There is a societal cost of increased pollution, and that's what I'm passionate about as a mother.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There is no doubt that pollution contributes to the climate changing around us, but what I refuse to do is support a climate tax bill like Waxman/Markey put in place that would have cost farmers and ranchers in the state, that would cost small business the opportunity to grow, that would increase that bills that families pay, $1,700 a year.
There is a growing recognition of the importance of really bringing pollution under control.
I just am a clean air freak. I grew up in the woods. I worked in China for a bit and was exposed to all the resources being used and the pollution and felt strongly that for our generation, the biggest economic and societal problem is energy.
That we have children coming into this world already polluted, at the same time we don't know what the effects of that pollution will be on their mental and physical development, is both bad policy and immorally wrong.
Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible to solve - with ever more people.
Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.
It's inevitable your environment will influence what you do.
Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.
You always bump into politics in life, and as a man, I'm party to a number of environmental issues that concern me first and foremost, as a man, as a father.