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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

$Bill McKibben Quote - It now appears that the fracturing of that ice is happening much more quickly than people previously thought, apparently at a slow melt.$

It now appears that the fracturing of that ice is happening much more quickly than people previously thought, apparently at a slow melt.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Happening Ice People
Ice in the West Antarctic and over Greenland, i.e., ice that’s over a rock at the moment, that will raise the level of the sea as it slides into the ocean, putting at risk everyone and everything that lives on the coasts, and that includes an enormous percentage of the world’s people.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Ice Ocean Rocks
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 MCKIBBEN

Comforting Thinking World
Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Global Philosophical Reality Warming
I did very much like [Barack] Obama’s attack on fossil fuel subsidies for fossil fuel companies. We asked for that in demonstrations and petitions, and now we’ll try to push it forward.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fuel Subsidies Trying
At least I sure hope it will – and I see good signs all the time, especially in things like the rise of local agriculture.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Agriculture Least Locals Sure
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Business Energy Use Way Work
Without a movement pressing for change, there’s little hope. We’ve got to work the political system to make this happen fast. The physics and chemistry are daunting. The resources on the other side are very large.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Littles Movement Political
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
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Oil People Summer
But tolerance by itself can be a cover for moral laziness.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Laziness Moral Tolerance
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 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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Coral Dying President Reefs
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
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
[Kids] will grow up into a world that’s difficult and wonderful, and they’ll make the best of it they can, and hopefully help turn it in the best possible direction.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Growing Kids Up World

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

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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

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