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1. black
2. grey
3. blue
4. red
5. brown
6. white

Our weird problem is an abundance of resources and a shortage of hard economic reasons not to use them.

Bill McKibben

Related Topics

AbundanceProblemUse

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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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  There’s always the danger that people will simply sign online petitions, the way they used to just mail in checks, and there’s the greater possibility we’ll just spend our whole lives staring at screens and never get anything done.

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  We’ll look for almost any reason not to change our attitudes; the inertia of the established order is powerful. If we can think of a plausible, or even implausible, reason to discount environmental warnings, we will.

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  A voluntary simplification of life-styles is not beyond our abilities, but it is probably outside our desires.

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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 think fracking for gas will reduce the incentive to turn to renewables, and I think it will do a lot of other damage across the countryside.

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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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  If you were running a solar company you may be okay – you may be able to keep growing. The question for physics is: Can you grow fast enough to begin to catch up with the damage?

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  We have to figure out ways to scare and entice our leaders more effectively than the fossil fuel industry has managed to scare and entice them. They’ve got the big checkbooks. We’ve got to have the big crowd.

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  The most blatant examples are increased power and frequency in hurricanes and the increased depth and frequency of heat waves.

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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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  I guess the underlying principle might be, don’t make it too easy for them to stereotype you.

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  Between [Speaker of the House] Paul Ryan, [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump’s team, I don’t see a lot of openings for making real progress.

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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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  We don’t know exactly where all the tipping points are in the physical world for inescapable damage, but we’re clearly reaching close to some of them.

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