Home / Authors / Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben Quotes

Environmentalist

Bill McKibben, born on December 8, 1960, is an American environmentalist renowned for his deep research and advocacy on climate change issues. His work highlights the impact of human activities on the Earth, particularly the destruction caused by industrialization and consumerism.

Filter quotes by topic

All People World Thinking Climate Ifs Years Fuel Climate Change Fossil Fuel Fossils Planets Global Warming Needs Problem Way Carbon Energy Humans Industry Real

Famous Bill McKibben Quotes

“Human beings any one of us, and our species as a whole are not all-important, not at the center of the world. That is the one essential piece of information, the one great secret, offered by any encounter with the woods or the mountains or the ocean or any wilderness or chunk of nature or patch of night sky.”

World Humans Important Whole Night Human Beings Secret Pieces Sky Information Mountain Essentials Ocean Species Woods Encounters Wilderness Patches Night Sky Chunks Center Of The World

Book:The end of nature

Source: The end of nature

“A spiritual voice is urgently needed to underline the fact that global warming is already causing human anguish and mortality in our nation and abroad, and much more will occur in the future without rapid action.”

Humans Facts Action Spiritual Nations Voice Needed Global Warming Mortality Anguish Rapids

Author:Bill McKibben

“We have built a greenhouse, a human greenhouse, where once there bloomed a sweet and wild garden.”

Humans Sweet Built Garden Greenhouses Biodiversity

Author:Bill McKibben

“If there's horrible flooding in Pakistan or a horrible heat wave in Texas, we're no longer able to call it an act of God, or a natural disaster, or something like that, the way we could have through all of human history until 35 or 40 years ago.”

Ifs Way Years Humans Able Natural Years Ago Wave Disaster Horrible Heat Texas Pakistan Human History Natural Disaster Flooding Heat Wave

Author:Bill McKibben

“Fossil fuel is very seductive stuff. [John Maynard] Keynes once said that, as far as he could tell, the average standard of living from the beginning of human history to the middle of the eighteenth century had perhaps doubled. Not much had changed, and then we found coal and gas and oil and everything changed. We're reaping the result of that, both ecologically and socially.”

Humans Said Found Stuff Results Middle Century Changed Standards Average Oil Fuel Gas Coal Fossils Human History Fossil Fuel Seductive Standards Of Living Keynes

Author:Bill McKibben

“I can't tell how moving it is to open my email and see a picture of 1,500 Buddhist monks and nuns in the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh forming a human 350 against the backdrop of the melting glaciers. This is not their fault, and yet they're stepping up to be part of the solution.”

Humans I Can Moving Solutions Faults Kingdoms Buddhist Email Monk Melting Nun Glaciers Backdrop Buddhist Monk Ladakh

Author:Bill McKibben

“I think communities of faith are extremely important in this question. I think that all faith communities share a common and unusual distinction in our time of being the only institutions left that can posit some goal other than accumulation for human existence. I think that's enormously important because it is that drive for consumption more than anything else that fuels the environmental devastation around us.”

“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.”

Needs Humans Essentials Crisis Threat Climate Peril

Author:Bill McKibben

“I think it's going to be a tough century; I also think people are starting to rise up, and that a growth in human solidarity will help compensate for the loss of margin in the natural world that will make life harder.”

People Thinking World Humans Helping Growth Natural Loss Century Tough Harder Starting Solidarity Natural World Margins

Author:Bill McKibben

“Everybody was cratered after Copenhagen. If the movie had worked the way that it should have, if it had been scripted by Holywood, the world would have come together and addressed the biggest problem it ever had faced and delegates would have embraced each other, and it all would have been a good happy scene instead of the complete farce and debacle that it turned into - maybe in certain ways, an absolute low point for human diplomacy.”

Ifs World Way Should Humans Has Beens Problem Together Certain Scene Lows Should Have Absolutes Diplomacy Delegates Farce Copenhagen Low Points Debacles

Author: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.”

Humans Real Hands Physics Global Warming Chemistry Negotiation Bargains

Author:Bill McKibben

“We've built a new Earth. It's not as nice as the old one; it's the greatest mistake humans have ever made, one that we will pay for literally forever.”

Humans Made Earth Pay Mistake Forever Environment Nice Built New Earth

Author:Bill McKibben

“The religious environmental movement is potentially key to dealing with the greatest problem humans have ever faced, and it has never been captured with more breadth and force than in RENEWAL. I hope this movie is screened in church basements and synagogue social halls across the country, and that it moves many more people of faith off the fence and into action.”

People Humans Country Problem Action Moving Force Social Church Religious Movement Keys Environmental Halls Fence Renewal Captured Basements Breadth Synagogue

Author:Bill McKibben

“We believe that we live in the 'age of information,' that there has been an information 'explosion,' an information 'revolution.' While in a certain narrow sense this is the case, in many important ways just the opposite is true. We also live at a moment of deep ignorance, when vital knowledge that humans have always possessed about who we are and where we live seems beyond our reach. An Unenlightenment. An age of missing information.”

Way Believe Humans Has Beens Important Moments Seems Age Certain Cases Missing Information Ignorance Revolution Opposites Who We Are Possessed Explosions

Book:The end of nature

Source: The end of nature

“You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in D.C. in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We're not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history.”

“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.”

Needs Humans Done One Thing Movement Planets Bigger Climate Climate Change

Author:Bill McKibben