We are Christian and Jewish and Muslim and Hindu and none of the above. We are gay and straight. We are black, brown, white, and innumerable combinations. We are young and old, female and male, with and without disabilities, urban and rural, and liberal and conservative. Every one of us is an equal American.

When I was first elected to the Senate, I was fortunate to be appointed to the Intelligence Committee. There, I saw up close the dedication and commitment of the men and women of our intelligence agencies.

Whatever the motivation of the 'Wall Street Journal' and other right-wing publications, it is clearly long past time for the climate denial scheme to come in from the talk shows and the blogosphere and have to face the kind of an audience that a civil RICO investigation could provide.

When counting on learning from innovation, there are great successes but also failures. The Wright Brothers invented the aircraft and started an amazing process of innovation, where we now have planes that carry 500 passengers. Along the way there were some silly looking vehicles that crashed early on.

The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach.

Quite simply, our isolation from nature has become isolation from God's Word. Cocooned in our manmade world of climate-controlled homes, cars, subways, and high-rises, we're finding it easier to live as practical atheists.

I wanted to repeat we cannot vote confidence at any point on a confidence motion in a government that fails to have a climate target that's ground in science and consistent with what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we must do.

No clean energy development is complete without extensive environmental protections, and I've been proud to work in a bipartisan fashion with my colleagues in Congress to protect our most precious natural resources.