We’d won the argument 15 years before, we were just losing the fight. And so it became clear to some of us that we would need to organise to fight, that we weren’t going to win.
BILL MCKIBBENBecause the financial power of the fossil-fuel industry is so great it can, and has, delayed any real action of the climate issues almost everywhere.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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A spiritual voice is urgently needed to underline the fact that global warming is already causing human anguish and mortality in our nation and abroad, and much more will occur in the future without rapid action.
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We couldn’t outspend the fossil fuel industry – they have more money than God.
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The technology we need most badly is the technology of community, the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done.
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These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish. This is a fight not only for the meaning of our individual lives, but for the meaning of our life together.
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It now appears that the fracturing of that ice is happening much more quickly than people previously thought, apparently at a slow melt.
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If one wanted to stigmaitise, that’s how one would do it – lots and lots of people saying “we’re severing our ties”.
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Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality.
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In the States, I think, the syllogism goes like this: ‘free markets solve all problems. Free markets aren’t solving global warming, QED global warming is not a problem’. It’s not a very good syllogism but it’s emotionally comforting if you’re in that world.
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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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We spend a lot of time playing defence against bad things. So, in the US, one of the focusses has been this huge Keystone Pipeline project, another has been the coal ports on the Pacific Ocean.
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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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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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The idea that China and India will just abandon climate action is not true, because they’re doing it for more reasons than we are.
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The movers and shakers on our planet, aren’t the billionaires and generals, they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing and revitalising.
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We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)
BILL MCKIBBEN