There is nothing that will discombobulate and degrade [more] the lives of people near the margin on this planet. You don’t have to look much past New Orleans to see that. Who took the hit? Some of the poorest people in the U.S.
BILL MCKIBBENI’m not sure I’m a very good source of advice since we’re kind of making this up as we go along.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free.
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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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A voluntary simplification of life-styles is not beyond our abilities, but it is probably outside our desires.
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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.
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We couldn’t outspend the fossil fuel industry – they have more money than God.
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Where people aren’t as deeply reliant on fossil fuel as in the United States, it’s far easier for them to imagine change on this scale. When you go to Europe, they’re much more ready. They use half the amount of energy per capita that we use. They can imagine using less than that. They see the benefits. They’re ready to go.
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On the top of these mile thick slabs of ice the water is percolating quickly to the base and greasing the skids, as it were, for the slide of that ice into the ocean.
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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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Those of us in the west have figured out a lot of ways to damage the lives of poor people in this country and around the world over the years.
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A price on carbon sufficient to keep 80% of current reserves underground, rebated directly to citizens.
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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.
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It is unbelievably sad and ironic that the first victims of global warming are almost all going to come from places that are producing virtually none of the problem.
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[The Maldives] they’ve become deeply politically engaged – just for instance, the president taught his whole cabinet to scuba dive so they could hold an underwater cabinet meeting along their dying coral reef and pass a 350 resolution to send to the U.N.
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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.
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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