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 MCKIBBENThose of us in the west have figured out a lot of ways to damage the lives of poor people in this country and around the world over the years.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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I think that it is impossible to think of a threat to social justice greater than what we are doing to the earth’s atmosphere at the moment.
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I don’t spend a huge amount of time fixated on climate denial because I don’t think that their objections, though sometimes couched in science, are based in science. I think they’re based in ideology. And I don’t think there’s anything you can do.
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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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For those of us who worry more about working people than about windfall profits for oil companies, it may net out. A better question is: what does it do to our economy if we manage to overheat the earth? This summer’s drought provides a small taste.
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We celebrate the birth of one who told us to give everything to the poor by giving each other motorized tie racks.
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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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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.
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Colonialism of one kind or another, imperialism of one kind or another, and slavery, and on and on and on.
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Environmentalism, I’d always been told, was just rich white people.
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Renewable energy is far more labor-intensive than fossil fuel production.
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There are so many symptoms of this disease it’s hard to know where to start to catalogue them, but just look at the effects on hydrology – on the way water moves around the planet.
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On the top of these mile thick slabs of ice the water is percolating quickly to the base and greasing the skids, as it were, for the slide of that ice into the ocean.
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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.
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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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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 MCKIBBEN