As a result of the carbon-dioxide enrichment of the Earth's atmosphere, plants are now growing faster. Furthermore, global warming lengthens the growing season and increases net rainfall.

I grew up in the 1960s and wanted to become part of the great space exploration effort, but when I graduated from college in 1974, the Apollo program was over, and the country had moved into this pessimistic mode. We had entered the 'age of limits.'

People make their own fates, and if enough of us make our fate to be space explorers, perhaps we can actually get some space exploration done.

In what was called the second siege of Leningrad, thousands died, but Putin and his partners in crime got rich. Then Putin killed even more Russians when he had the FSB explode bombs in apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999 to give himself the pretext to seize dictatorial powers.

The effects of climate change are real and only getting worse. I would like to build on the promises of the Paris Climate Agreement and make our country a global leader on the fight against climate change.

There has been a banking crisis, a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a geostrategic crisis and an environmental crisis. That's considerable in a country that's used to being protected.

Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

What I have experienced over time is that environmental problems are easier to deal with in ways that don't go into their interconnections to the rest of what we are.