The [Ronald] Reagan administration told the business world that they were not going to enforce the labor laws.

There's a very committed effort to convert the US into something resembling a Third World society, where a few people have enormous wealth and a lot of others have no security.

If you look at history, even recent history, you see that there is indeed progress. . . . Over time, the cycle is clearly, generally upwards. And it doesn't happen by laws of nature. And it doesn't happen by social laws. . . . It happens as a result of hard work by dedicated people who are willing to look at problems honestly, to look at them without illusions, and to go to work chipping away at them, with no guarantee of success — in fact, with a need for a rather high tolerance for failure along the way, and plenty of disappointments.

What has to be done today is (1) large-scale conversion (weatherizing , etc.), (2) sharp change in transportation to greater efficiency, like high-speed rail, (3) serious efforts to move to sustainable energy, probably solar in the somewhat longer term, (4) other adjustments that are feasible. If done effectively, that might be enough to stave off disaster. If not, then we can give up the ghost, because there are no alternatives in this world, at least none that I've seen suggested.

The book [Manufacturing Consent] itself is then devoted to a series of case studies, selected, we hope [with Edward Herman], to offer a fair and in fact rather severe test of those conclusions.

It's this kind of wild unpredictability, megalomania, thin-skinned craziness that really has me worried, more than [Donald Trump] statements. Now, on the climate change there's just nothing to say, he's perfectly straightforward.

The senate was wealthy people and it wasn't elected, it was chosen through legislatures, which themselves were under private influence, powerful influence. They were remote from the population and that's where power was suppose to reside.