[Barack Obama] done some good things, he’s done a couple of bad things. He’s obsessed with this all of the above energy policy and… lots and lots of drilling in the States, so he’s been weak on it.
BILL MCKIBBENIt’s off the charts – and if you don’t believe the scientists, ask the insurance industry, the people we pay to analyze risk in our society.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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The essential thing we need to understand is that the climate crisis is not some future threat, but a very present peril, the biggest one humans have ever encountered. Until we understand that, we’ll dawdle.
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I guess the underlying principle might be, don’t make it too easy for them to stereotype you.
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We have to get our states to adopt what are called “renewable portfolio standards” pledging to use a lot of renewable energy by 2015 or 2020. We have to work with businesses and shops to get them engaged in the same way.
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There’s always the danger that people will simply sign online petitions, the way they used to just mail in checks, and there’s the greater possibility we’ll just spend our whole lives staring at screens and never get anything done.
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According to new research emerging from many quarters that our continued devotion to growth above all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively and individually
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The most blatant examples are increased power and frequency in hurricanes and the increased depth and frequency of heat waves.
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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.
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The Arctic and the Antarctic are melting quickly. We may have waited too long to get started. But this is a day for optimism because the battle is fully joined, and the idea that big oil is unbeatable is no longer true.
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If it’s wrong to wreck the planet, it’s wrong to profit from the wreckage.
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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.
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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.
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If we continue to think of ourselves mostly as consumers, it’s going to be very hard to bring our environmental troubles under control. But it’s also going to be very hard to live the rounded and joyful lives that could be ours. This is a subversive volume in all the best ways!
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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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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?”
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The world is on fire, and I’m doing my best to help steer the firetruck.
BILL MCKIBBEN