American democracy is supposed to be the paradigm for the rest of the world.

Resurrecting American democracy is vital to averting climate catastrophe. We must first repeal the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, which has flooded elections with billions of oily petrodollars from carbon tycoons.

Industrial agriculture now accounts for over half of America's water pollution. Two years ago, Pfiesteria outbreaks connected with wastes from industrial chicken factories forced the closure of two major tributaries of the Chesapeake and threatened Maryland's vital shellfish industry. Tyson Foods has polluted half of all streams in northwestern Arkansas with so much fecal bacteria that swimming is prohibited. Drugs and hormones needed to keep confined animals alive and growing are mainly excreted with the wastes and saturate local waterways.

What polluters do is raise the standards of living for themselves, while lowering the quality of living for everybody else, and they do that by escaping the disciplines of the free market.

We protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities.

Large-scale hog producers are a greater threat to the United States and U.S. democracy than Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network.

Like other Americans, I've reconciled myself to the idea that an animal's life has been sacrificed to bring me a meal of pork or chicken. However, industrial meat production - which subjects animals to a life of torture - has escalated the karmic costs beyond reconciliation.