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 MCKIBBENSo far the earth has warmed about a degree Fahrenheit globally averaged. That doesn’t seem like an enormous amount but it’s unlike what we would have expected twenty years ago.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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We’d like to get the fossil fuel industry on the back foot for a while, having to deal with us.
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It now appears that the fracturing of that ice is happening much more quickly than people previously thought, apparently at a slow melt.
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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.
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I’ve always been opposed to population control. In climate terms, population is not the biggest problem going forward.
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The thing about global warming is that you can address it on a great number of levels – in fact you have to.
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All things considered, the internet seems fairly environmentally benign to me. The last stats I saw showed you could do 1,000 Google searches for the gas it took to drive six-tenths of a mile. But the internet can’t substitute for real connection and community.
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At least I sure hope it will – and I see good signs all the time, especially in things like the rise of local agriculture.
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The habits of the West in terms of consumption.
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The technology we need most badly is the technology of community, the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done.
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There is basically no one not on the payroll of Exxon Mobil or coal companies who any longer contend that this is not something to worry about.
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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.
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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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When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic.
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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.
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Renewable energy is far more labor-intensive than fossil fuel production.
BILL MCKIBBEN







