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The Arctic and the Antarctic are melting quickly. We may have waited too long to get started. But this is a day for optimism because the battle is fully joined, and the idea that big oil is unbeatable is no longer true.

Bill McKibben

We’re not at the point of trying to stop global warming; it’s too late for that. We’re trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity
BILL MCKIBBEN

Becoming Late Trying
Our weird problem is an abundance of resources and a shortage of hard economic reasons not to use them.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Abundance Problem Use
Probably more than anything else, the place that we really see the effects of the power of even the relatively mild temperature increases so far is in the melting of everything frozen on the planet.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Frozen Melting Temperature
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Community Connection Movement
The technology we need most badly is the technology of community, the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Community Peace Technology
We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fossils Fuel Math
I’m not sure I’m a very good source of advice since we’re kind of making this up as we go along.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Advice Kind Source
The world is on fire, and I’m doing my best to help steer the firetruck.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fire Helping World
I think that so far the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry has trumped all else.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fuel Political Thinking
I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Jobs Morning Optimistic
In the last two years 24 countries have set new all-time temperature records. We’ve seen flooding on an epic scale in every continent .
BILL MCKIBBEN

Country Epic Years
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Essentials Needs
Stop thinking about global warming as a future threat and understand it instead as a present emergency, one that requires a far stronger policy response than we’d imagined.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Emergencies Stronger Thinking
For those of us who worry more about working people than about windfall profits for oil companies, it may net out. A better question is: what does it do to our economy if we manage to overheat the earth? This summer’s drought provides a small taste.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Oil People Summer
TV makes it so easy to postpone living for another half hour.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Country Easy Half Make Tvs
I don’t think the fossil fuel industry will listen, not until we build up a lot of pressure. I do think we can persuade some shareholders that they don’t want to be involved in this enterprise.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fuel Thinking Want

The Arctic and the Antarctic are melting quickly. We may have waited too long to get started. But this is a day for optimism because the battle is fully joined, and the idea that big oil is unbeatable is no longer true.

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Popular Authors

The Arctic and the Antarctic are melting quickly. We may have waited too long to get started. But this is a day for optimism because the battle is fully joined, and the idea that big oil is unbeatable is no longer true.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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