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Unlike every other other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.

If a piece of 'alternative medicine' can be shown to work reliably, it ceases to become alternative. It just becomes medicine.

The golden toad was the first documented victim of global warming. We had killed it with our profligate use of coal-fired electricity and our oversize cars just as surely as if we had flattened its forest with bulldozers. It was as if, having experienced it, we did not recognize what happiness was.

Nothing in predictive climate science is more certain than the extinction of many of the world’s mountain-dwelling species.

Power broken into a thousand pieces can be hidden and disowned. If no individual or institution possesses the authority to act without of everybody else in the room, then nobody is at fault if anything goes wrong.

If humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this century, I believe the collapse of civilization due to climate change becomes inevitable.

We need not seek our own best selves, and in the meantime we inoculate ourselves against the viruses of age and idealism, which, as the advertising agencies well know, depress sales and sour the feasts of consumption.

This problem may not occur for several hundred years, but by the time we see the first signs, it will be far too late to do anything about it.

Some time this century, the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors.

We are a people captivated by the power and romance of metaphor, forever seeking the invisible through the image of the visible.

Are there any mythical beasts which aren't simple pastiches of nature? Centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, griffons, chimeras, sphinxes, manticores, and the like don't speak well for the human imagination. None is as novel as a kangaroo or starfish.

At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox.