If the politics of inaction and delay that have triumphed in this country continues for another decade, then Planetary Purgatory in the likely future facing our country before midcentury - probably in your own lifetime.

Ideology trumps rationality. Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming - strong government regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean-energy technologies in the market.

In 2003... the White House conspired with an oil-company funded think tank to block a major government scientific report that sought to spell out the dangers of climate change to Americans.

The last time Earth was 1°C warmer than today, sea levels were 20 feet higher.

The best thing about improvements in health care is that all the climate-change deniers are now going to live long enough to see how wrong they were.

If our government won't spend the money to protect New Orleans sufficiently today, what are the chances we will spend the money to protect dozens of coastal cities post-2050, once everyone knows that sea levels will keep rising and intense hurricanes will occur relentlessly?

As long as a handful of U.S. scientists, most receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry, get equal time with hundreds of the world's leading climate scientists, the public inevitably ends up with a misimpression about the state of our scientific understanding.