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 MCKIBBENWe’d won the argument 15 years before, we were just losing the fight. And so it became clear to some of us that we would need to organise to fight, that we weren’t going to win.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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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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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 is basically no one not on the payroll of Exxon Mobil or coal companies who any longer contend that this is not something to worry about.
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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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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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Where people aren’t as deeply reliant on fossil fuel as in the United States, it’s far easier for them to imagine change on this scale. When you go to Europe, they’re much more ready. They use half the amount of energy per capita that we use. They can imagine using less than that. They see the benefits. They’re ready to go.
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I think we need to go straight at the fossil fuel industry.
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We’re not at the point of trying to stop global warming; it’s too late for that. We’re trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity
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[The Maldives] they’ve become deeply politically engaged – just for instance, the president taught his whole cabinet to scuba dive so they could hold an underwater cabinet meeting along their dying coral reef and pass a 350 resolution to send to the U.N.
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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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My house is covered in solar panels, I’m a great believer in all this – we all should be doing this.
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The latest computer modeling I’ve seen indicates that at mid-century, there might be 150 million people classified as “environmental refugees.”
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I’ve always been opposed to population control. In climate terms, population is not the biggest problem going forward.
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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