When you are in a hole, stop digging!
BILL MCKIBBENWe’ll look for almost any reason not to change our attitudes; the inertia of the established order is powerful. If we can think of a plausible, or even implausible, reason to discount environmental warnings, we will.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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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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To me, it’s more important to take the 60-70% of people who really understand that there’s a problem [of climate change] and get some percentage of them active than to try and stamp out the last embers of pre-scientific thought.
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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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We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)
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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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I think that so far the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry has trumped all else.
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Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem, for two reasons. One is the habits of the West in terms of consumption. The other is the incredible iniquity between poor countries and rich countries on this planet.
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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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“Science,” of course, replaced “God” as a guiding concept for many people after Darwin. Or, really, the two were rolled up into a sticky ball. To some degree this was mindless worship of a miracle future, the pursuit of which has landed us in the fix we now inhabit.
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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.
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Pat Robertson had decided that global warming was real and we need to do something about it struck me as powerful evidence that the Holy Spirit is hard at work in this question.
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[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.
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I think the same around the world. At 350.org we just trained 500 young people from around the world in Istanbul for a few weeks. We had 5000 applications from young people who wanted to be part of the training. There’s real hunger out there.
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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.
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No one is strong enough – given the magnitude of the task, everyone has to step up their game.
BILL MCKIBBEN