“’Oh, yeah, when I retire from this job I plan on passing the torch, all right. Flaming end first.’”

A harried, sweating office worker in the cartoon Real Life Adventures in Ottawa Sun August 11, 2004

"The great inlet by which a color for oppression has entered the world is by one man’s pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another, and by claiming to use what means he thinks proper in order to bring him to a sense of it. It is the ordinary and trite sophism of oppression."

Edmund Burke, quoted by Richard John Neuhaus in First Things February 2003 (crediting it to a letter from Nino Langiulli of Lynbrook, New York and calling it "an observation of the ever–quotable Edmund Burke with which I was not familiar").

“Even if it were true that a hundred persons would experience more pleasure from torturing one person than that person would experience pain (in some dreadful utilitarian calculus), such an action would be an abomination. The person is never subordinate to the common good in an instrumental way. Persons are not means but ends, because of the God in Whom they live and Who lives in them.”

Michael Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good

Today I’m really excited to announce the launch of a new project, the Climate Discussion Nexus, to promote a polite, intelligent discussion of climate policy and the science behind it. We’re producing a weekly newsletter, videos, a blog and other media, and offering a forum for debate, analysis and data.

I’m the Executive Director and you can find more information at the CDN website, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, subscribe on YouTube, get our weekly newsletter (on climatediscussionnexus.com, lower right corner), share the initiative with your friends, colleagues and family, and consider donating to support this venture going forward.

At the Climate Discussion Nexus there are no sacred cows and no taboos except rudeness and ignorance.

Nobody’s happy with the current state of our national conversation on climate change. It’s time to open up the discussion for real.

So please join us and help spread the word.

“Progress mainly depends on the extent to which the strongest and not merely the highest forces of human nature can be utilised for the increase of social good.”

Professor Alfred Marshal, quoted in Nigel Birch, The Conservative Party