bill-mckibben Quotes About ifs

“The Old Testament contains in many places, but especially in the book of Job, one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man. The argument gets at the heart of what the loss of nature will mean to us....God seems to be insisting that we are not the center of the universe, that he is quite happy if it rains where there are no people - that God is quite happy with places where there are no people, a radical departure from our most ingrained notions.”

“We are altering the most basic forces of the planet's surface - the content of the sunlight, the temperature and aridity - and that brings out the most powerful questions about who is in charge. If you wanted to give a name to this theological problem, I think you could say that we are engaged in decreation.”

Ifs Thinking Giving Problem Wanted Names Force Powerful Planets Environmental Surface Engaged Most Powerful Sunlight Temperature Theological

Author:Bill McKibben

“These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish. This is a fight not only for the meaning of our individual lives, but for the meaning of our life together.”

Ifs May Together Fighting Individual Technology Our Lives Inevitable New Technology Being Free Individual Life Life Together

Author:Bill McKibben

“If we continue to think of ourselves mostly as consumers, it's going to be very hard to bring our environmental troubles under control. But it's also going to be very hard to live the rounded and joyful lives that could be ours. This is a subversive volume in all the best ways!”

Ifs Thinking Way Hard Growth Trouble Environmental Best Way Consumers Joyful Consumption Volume Our Environment Subversive All The Best Joyful Life

Author:Bill McKibben

“If we were built, what were we built for? ... Why do we have this amazing collection of sinews, senses, and sensibilities? Were we really designed in order to recline on the couch, extending our wrists perpendicular to the floor so we can flick through the television's offerings? Were we really designed in order to shop some more so the economy can grow some more? Or were we designed to experience the great epiphanies that come from contact with each other and with the natural world?”

Ifs World Order Grows Natural Economy Television Built Senses Contact Collections Shops Offering Sensibility Consumerism Natural World Couches Wrists Epiphany Overconsumption Extending

Author:Bill McKibben

“There's no huge mystery. If you dig up huge amounts of carbon, huge amounts of ancient biology, hundreds of millions of year's worth of ancient biology, and flush it into the atmosphere in a matter of decades, then it stands to reason that we're going to have enormous effects, and now we can see those effects all around us.”

Ifs Years Matter Reason Millions Mystery Effects Huge Amount Ancient Decades Enormous Atmosphere Biology Carbon

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

“When you go to China and the developing world, people understand more clearly the dangers that are coming at them because they're living closer to the margin. They don't have any of the false sense of invulnerability that Americans have. People from developing countries also feel that it's their right, if you're talking in terms of justice, to use fossil fuels like we did for a hundred years to get rich. It's hard for them to give up that vision.”

“Often when I'm on TV, they'll ask what are the three most important things for people to do. I know they want me to say that people should change their light bulbs. I say the number one thing is to organize politically; number two, do some political organizing; number three, get together with your neighbors and organize; and then if you have energy left over from all of that, change the light bulb.”

“If you consider that there are a million people forced out of their homes by Katrina, multiply that by 150, and then stick those people in countries who, as inconceivable as it seems, are less prepared than we were to deal with the whole thing.”

People Ifs Country Whole Home Seems Deals Millions Sticks Prepared Katrina

Author:Bill McKibben

“If you look at the polling data, long before anyone had thought about Iraq, it was the [George W.] Bush Administration's decision in the first few weeks in its tenure in office to abnegate the Kyoto treaties that set our international perception into a nose-dive. People around the world looked on in amazement as the biggest part of the problem decided it wasn't going to make any effort to help with the solution.”

“If the Holy Spirit is capable of the heavy lifting required to get Pat Robertson to change his mind, then that strikes me as a very good sign.”

Ifs Mind Spirit Holy Capable Very Good Heavy Strikes Holy Spirit Lifting Heavy Lifting

Author:Bill McKibben

“For those of us who worry more about working people than about windfall profits for oil companies, it may net out. A better question is: what does it do to our economy if we manage to overheat the earth? This summer's drought provides a small taste.”

People Ifs May Doe Earth Company Worry Economy Taste Summer Profit Oil Manage Drought Oil Companies

Author:Bill McKibben

“It's off the charts - and if you don't believe the scientists, ask the insurance industry, the people we pay to analyze risk in our society.”

People Ifs Believe Asks Pay Risk Industry Scientist Don't Believe Our Society

Author:Bill McKibben

“We'll never get there if we let the climate crisis bloom unchecked, so for the moment the key is to organize, organize, organize!”

