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I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.

Bill McKibben

The real negotiation is between humans on the one hand and chemistry and physics on the other. And chemistry and physics, unfortunately, don’t bargain.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Chemistry Hands Real
A price on carbon sufficient to keep 80% of current reserves underground, rebated directly to citizens.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Carbon Citizens Currents
From some tiny portion of the wealth the west accumulated in a hundred years of filling the atmosphere with carbon.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Atmosphere Tiny Years
The latest computer modeling I’ve seen indicates that at mid-century, there might be 150 million people classified as “environmental refugees.”
BILL MCKIBBEN

Environmental might People
The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Divergent Law Yield
I guess the underlying principle might be, don’t make it too easy for them to stereotype you.
BILL MCKIBBEN

might Principles Stereotype
Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on this planet. The one thing that needs to be bigger is our movement to stop it.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Climate Done Needs
We have to transition to new technologies, making it more expensive to continue with the old and polluting technologies and cheaper to go to the clean ones.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Clean Technology Transition
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

Climate Essentials Needs
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
Colonialism of one kind or another, imperialism of one kind or another, and slavery, and on and on and on.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Colonialism Kind Slavery
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 MCKIBBEN

Community Facts Purpose
Advent: the time to listen for footsteps – you can’t hear footsteps when you’re running yourself.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Advent Christmas Country Running
The world is on fire, and I’m doing my best to help steer the firetruck.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Fire Helping World
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
“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.
BILL MCKIBBEN

Future People Two

I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.

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Popular Authors

I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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