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Poverty, inequality, disease -- there are a lot of horrible things wrong in the world. As an outspoken advocate of justice and peace, Sister Joan Chittister has spent the better part of her 78 years shining a spotlight on the many injustices plaguing the population. But at the heart of it all, she tells Oprah on "Super Soul Sunday," is one particular plight whose advancement would have a ripple effect on everything else threatening humanity.

"I'm fundamental about this. I really believe that nothing is going to change in the world until the situation of women changes," Sister Joan asserts in the above video. "I'll tell you why: You cannot simply dismiss over half of the human race, which means dismiss their agendas, dismiss their needs, dismiss their gifts, dismiss their intelligence."

Particularly in the current discourse and state of the world, she continues, women's voices are crucial in the decision-making process, bringing the valuable insights that have been so sorely lacking on a variety of levels.

"We are now at the place where men are running everything, which means that humanity is seeing with one eye, hearing with one ear and thinking with one half of the human brain," she says. "No wonder we're doing the things we're doing! We're bringing to the table only half the needs of the human race!"

Sister Joan is quick to point out that she doesn't believe all men intentionally overlook the needs and voices of women.

"I don't mean that men are doing this purposefully," she says. "It's just that they only have half the experience. They have half the wisdom. They have half the intelligence. So, they're making full decisions out of half of the resources that we should have."

The result is that women are the ones who ultimately suffer. "Who gets left behind? Who are the poorest of the poor?" Sister Joan says. "The women and the children."

"All over the world," Oprah adds.

When Oprah asks what we should be doing now to address this issue, Sister Joan gives a one-word answer that she insists is true and genuine, not flippant: something. Do something.

"Each of us must do something where we are that changes the attitude of the neighborhood, and the attitude of the office, and the attitude of the boardroom, and the attitude of the bank. Do something," Sister Joan urges.

"Wherever you see injustice. Wherever you see despair," Oprah adds. "I used to say this [for] so many years when I was doing 'The Oprah Show': Once you've seen it and it's come into your consciousness, you can't pretend you didn't see it."

"And you can never not see it again," Sister Joan agrees. "Do something."

Also in the interview: Sister Joan says that a bird named Billy taught her the true meaning of humanity.

"Super Soul Sunday" airs Sundays at 11 a.m. ET on OWN. You can also stream the program live during that time on Oprah.com/supersoulsunday or Facebook.com/supersoulsunday.

President Obama's veto this week of a Republican bill passed -- precisely so that he would veto it -- mandating the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline does, indeed, as former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed out, serve as "a perfect symbol of Washington's dysfunction." Obama made it clear that this veto, at least, was over the process, not the substance, and the Republicans had set the process up so that no self-respecting president could do other than veto.

In their last PR foray before the veto, tar sands proponents offered up an IHS-CERA study which asserted that, facts to the contrary, approving Keystone would increase the reliable supplies of oil for domestic consumers. The study asserted "the overwhelming majority" of oil flowing to refineries in the Gulf Coast would be refined and consumed in the U.S., even after XL is built -- which is true but irrelevant. If I pour a glass of water (Keystone XL) into an already full bucket (Midwest and Gulf Coal oil markets), most of the water stays in the bucket, but the bucket does not hold any more water; the increment just slops on the floor, or in this case gets exported.

The president focused on a more relevant point in his comments in Fargo this week, saying:

I've already said I'm happy to look at increasing pipeline production for U.S. oil. But Keystone is for Canadian oil. Sending it down to the Gulf it bypasses the U.S., it estimated to create 250, maybe, 300 permanent jobs. We should be focusing on American infrastructure for American jobs for American producers....

Keystone is an enormously important environmental symbol. But it is also a commercial struggle. Alberta tar sands oil and North Dakota light shale oil flows into the same markets, have access to the same refineries, and rely on the same pipelines and railroads to get them to the same customers. So it was never terribly plausible that Keystone would be good for the U.S. -- it was designed to make Canadian oil more competitive in global markets, which, on balance, is not good for American producers or, since the Canadians want to escape from American markets, American consumers.

The logic of the North American Free Trade Agreement was, in some minds, that we would collaborate, rather than compete, with Canada and Mexico, and would allow Canada, for example, to put U.S. territory, waterways and airsheds at environmental risk to provide the cheapest route for Canada's oil to global markets. But the Canadians walked away from their Kyoto commitment to curb global warming emissions precisely because doing so would put them at a competitive disadvantage with U.S. oil and gas producers -- so the kumbaya theory of NAFTA was always pretty threadbare. Obama now seems to recognize this. Canada needs Keystone. The U.S. does not.

