bill-mckibben Quotes About thinking

“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.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“Despite the array of groups and organizations working on global warming, we are still missing a key element: the movement. Along with the hard work of not-for-profit lobbyists, environmental lawyers, green economists, sustainability-minded engineers, and forward-thinking entrepreneurs, it's going to take the inspired political involvement of millions of Americans to get our country on track to solving this problem.”

“When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic.”

Thinking Economic Argument Global Warming Ideological Theological

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!”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“Stop thinking about global warming as a future threat and understand it instead as a present emergency, one that requires a far stronger policy response than we'd imagined.”

Thinking Policy Stronger Threat Response Global Warming Emergencies

Author:Bill McKibben

“I think that it is impossible to think of a threat to social justice greater than what we are doing to the earth's atmosphere at the moment.”

Thinking Moments Earth Social Justice Greater Impossible Social Justice Threat Atmosphere

Author:Bill McKibben

“The polling data shows not an unbelievable level of concern [on climate issue] but a general awareness of this problem. And now I think it's up to all sorts of people who really care about these things to continue on this new ground to try and make this the central political issue it needs to be.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“I think [George W.] Bush has done nothing right about global warming.”

Thinking Done Global Warming

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.”

“I think I have felt most profoundly that in our disruption of the most basic physical processes of creation, we are engaged not only in the act of suicidal self-destructiveness, but also in an act of thorough-going blasphemy.”

Thinking Self Felt Process Creation Engaged Suicidal Thorough Disruption Blasphemy Destructiveness

Author:Bill McKibben

“In certain ways, I think the work in the Evangelical community has been the most interesting and the most promising. Partly because Evangelical congregations may be harder to convince about issues but, on the other hand, are more likely to do something about it.”

Thinking Way May Has Beens Hands Certain Community Interesting Issues Harder Convince Most Interesting Evangelical Congregation

Author:Bill McKibben

“We also have to engage - and I think this is important - in national politics because there is no way to address questions of this scale in the short time that we have to address them without engaging in real political change.”

Thinking Way Important Real Political Scales Addresses Engaging Short Time Political Change

Author:Bill McKibben

“I think that some of it is electoral - helping candidates that are willing to take dramatic actions, not just to say a few words about how climate change might be a problem.”

Thinking Helping Problem Might Action Willing Climate Climate Change Dramatic Candidates Few Words

Author:Bill McKibben

“I also think we need unconventional political action, and I increasingly think that there is a need for people of faith to be able to do the kind of things that people of faith did 40 years ago in the heat of the civil rights revolution. This is a moral issue of every bit as much importance requiring every bit as much sacrifice, courage, and energy as that crisis did.”

“I think that so far the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry has trumped all else.”

Thinking Political Economic Industry Fuel Fossils Fossil Fuel Economic Power

Author:Bill McKibben

“I think we need to go straight at the fossil fuel industry.”

Thinking Needs Industry Fuel Fossils Fossil Fuel

Author:Bill McKibben

“I don't think the fossil fuel industry will listen, not until we build up a lot of pressure. I do think we can persuade some shareholders that they don't want to be involved in this enterprise.”

Thinking Want Industry Involved Pressure Fuel Enterprise Fossils Fossil Fuel Shareholders

Author:Bill McKibben

“I think fracking for gas will reduce the incentive to turn to renewables, and I think it will do a lot of other damage across the countryside.”

Thinking Turns Damage Gas Incentives Countryside Fracking

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

“I think the world on the other side of fossil fuel is more local - the logic of sun and wind is diffuse and spread out, not concentrated like the logic of coal and oil.”

Thinking World Sides Sun Wind Logic Spread Oil Locals Fuel Coal Fossils Fossil Fuel

Author:Bill McKibben

“In the States, the movement's actually gotten much much much stronger. There really was no climate movement so to speak before that - I think because everybody assumed that reasonable heads would prevail and do the right thing - and why would you need to have a huge movement in order to cause our leaders to deal with the most serious problem that they face. In a rational world you wouldn't. They would deal with it.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“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.”

People Thinking World Real Wanted Young Week Training Hunger Around The World Application Istanbul

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.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“I'm probably the wrong person to ask. My partner in much of this work [climate movement], who really came up with the divestment campaign with me, Naomi Klein, I think has written powerfully about this.”

Thinking Persons Asks Written Movement Climate Partners Campaigns Wrong Person

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

“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.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“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.”

Thinking Sometimes Can Do Huge Amount Climate Ideology Denial Objections

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

“The irony is that one of the things people want to solve climate change is more market - more price on carbon so that markets have something to chew on when they think about climate change instead of the complete monopoly, the absurdity of allowing these guys to own the sky for free - socialise all of the costs and privatise all of the profits.”

People Thinking Want Guy Sky Cost Climate Climate Change Profit Solve Irony Allowing Carbon Absurdity Monopoly

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.”

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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.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“The fight around climate change, which I've spent my life on, is somewhat more difficult than gay marriages because no one makes trillions of dollars a year being a bigot, and that's how much the fossil-fuel industry pulls in pumping carbon into the air. But the principle is the same, I think.”

Thinking Fighting Difficult Gay Climate Change Gay Marriage

Author:Bill McKibben

“Do I think that people should in the best of all possible worlds have to go to jail for wanting the US government to pay attention to the warnings of scientists about climate change? Not really. I mean, in a rational world, if all the scientists said, "The worst thing that ever happened is about to happen and here's what you should do to stop it," you would expect any rational system to say, "Oh, sure, OK, let's do something about it." But that's not the world we live in. In the world we live in, you do need people willing to stand up, fight, march and sometimes go to jail.”

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Author:Bill McKibben

“TV is sometimes accused of encouraging fantasies. Its real problem, though, is that it encourages-enforces, almost-a brute realism. It is anti-Utopian in the extreme. We're discouraged from thinking that, except for a few new products, there might be a better way of doing things.”

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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.”

“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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