My dad grew up in Nicaragua in his teenage years, then immigrated to the United States.

I was the third parent, growing up, and it did make me a very overly responsible adult.

I still remember, at the age of 12, learning that segregation had been permitted only a couple of decades before I was born and that a woman's right to vote was not even a century old. But it was great Americans who stood up, some dying for the cause, to make our country better.

Detroit can become a national model for urban revitalization, but to do so, it must break free from past development models.

I am saying that all predictions concerning climate are highly uncertain.

I have American in-laws, and I care about the environment. We don't use disposable diapers, which, of course, creates an environmental problem of our own.

Ours is a world which feels so unsettled and dangerous in large ways, whether it's terrorism or global financial meltdown or climate change - huge things that affect us deeply, and yet things about which we can do, individually, very little.

Even the government understands that the environmental challenge is so big that no single agency can handle it. It needs collaboration among all the stakeholders - companies, governments, NGOs and the public. Public accountability will be the ultimate driving force.