Let us all take more responsibility not only for ourselves and our families but for our communities and our country.

Our overriding environmental challenge tonight is the worldwide problem of climate change, global warming, the gathering crisis that requires worldwide action.

I know that the precise magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted. But global warming clearly is a growing, long-term threat with profound consequences. And make no mistake about it, it will take decades to reverse.

I liked working with Republicans. We had five pretty good years after we had that bad year in '95 that culminated in two government shutdowns. But then they really decided that they liked being in the majority for the first time in forty years, and they wanted to get some things done, and I agreed, to get things I wanted. It was all perfectly transparent. Everybody knew what they wanted and what I wanted.

It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics. Why? Because discrimination, poverty and ignorance restrict growth. We know that investments in education, infrastructure and scientific and technological research increase growth. They increase good jobs, and they create new wealth for all of us.

If you want to know where I come by the passionate commitment I have to bringing people together without regard to race, it all started with my grandfather.

Marijuana is ten times more dangerous than twenty years ago.