Now the lack of permit for Keystone is the least of Prime Minister Harper's problems. He bet Canada's future on finding ever-increasing markets for the world's most expensive -- $90-plus-per-barrel break-even for new projects -- crude. With global prices down at $60, returns from tar sands projects are a fraction of what they were a year ago. Even before global prices reached the bottom, three major projects had been cancelled. Shell just pulled out of its Pierra River Project last week. Investment is collapsing. Most companies will survive -- but they survive by cutting payrolls and supply chains, the two factors Harper was counting on to keep the Canadian economy afloat through his reelection bid this year. But unemployment rolls are soaring, and the Canadian dollar has lost 20 percent of its value. Harper is now running barely even with his leading opponent, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, who acerbically attacks Harper's bet on oil. "It's not fiscally responsible," said Trudeau in January, "to pin all your hopes on oil prices remaining high, and when they fall, being forced to make it up as they go along."

Harper must call an election by November. One of the major issues in that election is certain to be Canada's next economic strategy, because the petro-exporter bubble just burst, which is why Bloomberg's suggestion that Canada embrace its former climate leadership and bet its economic future on low-carbon energy and high-knowledge manufacturing is almost certain to have at least one taker among Canada's three major parties. But it would be much better news for the climate if all three Canadian parties, led by Harper's Conservatives, decided that Canada doesn't have the cheap oil resource base to become the next Saudi Arabia -- and might not want to even if it could.

NEW YORK -- We are entering an age of accelerated development of artificial and robotic technology, three panelists told an audience of investors, engineers and journalists recently.

"A lot of the things that technology was traditionally lousy at are now really, really good, and getting better all the time," said Andrew McAfee, the principal research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This is unprecedented and unexpected."

McAfee was speaking at an annual lecture on science and technology hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations; joining him on the panel were Rodney Brooks, an entrepreneur and emeritus professor of robotics at MIT, and Abhinav Gupta, of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. All three were optimistic about the development of robotics and artificial intelligence technology, but each acknowledged areas where there are still tremendous challenges to overcome.

"Just in the past few years," McAfee said, excitably, "digital technologies in all their manifestations, including robots, have been breaking out of the box and starting to demonstrate capabilities that they never ever had before."

But something as fundamental as taking keys out of a pocket, Brooks said, remains beyond the current capabilities of robots. Even determining that a picture of a child was a picture of a child is too hard. Great strides have been made in other areas, like creating machines that can win a chess game against even the most experienced grandmaster, but it will take years more research to mimic the dexterity of the human hand, the panelists said, or even the spacial awareness of a 1-year-old.

And yet, the most important issues to sort out, the panelists agreed, are not technological. They're in the policy realm.

"None of It Is Rocket Science"

"Why is our infrastructure so lousy?" McAfee asked, exasperated. "Why are our immigration policies -- as far as I can tell -- designed by our enemies? Why are [our schools] turning out the kinds of workers we needed 50 years ago? If we can get these things right, that'd be the best thing we could do to improve the prospects of the American worker, and none of it is rocket science."

Encouraging immigrants to create companies here is another issue. The government permits immigrants who invest $1 million in the economy to stay permanently, Gupta noted. "Why don't we have that for people who have ideas to open a start-up?" he wondered.

Research investment is another area where American government policy needs a serious rethink.

"In the U.S., it's going down," said Gupta. "In China, it's doubling. Europe is even better than the U.S.! If you talk to researchers, like me, Europe has much better research funding than America has."

Two of the largest industries in the American economy -- healthcare and education -- are ripe for disruption, the panelists said.

"We are not seeing crazy price declines in these huge industries that we are seeing elsewhere," McAfee argued. "What's going to bring them there? Opening up these markets. Getting rid of the incumbent's advantage. Education is a cartel."

Geeks Will Astonish Us

In the end, despite the monumental challenges yet to be overcome, the panelists were optimistic about the accelerating abilities of technology and artificial intelligence.

"The exponential improvement in the elements of computing is not about to run out of gas," McAfee said. "We've got generations more of it to go. Geeks out there are going to take that computational power and that ocean of data and do things that astonish us."

But the panelists couldn't muster the same sentiment when it comes to policy-making, economics and security.

"As different technologies have proliferated and really democratized access to innovation and to making things, the economy has moved in the other direction," McAfee said. "It's moved toward more concentration. The big guys are getting bigger. The workforce is becoming more polarized instead of less. I'm really worried about this polarization of opportunity and of mobility. I think it's already a challenge and it's going to get a lot bigger. And what we do about that is going to be the challenge that defines us for the next generation."

Moreover, the global security landscape is becoming more threatening. The proliferation of accessible technology is as beneficial to Iran and the Taliban as it is for Silicon Valley start-ups. Equipment available at RadioShack is used in IEDs targeting American troops in Afghanistan, said Brooks.

"Cybersecurity is scary as hell," McAfee noted.

"The threats of the future are going to be very different sorts of threats," echoed Brooks. "And that worries me."