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I think the world on the other side of fossil fuel is more local – the logic of sun and wind is diffuse and spread out, not concentrated like the logic of coal and oil.

Bill McKibben

There is an urgent need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, dramatically reduce wasted energy, and significantly shift our power supplies from oil, coal, and natural gas to wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Coal Oil Wind
Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem, for two reasons. One is the habits of the West in terms of consumption. The other is the incredible iniquity between poor countries and rich countries on this planet.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Country Rich Countries Two
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Leader Scare Way
Especially in recent years, the more and more we understand what we are doing, the more we have the science to tell us what we’re doing, the fact that we continue to do it without taking steps to address it strikes me as, among many other things, irreverent in an extreme.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Addresses Facts Years
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

Clean Technology Transition
There is nothing that will discombobulate and degrade [more] the lives of people near the margin on this planet. You don’t have to look much past New Orleans to see that. Who took the hit? Some of the poorest people in the U.S.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Country New Past People
The habits of the West in terms of consumption.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Habit Term West
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

Black People World
We’d like to get the fossil fuel industry on the back foot for a while, having to deal with us.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Feet Fossils Fuel
But tolerance by itself can be a cover for moral laziness.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Laziness Moral Tolerance
All the signs of incipient activism and uprising, from Tahrir square to Zuccotti Park to [the recent] shutdown of the Internet to protest web censorship. People are getting smart and getting connected.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Smart Squares Uprising
You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet
BILL MCKIBBEN

Balance Fuel Healthy
I think the world on the other side of fossil fuel is more local – the logic of sun and wind is diffuse and spread out, not concentrated like the logic of coal and oil.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Oil Thinking Wind
Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Insoluble Problem
Look – every time is the wrong time and the perfect time to have a kid, and you just do it when you can.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Kids Looks Perfect
It was huge mistake to avoid working with the rest of the world because (a) we’re the largest source of the problem: 4% of us who are in the U.S. produce 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Mistake Problem World

I think the world on the other side of fossil fuel is more local – the logic of sun and wind is diffuse and spread out, not concentrated like the logic of coal and oil.

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I think the world on the other side of fossil fuel is more local – the logic of sun and wind is diffuse and spread out, not concentrated like the logic of coal and oil.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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