Once you've created a connection of empathy, rational arguments can play a supportive role.

Our national leaders tend to try to protect the national interest as they see it. They may screw up in that, but they at least see that as their role. In contrast, where issues of our national values are involved, which covers pretty much any humanitarian issue, they pretty much drop the ball.

There are other issues I have felt more emotionally connected to, like China, where I lived and worked for some time. I was living there when Tiananmen Square erupted

So Kim Kardashian is getting a divorce, 72 days after a wedding that is variously reported to have cost $10 million or more. Just to put that in perspective, that sum could have built 200 schools in poor countries around the world for kids who desperately want an education. Then Kardashian could have helped transform the world, not just entertain it. And the schools would have lasted incomparably longer than her marriage.

Sandy was particularly destructive because it was prevented from moving back out to sea by a "blocking pattern" associated with the jet stream. There's debate about this, but one recent study suggested that melting sea ice in the Arctic may lead to such blocking.

The north of the Central African Republic is now a war zone, with rival armed bands burning villages, kidnapping children, robbing travelers and killing people with impunity.

I think when hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line, you might have to set aside some principles.