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

Bill McKibben

The habits of the West in terms of consumption.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Habit Term West
If the Holy Spirit is capable of the heavy lifting required to get Pat Robertson to change his mind, then that strikes me as a very good sign.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Holy Mind Spirit
everyone knows, at some level, that the sharp line between “good weather” and “bad weather” is a fiction, that we need rain as surely as we need sun.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Needs Rain Weather
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
I guess the underlying principle might be, don’t make it too easy for them to stereotype you.
BILL MCKIBBEN

might Principles Stereotype
$Bill McKibben Quote - My guess is that liberating the fossil fuel industry to frack anywhere they want will drive down the rate at which we’re converting to sun and wind. And it’s entirely a rate problem at this point.$

My guess is that liberating the fossil fuel industry to frack anywhere they want will drive down the rate at which we’re converting to sun and wind. And it’s entirely a rate problem at this point.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fuel Want Wind
Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Insoluble Problem
When you have solar panels, your electricity gets there for free, no one’s figured out how to meter the sun yet. And that’s good.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Electricity Meter Sun
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Coal Oil Wind
The world is on fire, and I’m doing my best to help steer the firetruck.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fire Helping World
TV makes it so easy to postpone living for another half hour.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Country Easy Half Make Tvs
If [a student’s] college’s endowment portfolio has fossil-fuel stock, then their educations are being subsidized by investments that guarantee they won’t have much of a planet on which to make use of their degree.
BILL MCKIBBEN

College Degrees Guarantees
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
BILL MCKIBBEN

Balance Growth Research
But the truth is that we could win every other fight that we face and if we lose the climate fight, the other victories will be pyrrhic. I don’t think even people who are worried about climate change quite understand the scale and speed with which we’re now shifting the planet.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fighting Thinking Winning
A world where one tenth of the population gets to be extremely wealthy, and six tenths very poor, is not, in the long run, a stable place.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Future Long Running
We had other currencies that we could find work in – the currencies of movements: passion, spirit, creativity.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Creativity Movement Passion
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
BILL MCKIBBEN

Becoming Late Trying
I think the best way is to keep stressing, that, as we build out a new energy system, one of the best things about it, if we do it right, will be that it will be more local, more democratic, more distributed, and, in the long run, much more economically sensible.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Running Stress Thinking
I’m guessing the most efficient way would be to transfer an awful lot of technology, but also direct aid to deal with climate emergencies already underway. Hillary [Clinton] has already said $100 billion a year would be appropriate.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Technology Years
No one is strong enough – given the magnitude of the task, everyone has to step up their game.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Games Strong Tasks
All the science in the last few years, or almost all of it, really serves to show that the [climate] effects are larger and more rapid than we had thought even a decade ago.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Lasts Years
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 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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Denial Thinking
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
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

Smart Squares Uprising
The thing about global warming is that you can address it on a great number of levels – in fact you have to.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Addresses Levels Numbers
The idea that China and India will just abandon climate action is not true, because they’re doing it for more reasons than we are.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Action Ideas India

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

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

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