The habits of the West in terms of consumption.
BILL MCKIBBENI think that it is impossible to think of a threat to social justice greater than what we are doing to the earth’s atmosphere at the moment.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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It drives me crazy to see so much of this planet’s life so casually endangered. The first steps are so easy (drive smaller cars, for instance) that it’s very hard to understand why we haven’t taken them. But I know that this is the issue our generation will be judged by.
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If you were running a solar company you may be okay – you may be able to keep growing. The question for physics is: Can you grow fast enough to begin to catch up with the damage?
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There is an urgent need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, dramatically reduce wasted energy, and significantly shift our power supplies from oil, coal, and natural gas to wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources.
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The essential thing we need to understand is that the climate crisis is not some future threat, but a very present peril, the biggest one humans have ever encountered. Until we understand that, we’ll dawdle.
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My guess is that liberating the fossil fuel industry to frack anywhere they want will drive down the rate at which we’re converting to sun and wind. And it’s entirely a rate problem at this point.
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There’s no happy ending where we prevent climate change any more. Now the question is, is it going to be a miserable century or an impossible one, and what comes after that.
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I imagine a certain amount of consumer impulse will be replaced by community connection. You can already see it starting with things like the local food movement.
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we use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness.
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We don’t know exactly where all the tipping points are in the physical world for inescapable damage, but we’re clearly reaching close to some of them.
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In certain ways, I think the work in the Evangelical community has been the most interesting and the most promising. Partly because Evangelical congregations may be harder to convince about issues but, on the other hand, are more likely to do something about it.
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I think we need to think of lots of ways to communicate. And we tried some at 350. We organised what they called the largest art project in the planet’s history. We do a lot with art and music and things.
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But the truth is that we could win every other fight that we face and if we lose the climate fight, the other victories will be pyrrhic. I don’t think even people who are worried about climate change quite understand the scale and speed with which we’re now shifting the planet.
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I think fracking for gas will reduce the incentive to turn to renewables, and I think it will do a lot of other damage across the countryside.
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Probably nothing that we have ever managed to do quite equals the basic undermining of the physical stability of the planet on which most of the world’s poor people depend.
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There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions.
BILL MCKIBBEN