Now, here's a good question: should serious people focus on global political instability - terrorism, failing states, nuclear weapons - or should we focus on global climate instability - droughts, floods, extreme weather? Here's the correct answer: yes, both, because climate disruption will make every other national security problem worse.

I don't like to comment on a specific local issue because there are plenty of people already working on the problem who know a lot more about it than I do.

Clean energy is hippy power. But its also cowboy power, it's rancher power, it's Appalachian power.

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

I think we have every reason to hope for the best but expect and prepare for the worst.

We need a national renewable energy goal. Such a goal, sometimes called a renewable energy standard (RES), would spell out what percentage of our power America plans to get from renewable sources.

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.