How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - that's not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible.
The science-denial machinery is a serious adversary, and it has a big advantage over real science: it does not need to win its dispute with real science; it just needs to create a public illusion that there is a dispute.
The fossil fuel industry has been a particular disgrace, polluting our politics as well as our planet.
When I deliver the message to a cross section of Rhode Island that democracy is broken because special interests have relentless power - which prevents politicians from compromising despite popular support on an issue - I don't have any pushback.
The Founding Fathers built our judicial system to withstand the special interest pressures that beset the political branches of government.
Across our small globe, dawn sweeps each morning, lighting cities and cottages, barrios and villages. Whoever and wherever you may be, you can step out into that morning sunrise and know, from our American example, that life does not have to be the way it is for you.
Too many members of Congress seem willing to give corporate polluters, many of whom happen to be major political donors, a free pass to poison the air.
Putting a price on carbon pollution is one of the best things we can do to stem the tide of climate change.
We would like the rest of the world to look up to American democracy. So when there is this kind of folly taking place, it makes it difficult for other rational nations to look up to American democracy.
We pay for power plant pollution through higher health costs.
I suspect that a lot of the frustration people feel about government would feel a lot better if we had corporate influence out of our politics and were running a democracy like the founding fathers intended.
Is keeping Big Oil happy with subsidies from the American people more important than addressing our deficit? Should a billionaire who makes a multi-million-dollar gift to a museum receive more tax bang for his charitable buck than a middle-class family who gives to their local church?
No one has a First Amendment right to lie to a federal agency in order to claim an improper tax status in order to avoid legal disclosure requirements on political spending and thereby receive undue tax benefits. That's a criminal false statement and possibly a fraud.
It would be a sorry world in which corporations engaged in fraud could pull the screen of the First Amendment over any investigation of their scheme.
The big polluters are confident in their grip on Congress. They have basically achieved control of the Republican Party, and as a result, they are basically able to block action in Congress that the public needs and the country deserves.
If the American people make their voices heard and put enough pressure on Congress, we can restore fairness in our economic system, do what's right for the middle class, and show that Congress can stand up to special interests.
Implementing the so-called 'Buffett Rule' would restore some badly needed fairness to our tax system.
In many ways, the rotten effects of dark money are seen less in what we do than in what we don't do.
Protected free speech has boundaries, and one boundary is fraud.
If you look at the casualties, the federal government isn't waging a War on Coal. If anything, coal is waging a war on us.
