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The habits of the West in terms of consumption.

Bill McKibben

What makes us different? We’re the creature that can decide not to do something that we are capable of doing.
BILL MCKIBBEN

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

might Principles Stereotype
The habits of the West in terms of consumption.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Habit Term West
We just see a sort of cascading amount of data of the damage that is being done by those increased temperatures.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Damage Data Done
The latest computer modeling I’ve seen indicates that at mid-century, there might be 150 million people classified as “environmental refugees.”
BILL MCKIBBEN

Environmental might People
To me the analogy [to climate change] is… doctors worry a lot about cholesterol. And if you go to the doctor, and the doctor says “oh, your life would be happier if you ate a different diet and exercised” people pay no attention.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Doctors People Worry
In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They’ll just ask, “So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?”
BILL MCKIBBEN

Cliffs Crisis Euro Years
Very few people on earth ever get to say: ‘I am doing, right now, the most important thing I could possibly be doing.’ If you’ll join this fight that’s what you’ll get to say
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fighting Important People
We’re going to need that kind of movement, because the fossil fuel industry is a sprawling adversary – at work everywhere, its tentacles in everybody’s politics, invulnerable, I think, to direct frontal assault, but probably more brittle than it guesses if we come at it from all sides.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Movement Needs Thinking
A voluntary simplification of life-styles is not beyond our abilities, but it is probably outside our desires.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Ability Desire Style
Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Insoluble Problem
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
We had other currencies that we could find work in – the currencies of movements: passion, spirit, creativity.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Creativity Movement Passion
In fact, corporations are the infants of our society – they know very little except how to grow (though they’re very good at that), and they howl when you set limits. Socializing them is the work of politics. It’s about time we took it up again.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Corporations Littles Our Society
We spend a lot of time playing defence against bad things. So, in the US, one of the focusses has been this huge Keystone Pipeline project, another has been the coal ports on the Pacific Ocean.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Coal Ocean Pipeline

The habits of the West in terms of consumption.

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The habits of the West in terms of consumption.

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