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 journalists in America are no longer covering critical stories. Investigative journalism is gone. Foreign-news coverage is gone. The press is owned by five giant corporations.

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.

We know more about Tom [Cruise] and Katie [Holmes] than we do about global warming. We're the most entertained, least informed people in the world.

Listen, the environmental movement is not about protecting the fishes and the birds so much as recognizing that nature is the infrastructure of our communities ... If you're saying the values that drive the environmental movement are uncool and antithetical to America, then I would argue just the opposite. If you think being patriotic is not cool, I'd say that's not true either. I'd say the most patriotic thing you can do is to take care of the environment and try to live sustainably.

GE is the biggest polluter of the Hudson.. years ago they killed all the fish dumping millions of lbs. of pcb's into our waterways. Now let's make them pay for the cleanup.

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