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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.

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Famous Bill McKibben Quotes

“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 things are happening in large measure because of us. We in this country burn 25 percent of the world's fossil fuel, create 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide. It is us - it is the affluent lifestyles that we lead that overwhelmingly contribute to this problem. And to call it a problem is to understate what it really is. Which is a crime. Crime against the poorest and most marginalized people on this planet. We've never figured out, though God knows we've tried, a more effective way to destroy their lives.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“We're clearly not going to stop global warming at this point. We've already raised the temperature of the planet one degree. We've got another degree in the pipeline from carbon we've already emitted. What we're talking about now is whether we're going to have a difficult, difficult century, or an impossible one.”

Difficult Talking Impossible Century Planets Degrees Raised Global Warming Carbon Temperature Pipeline

Author:Bill McKibben

“The movers and shakers on our planet, aren't the billionaires and generals, they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing and revitalising.”

People World Earth Numbers Planets Filled Incredibles Neighbor Around The World Our Planet Billionaire Resisting Restoring Shakers Movers And Shakers

Author:Bill McKibben

“We finally know where the red line for climate really is. After the rapid melt of arctic ice in the summer of 2007, our best scientists, led by NASA's Jim Hansen, went back to work and produced a series of papers showing that with more than 350 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we couldn't have a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted."”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“Probably more than anything else, the place that we really see the effects of the power of even the relatively mild temperature increases so far is in the melting of everything frozen on the planet.”

Effects Planets Increase Frozen Temperature Melting

Author:Bill McKibben

“In the scientific community, the debate is over, for all intents and purposes, about whether or not the planet is heating and who is causing it. In fact, it's more or less been over since 1995.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“Probably nothing that we have ever managed to do quite equals the basic undermining of the physical stability of the planet on which most of the world's poor people depend.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“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.”

People Looks Past Planets New Orleans Margins Poorest Degrade

Author:Bill McKibben

“I just keep trying to explain what's going on with our planet - and now, to explain what's going on with our politics, which explains why we're not doing anything about the former.”

Trying Planets Former Our Planet Keep Trying

Author:Bill McKibben

“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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Author:Bill McKibben

“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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Author:Bill McKibben

“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.”

Thinking Way Needs Art Planets Projects Communicate Organised Art And Music Art Projects

Author:Bill McKibben

“When we work all over the planet, it's mostly poor and black and brown and young people, because that's mostly what the world [environmentalism] is.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“We'd already lost the possibility of stopping global warming entirely. That hasn't been in the cards for a long time. The triumph of Trump probably means that we're not going to be able to stop it at the two-degree mark that the world had been aiming for. That's very bad news, mostly because the planet seems to be more sensitive than we thought to even small increases in temperature.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“We've lost half the summer sea ice in the Arctic. We've wiped out an enormous percentage of the world's coral reefs. We see huge changes in the planet's hydrology already, the cycles of drought and flood both amped up because warm air holds more water vapor than cold. These things are happening with a one-degree increase and going to two degrees won't be twice as bad, the increase in damage won't be linear, it most certainly will be exponential. So it was precisely the wrong moment to elect Trump.”

“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.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“Remember...this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas...This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.”

“TV, and the culture it anchors, masks and drowns out the subtle and vital information contact with the real world once provided. There are lessons, enormous lessons, lessons that may be crucial to the planet's persistence as a green and diverse place and also to the happiness of it's inhabitants-that nature teaches and TV can't.”

World May Real Culture Teach Information Planets Tvs Lessons Green Enormous Contact Persistence Subtle Mask Real World Crucial Diverse Anchors

Book:The Age of Missing Information

Source: The Age of Missing Information

“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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Author:Bill McKibben

“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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Author:Bill McKibben

“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.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet”

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Book:Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist

Source: Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist

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

Ifs Planets Profit Wrecks Wreckage

Author:Bill McKibben