I think we as Americans know there's a much better alternative than the 17th century practice of burning rocks to power our economy.

The next time you see John Stossel or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, these flat-Earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public, and telling you that global warming doesn't exist. You send an e-mail to their advertisers and tell them that you're not going to buy their products anymore.

When Wal-Mart brings water down to the Katrina victims, it's not doing that to be nice; it's doing it to make larger profits and to increase the value of its shares. If its actions are not accomplishing those objectives, the shareholders can sue the executives, and sue them successfully, because it is illegal for them to act on behalf of any other reason than increasing the value of their shares. There is nothing wrong with that. That is the way that they were created and the way we want them to function to increase prosperity in the market.

We are living in a science-fiction nightmare where children are gasping for breath on bad-air days because somebody gave money to a politician. And my children and the kids of millions of other Americans can no longer go fishing and eat their catch because somebody gave money to a politician.

There are two reforms that we need to restore our democracy. The first is campaign finance. We need to get the corporate money out of the election process. And second, we need to resolve the dysfunction in the environment. Looters are running agencies that are supposed to be protecting us from pollution.

The best measure of how a democracy is functioning is how it allocates the goods of the land, the public trust assets.

The technologies for the alternative energy sources exists today. The economics are compelling. The public health is compelling. Why would we maintain a focus on a 17th-century technology, when there are 21st-century alternatives that are both necessary and available? And the answer is the subversion of democracy.