I think the deeper truth is that the Kyoto Protocols will not be followed by anyone really and that, in effect, nothing will be done to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions.

We're not going to reform our moronic land-use laws, which mandate suburban sprawl one way or another. They're simply going to be ignored when it becomes self-evident that we cannot build stuff that way anymore.

Eighty percent of everything ever built in America has been built in the last 50 years, and most of it is depressing, brutal, ugly, unhealthy, and spiritually degrading.

In my view, suburbia in general has very poor prospects. I think it will only become devalued and probably more dangerous. It's chief characteristic was that it represented a living arrangement with no future - and that future is now here.

Cities like Detroit exist because they occupy important sites. In the case of Detroit, it sits on a river between two great lakes - very important and strategic.

We're still promoting stupid wasteful behavior in agribusiness - everything from ethanol production for cars to genetically modified crops. In commerce just about everything we do politically is in the service of WalMart and the systems tied to it. In transportation, we could, for instance, have compelled General Motors to produce railroad rolling stock as a condition of their bail-out, but we didn't do that. Instead, we're chasing the phantom of electric cars - and, believe me, we are going to be mortally disappointed how that works out.

We have to grow our food differently because industrial farming will soon end. That means growing more food locally on smaller farms with more human attention.