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When we work all over the planet, it’s mostly poor and black and brown and young people, because that’s mostly what the world [environmentalism] is.

Bill McKibben

I’m far less a leader than a writer.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Leader Less Writer
I can’t tell how moving it is to open my email and see a picture of 1,500 Buddhist monks and nuns in the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh forming a human 350 against the backdrop of the melting glaciers. This is not their fault, and yet they’re stepping up to be part of the solution.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Buddhist Email Moving
There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Christmas Holiday Reflection
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
I’m guessing the most efficient way would be to transfer an awful lot of technology, but also direct aid to deal with climate emergencies already underway. Hillary [Clinton] has already said $100 billion a year would be appropriate.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Technology Years
Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Global Philosophical Reality Warming
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Istanbul Real Thinking
A world where one tenth of the population gets to be extremely wealthy, and six tenths very poor, is not, in the long run, a stable place.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Future Long Running
The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Divergent Law Yield
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 reality, climate change is actually the biggest thing thats going on every single day.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Change Climate Reality
Certainly, packets of sea ice, in say the Arctic, which have failed to fully reform in the last couple of years.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Couple Ice Years
The habits of the West in terms of consumption.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Habit Term West
[The Maldives] they’ve become deeply politically engaged – just for instance, the president taught his whole cabinet to scuba dive so they could hold an underwater cabinet meeting along their dying coral reef and pass a 350 resolution to send to the U.N.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Coral Dying President Reefs
We have built a greenhouse, a human greenhouse, where once there bloomed a sweet and wild garden.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Biodiversity Garden Sweet
The thing about global warming is that you can address it on a great number of levels – in fact you have to.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Addresses Levels Numbers

When we work all over the planet, it’s mostly poor and black and brown and young people, because that’s mostly what the world [environmentalism] is.

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When we work all over the planet, it’s mostly poor and black and brown and young people, because that’s mostly what the world [environmentalism] is.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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