I just spent a week at the 15th Annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit in India, a four-day eco-extravaganza for hundreds of participants from government, business, academics, and community organizations. 

Think how quickly we evolved from landline phones, that took weeks to install, to cellphones that take a few minutes to buy and activate. 

China and the US announced a substantial policy down payment on tackling greenhouse gas emissions in Beijing this week. 

It was fitting that New York hosted the recent UN climate change summit for several reasons. Let’s start with the old joke about the guy who jumps off the Empire State Building and, as he passes the 50th floor on this way down, is heard to say “so far so good.” But the pavement, that is looming larger by the minute to our clueless friend, is about to smack all of us in the face.

Thank goodness the graduation season is finally over. I witnessed pomp and circumstance at prep schools from Orlando to the Napa Valley and at colleges from Los Angeles to the Ivy League. The surprising topic at all of these cap-and-gown fests? Endowments divesting their holdings in fossil fuel companies.

Any American civics lesson includes the “balance of powers” of our government among its three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. 

What do you get Mother Earth on her big day (reminder: it’s April 22nd!)? 

Overheard at the water cooler this week:

Tom: Sally, did you know we can solve climate change for as little as $35 per person?

Sally: I’m afraid that’s a waste of my money, Tom.

Ever hear of a reality show called “Snake Salvation?” 

Me neither, until one of the serpent-handling co-stars was bit last month by a snake during a church service and later died. 

As the confetti is swept away and the world gets back to work, will 2014 be a banner year or will we be singing that “old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind” a year from now? 

Legend says that naughty kids get a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking, so do nice kids get clean energy in theirs, at least metaphorically speaking? 

Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that before mid-century the exponential acceleration of information technologies, robotics, medical science, and artificial intelligence will result in a “singularity”, a point at which humans will essentially merge with their technology. 
 

Ten years ago this week, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California and he appointed me to be the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency. 

Last year Americans spent $65billion on lottery tickets. In some games, the odds of winning have been compared to the probability of being struck by lightning while sinking a hole-in-one. 

Global population hit 7 billion well ahead of most predictions. The UN now forecasts that we will share the planet - - and its increasingly scarce natural resources - - with about 10 billion fellow humans by 2050. 

Last week Arnold Schwarzenegger, chairman of the R20 Regions of Climate Action, signed an agreement in Algeria to address waste and sustainable energy challenges in the Mediterranean and North Africa. At the same time, a meeting of officials in Bahrain examined technologies and strategies to help that nation evolve into one of the most energy and water efficient economies in the world. Are there lessons in those examples for the U.S. now that President Obama has reignited the debate over climate change policy?

When I was born in the 1950s, nuclear power was said to be “too cheap to meter.” Although few and far between, disasters at Fukushima and Chernobyl have laid waste to that claim and, for that matter, entire cities.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a nuclear physicist, led the charge to eliminate her nation’s nuclear power plants in the next few years based on a rational risk analysis. 

A few weeks ago, the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii recorded CO2 levels in the atmosphere at almost 400 parts per million. Many scientists predicted that in reaching this level, we would see more intense storms (like Hurricanes Irene and Sandy); droughts (like the one suffocating the middle of the US for the past year); and heat waves (the 12 hottest years on record have all been in the last 15). 

We wouldn’t be here without her. We’ll never fully appreciate the sacrifices she makes every day for our well-being. Yes, it will take a very special gift to really say “I love you, mom” to our Mother Earth. 

With Earth Day 2013 around the corner, it’s a good time to step back and see how we’ve been doing since the first Earth Day in 1970, when 20 million people took to the streets to protest rivers on fire, DDT-poisoned birds, sewage on beaches, and a devastating oil spill off the pristine Santa Barbara coast.