Because 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.
BILL MCKIBBENMost of the men and women who vote in Congress each year to continue subsidies have taken campaign donations from big energy companies.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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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.
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We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)
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In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They’ll just ask, “So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?”
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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.
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I’ve always been opposed to population control. In climate terms, population is not the biggest problem going forward.
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I’m not sure I’m a very good source of advice since we’re kind of making this up as we go along.
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We have to transition to new technologies, making it more expensive to continue with the old and polluting technologies and cheaper to go to the clean ones.
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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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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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There are many places where we need to fight important battles to make sure that customers have access to solar.
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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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Where people aren’t as deeply reliant on fossil fuel as in the United States, it’s far easier for them to imagine change on this scale. When you go to Europe, they’re much more ready. They use half the amount of energy per capita that we use. They can imagine using less than that. They see the benefits. They’re ready to go.
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It’s off the charts – and if you don’t believe the scientists, ask the insurance industry, the people we pay to analyze risk in our society.
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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.
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So far the earth has warmed about a degree Fahrenheit globally averaged. That doesn’t seem like an enormous amount but it’s unlike what we would have expected twenty years ago.
BILL MCKIBBEN