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 MCKIBBENAll the science in the last few years, or almost all of it, really serves to show that the [climate] effects are larger and more rapid than we had thought even a decade ago.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic.
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If it’s wrong to wreck the planet, it’s wrong to profit from the wreckage.
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We have to get our states to adopt what are called “renewable portfolio standards” pledging to use a lot of renewable energy by 2015 or 2020. We have to work with businesses and shops to get them engaged in the same way.
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It is unbelievably sad and ironic that the first victims of global warming are almost all going to come from places that are producing virtually none of the problem.
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When you are in a hole, stop digging!
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I think that so far the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry has trumped all else.
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Those of us in the west have figured out a lot of ways to damage the lives of poor people in this country and around the world over the years.
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The latest computer modeling I’ve seen indicates that at mid-century, there might be 150 million people classified as “environmental refugees.”
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All things considered, the internet seems fairly environmentally benign to me. The last stats I saw showed you could do 1,000 Google searches for the gas it took to drive six-tenths of a mile. But the internet can’t substitute for real connection and community.
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The world is on fire, and I’m doing my best to help steer the firetruck.
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Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free.
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In the scientific community, the debate is over, for all intents and purposes, about whether or not the planet is heating and who is causing it. In fact, it’s more or less been over since 1995.
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I think the same around the world. At 350.org we just trained 500 young people from around the world in Istanbul for a few weeks. We had 5000 applications from young people who wanted to be part of the training. There’s real hunger out there.
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Environmentalism, I’d always been told, was just rich white people.
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The fact that Washington has been a complete logjam for anything for the last six years has got to change because we need to have federal policy that really allows us to move quickly and nimbly.
BILL MCKIBBEN