In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They’ll just ask, “So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?”

TV is sometimes accused of encouraging fantasies. Its real problem, though, is that it encourages-enforces, almost-a brute realism. It is anti-Utopian in the extreme. We’re discouraged from thinking that, except for a few new products, there might be a better way of doing things.

You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet.

We already have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as any scientist thinks is safe to burn.

Put simply, between ecological destruction and technological hubris, the human experiment is now in question.

With each month that passes, a solar panel gets 2 or 3 percent cheaper. So while we’re holding the fossil fuel industry in check, the engineers in the renewable energy world are undercutting them from the other side.

But knowing that moose had returned to Vermont in his lifetime pleased him enormously. It was the idea that things repaired themselves, that if you backed off a little and didn’t ask too much of the world then it would meet you halfway.

Until it’s understood to involve justice for those in poverty, a future for generations yet unborn, and a commitment to the rest of creation, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to overcome the status quo.

Last year, the USDA said for the first time in 150 years that there were more farms in America instead of fewer. I think that’s the single most hopeful statistic I know.

We can no longer imagine that we are part of something larger than ourselves – that is what all this boils down to.