I think that for those of us who come from oppressed backgrounds and who do our work in marginalized communities, recovering our innocence is one of the most important acts of self-liberation and de-colonization. Not letting the requirement that we adapt to impossible circumstances and unconscionable crimes leave us shackled to the kind of cynicism and armor such that we can't breathe and laugh and magnetize to ourselves all the genius and love and support that we need to transform the situation. That's probably the biggest challenge, is to recover our innocence.

Will the new environmental leaders fight for eco-equity in this new "green economy" they are birthing?

When you get $1 billion of free advertising, it's hard not to have anybody buy the product.

Well, we in America are about to break up with oil. Why not break up with poverty and discrimination too?

Environmentalists and clean energy champions should stop telling people that we are working for "sustainability," which nobody understands.

Little kids sing a song called "America the Beautiful." They sing a song called "This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land." To me, those songs are not just nice little ditties. They are marching orders. They are commandments that we must protect America's beauty from the clear-cutters, the strip-miners, the oil spillers. They are pledges we have made. They are promises to keep.

To green our country, regular people will have to put on hard hats and work boots, roll up their sleeves - and get to work.