Not only who am I, but who are we? And where are we going? It's the "we." It's the social connections that are special to human beings.

In terms of personal choices, let's all think more carefully about where we get our protein from.

We are not only warming the ocean and the planet as a whole, but we are also acidifying the ocean and changing its chemistry.

People I know who succeed don't mind working. Those who are competent seem to like doing things well -- not stopping because they haven't accomplished what they wanted to on the first go-round. They're willing to do it twenty times, if necessary. There's an illusion that the good people can easily do something, and it's not necessarily true. They're just determined to do it right. I was impressed by hearing one of the women at Radcliffe talk about writing a poem, how many revisions a single poem sometimes has to go through -- fifty or sixty revisions to come out with a poem sixteen lines long.

We are blessed with a place that is open to the universe and, despite this, supports this very thin envelope of air we call atmosphere, which holds just the right amount of oxygen for us to breathe.

Look at a child and realize that their future is in your hands. It's not just those who will be here fifty years from now. The decisions we make in the next ten years will shape the next 10,000 years.

Photosynthetic organisms in the sea yield most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, take up and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide, shape planetary chemistry, and hold the planet steady.