We all need to be reminded that democracy isn't just voting for the president every four years and then trusting him to fix things. Democracy is about getting together with your community to think together about your future.

For two hundred years, human economic activity has largely consisted of digging up fossil fuels and setting them alight

One of the great privileges of living in the affluent parts of the modern world is that we've been able to forget that the natural world even exists...a great city seems to produce wealth out of thin air. This is illusion, of course, but powerful illusion.

...a man with a phone more or less permanently affixed to his palm is partway a robot already

The human game is a team sport.

When the peak temperature in leafy suburbs can be lower by as much as fifteen degrees, "landscape is a predictor for mobidity in heatwaves," in the words of one study, which found that African Americans were "52% more likely than white people to live in areas of unnatural 'heat risk-related land cover.'" Imagine what it's like in a refugee camp, or a prison. It's hell, is what it is.

Rebelling against the wishes and hopes of your parents is how a great many of us define who we are. It may be hard, and it may be painful, and some people may never manage it. And some never need to, because their parents were wise and gentle enough to help them down a congenial path.

Let's be, for a while, true optimists, and operate on the assumption that human beings are not grossly defective. Let's assume we're capable of acting together to do remarkable things.

...we really do live on an unbearably beautiful planet. We don't think of it often as a planet - - we live our daily lives on flat and often prosaic ground, and when we're in the air, the flight attendant usually makes us lower the window shade so as not to interfere iwth the movie.