I find all folklore challenging, and I never cease to be grateful that I became a professional folklorist.

In the light of our culture, these are not unreasonable questions and tactics, but if once again, we try to see the lens through which we look, we can see that there is far too great an emphasis placed on the future.

Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.

Americans have a penchant for the future and tend to disregard the past.

In the case of climate change, the threat is long-term and diffuse and requires broad international action for the benefit of people decades in the future. And in politics, the urgent always trumps the important, and that is what makes it a very difficult and challenging issue.

However useful computer models may be, the one thing they cannot be is evidence. Computer climate models are simply conjectures.

We can't leave everything to the free market. In fact, climate change is, I would argue, the greatest single free-market failure. This is what happens when you don't regulate corporations and you allow them to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer.

I used to be frightened of the countryside after dark. Now I enjoy it. There is something wonderful about those strange country and wildlife noises.