• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

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

Popular Authors

Marilyn Monroe Paulo Coelho Abraham Lincoln C. S. Lewis Khalil Gibran Charlie Chaplin Gautama Buddha Isaac Newton

| Next

More Bill McKibben Quotes

• 

  we use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  ConfusionLonelinessUse
• 

  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.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  DamageTippingWorld
• 

  I’m probably the wrong person to ask. My partner in much of this work [climate movement], who really came up with the divestment campaign with me, Naomi Klein, I think has written powerfully about this.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  ClimatePersonThinkingWrong
• 

  To me, it’s more important to take the 60-70% of people who really understand that there’s a problem [of climate change] and get some percentage of them active than to try and stamp out the last embers of pre-scientific thought.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  ImportantPeopleTrying
• 

  [Kids] will grow up into a world that’s difficult and wonderful, and they’ll make the best of it they can, and hopefully help turn it in the best possible direction.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  GrowingKidsUpWorld
• 

  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.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  ComfortingThinkingWorld
• 

  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
  JobsMorningOptimistic
• 

  Pat Robertson had decided that global warming was real and we need to do something about it struck me as powerful evidence that the Holy Spirit is hard at work in this question.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  NeedsPowerfulReal
• 

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

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  CoupleIceYears
• 

  I think we need to go straight at the fossil fuel industry.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  FuelNeedsThinking
• 

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

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  AbilityDesireStyle
• 

  The ability to write compelling emails may be the single most useful talent an organizer can possess.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  ClimateEmailWriting
• 

  We celebrate the birth of one who told us to give everything to the poor by giving each other motorized tie racks.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  ChristmasGivingTies
• 

  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.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  CleanTechnologyTransition
• 

  Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  ClimateInsolubleProblem
• 

  Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on this planet. The one thing that needs to be bigger is our movement to stop it.

  BILL MCKIBBEN
  ClimateDoneNeeds