Ifs Moments Keys Crisis Climate Organize

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

“Speaking for me, I think the odds of bankrupting Exxon are pretty small, but I think the odds of politically bankrupting them are higher. I think if we can use this as a vehicle to get out the analysis that these guys have 3-5 times as much carbon in the ground as the most conservative government thinks would be safe to burn, then that politically stigmatises them, makes them into the rogue industry that they are.”

Ifs Thinking Use Government Would Be Guy Industry Higher Safe Conservative Analysis Vehicle Odds Carbon Rogues

Author:Bill McKibben

“If one wanted to stigmaitise, that's how one would do it - lots and lots of people saying "we're severing our ties".”

People Ifs Wanted Ties

Author:Bill McKibben

“If Apple is enslaving Chinese to make its iPhones, you don't need to eat the i-Phone, you need to make sure that Apple is paying a living wage to someone, and then it adds a dollar to the cost of iphones, and everybody's cool.”

Ifs Needs Cost Dollars Add Phones Chinese Apples Iphone Living Wage

Author:Bill McKibben

“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.”

People Ifs Different Would Be Pay Attention Worry Doctors Climate Climate Change Diets Analogies Cholesterol

Author:Bill McKibben

“If we had about 100 years, that sort of slow cultural conversion would be exactly the thing to do. But physics is calling the tune here. We've got to respond to a timetable that physics has set for us.”

Ifs Years Would Be Calling Physics Conversion Things To Do Tunes Timetables

Author:Bill McKibben

“I think the best way is to keep stressing, that, as we build out a new energy system, one of the best things about it, if we do it right, will be that it will be more local, more democratic, more distributed, and, in the long run, much more economically sensible.”

Ifs Thinking Way Long Running Energy Stress Democratic Locals Best Way Best Things Sensible Long Runs New Energy

Author:Bill McKibben

“In the States, I think, the syllogism goes like this: 'free markets solve all problems. Free markets aren't solving global warming, QED global warming is not a problem'. It's not a very good syllogism but it's emotionally comforting if you're in that world.”

Ifs Thinking World States Problem Very Good Solve Global Warming Free Market Comforting Problem Free

Author:Bill McKibben

“We're going to need that kind of movement, because the fossil fuel industry is a sprawling adversary - at work everywhere, its tentacles in everybody's politics, invulnerable, I think, to direct frontal assault, but probably more brittle than it guesses if we come at it from all sides.”

Ifs Thinking Needs Kind Sides Movement Industry Direct Fuel Assault Fossils Adversaries Fossil Fuel Tentacles

Author:Bill McKibben

“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?”

Ifs May Enough Running Able Grows Company Growing Okay Physics Damage

Author:Bill McKibben

“There hadn't really been a climate movement, per se. I think everyone spent twenty years thinking that if we just keep pointing out that the world is on the edge of the greatest crisis by far it's ever come to, then our leaders will do something about it. And it turned out that was wrong. They weren't going to do anything about it.”

Ifs Thinking World Years Leader Movement Twenties Crisis Climate Edges Pointing

Author:Bill McKibben

“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.”

People Ifs Thinking Faces Fighting Winning Loses Planets Victory Truth Is Climate Climate Change Speed Scales Worried Shifting

Author:Bill McKibben

“Community is as endangered by surplus as it is by deficit. If there is too much money floating around it enables people to have no need of each other.”

People Ifs Needs Community Money Too Much Floating Deficit Surplus

Author:Bill McKibben

“The world hasn't ended, but the world as we know it has-even if we don't quite know it yet.”

Ifs Knows World Energy Environment Climate Change

Book:Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

Source: Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

“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.”

Ifs Use Students College Planets Degrees Investment Fuel Guarantees Fossils Fossil Fuel Endowment Portfolios

Author:Bill McKibben

“If we all used clotheslines, we could save 30 million tons of coal a year, or shut down 15 nuclear power plants. And you don't have to wait to start. Yours could be up by this afternoon. To be specific, buy 50 feet of clothesline and a $3 bag of clothespins and become a solar energy pioneer.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“Very few people on earth ever get to say: 'I am doing, right now, the most important thing I could possibly be doing.' If you'll join this fight that's what you'll get to say”

People Ifs Important Earth Fighting Right Now Important Things Doing Right

Author:Bill McKibben

“If it's wrong to wreck the planet, it's wrong to profit from the wreckage.”

Ifs Planets Profit Wrecks Wreckage

Author:Bill McKibben

“We'll look for almost any reason not to change our attitudes; the inertia of the established order is powerful. If we can think of a plausible, or even implausible, reason to discount environmental warnings, we will.”

Ifs Thinking Looks Reason Order Powerful Attitude Environmental Lifestyle Warning Inertia Plausible Discounts

Author:Bill McKibben

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