The factory meat industry has polluted thousands of miles of America's rivers, killed billions of fish, pushed tens of thousands of family farmers off their land, sickened and killed thousands of U.S. citizens, and treated millions of farm animals with unspeakable and unnecessary cruelty.

The environment is the most important, the most fundamental, civil-rights issue.... Four out of every five toxic-waste dumps in America is in a black neighborhood.

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

We're not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds. We're protecting it for our own sake.

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.

Everyone knows that we're doing a science experiment with Earth. And the No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 contributors to it are the mining and burning of coal.

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