It was huge mistake to avoid working with the rest of the world because (a) we’re the largest source of the problem: 4% of us who are in the U.S. produce 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide.
BILL MCKIBBENI guess the underlying principle might be, don’t make it too easy for them to stereotype you.
More Bill McKibben Quotes
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Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It’s our reality.
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There are so many symptoms of this disease it’s hard to know where to start to catalogue them, but just look at the effects on hydrology – on the way water moves around the planet.
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It drives me crazy to see so much of this planet’s life so casually endangered. The first steps are so easy (drive smaller cars, for instance) that it’s very hard to understand why we haven’t taken them. But I know that this is the issue our generation will be judged by.
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If you were running a solar company you may be okay – you may be able to keep growing. The question for physics is: Can you grow fast enough to begin to catch up with the damage?
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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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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 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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We don’t know exactly where all the tipping points are in the physical world for inescapable damage, but we’re clearly reaching close to some of them.
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We had other currencies that we could find work in – the currencies of movements: passion, spirit, creativity.
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The ability to write compelling emails may be the single most useful talent an organizer can possess.
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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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“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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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.
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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.
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Certainly, packets of sea ice, in say the Arctic, which have failed to fully reform in the last couple of years.
BILL MCKIBBEN