In the scientific community, the debate is over, for all intents and purposes, about whether or not the planet is heating and who is causing it. In fact, it’s more or less been over since 1995.
BILL MCKIBBENIf 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!
More Bill McKibben Quotes
-
-
We couldn’t outspend the fossil fuel industry – they have more money than God.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
I think we need to think of lots of ways to communicate. And we tried some at 350. We organised what they called the largest art project in the planet’s history. We do a lot with art and music and things.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
I’ve always been opposed to population control. In climate terms, population is not the biggest problem going forward.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
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 -
I’m probably the wrong person to ask. My partner in much of this work [climate movement], who really came up with the divestment campaign with me, Naomi Klein, I think has written powerfully about this.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
Look – every time is the wrong time and the perfect time to have a kid, and you just do it when you can.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
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 -
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
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.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
The thing about global warming is that you can address it on a great number of levels – in fact you have to.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
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 -
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 -
I think that so far the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry has trumped all else.
BILL MCKIBBEN -
Probably nothing that we have ever managed to do quite equals the basic undermining of the physical stability of the planet on which most of the world’s poor people depend.
BILL MCKIBBEN