make over the next ten years will have a sweeping impact on the future direction of life on the planet.

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 most rational defender of nature is driven by a passion for wildness that cannot be explained by an appeal to logic.

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.