A century and a half ago, fossil fuels replaced slaves as the underpriced energy source driving American economic growth. And like slavery, our deep economic dependence makes change difficult, despite the incontrovertible reality that our fossil-fueled system is profoundly wrong. America could not thrive while captured by the slave economy,...

With the advent of "smart" phones equipped with tiny GPS receivers, innovators, advertisers, best friends, and the government are eager to learn our whereabouts. Even without GPS, the cellphones we've been carrying in our pockets for many years now are terrifically accurate homing...

Let's spin some straw into gold. There is a hunger in the Whitehouse and state houses, on Wall Street and Main Streets for something, anything, to turn our financial distress and disappearing budgets into a future that restores hope, prosperity and confidence in government. I see the shimmering gold that...