bill-mckibben Quotes About years

“The models that have been constructed agree that when, as has been predicted, the level of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases doubles from pre-Industrial Revolution concentrations, the global average temperature will increase, and that the increase will be 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius or 3 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit... In Dallas, for instance, a doubled level of carbon dioxide and other gases like methane, would increase the number of days a year with temperatures above 100 degrees from 19 to 78 each year.”

“In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They'll just ask, "So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?"”

Years Care Asks Crisis Climate Change Cliffs Euro Arctic Fiscal Cliff Euro Crisis

Author:Bill McKibben

“Most of the men and women who vote in Congress each year to continue subsidies have taken campaign donations from big energy companies.”

Men Years Bigs Energy Company Taken He Man Men And Women Vote Congress Campaigns Donation Subsidies

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.”

“So far the earth has warmed about a degree Fahrenheit globally averaged. That doesn't seem like an enormous amount but it's unlike what we would have expected twenty years ago.”

Years Seems Earth Amount Degrees Years Ago Twenties Expected Enormous

Author:Bill McKibben

“Certainly, packets of sea ice, in say the Arctic, which have failed to fully reform in the last couple of years.”

Years Lasts Sea Couple Ice Reform Arctic

Author:Bill McKibben

“That's when the vast consensus of the world's climatologists, brought together by the UN and The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, really announced that this was going on, and since then the accumulation of data and wickedly hot years has served to only congeal that consensus much more firmly.”

World Years Together Hot Climate Climate Change Data Consensus Accumulation

Author:Bill McKibben

“There is no real scientific debate over what is happening; of course there is debate over exactly how it is going to play out in the decades ahead, because this is a large experiment that we haven't done before, and no one knows precisely how one can ever precisely predict what effects this heat will have. But all the science in the last few years, or almost all of it, really serves to show that the effects are larger and more rapid than we had thought even a decade ago.”

Knows Years Real Done Play Shows Lasts Courses Effects Havens Happenings Decades Debate Experiments Heat Rapids

Author:Bill McKibben

“All the science in the last few years, or almost all of it, really serves to show that the [climate] effects are larger and more rapid than we had thought even a decade ago.”

Years Shows Lasts Effects Climate Decades Rapids

Author:Bill McKibben

“Those of us in the west have figured out a lot of ways to damage the lives of poor people in this country and around the world over the years.”

People World Way Years Country Poor West Around The World Damage Poor People

Author:Bill McKibben

“Especially in recent years, the more and more we understand what we are doing, the more we have the science to tell us what we're doing, the fact that we continue to do it without taking steps to address it strikes me as, among many other things, irreverent in an extreme.”

Years Facts Steps Extremes Strikes Addresses Irreverent

Author:Bill McKibben

“I do a certain amount of work in religious communities on these issues. It's not the central focus of my work but it is certainly an area where I have worked a lot. It has gotten much better over the years, especially over the last couple years. There wasn't a religious environmental movement 15 years ago, but there is now - in the Catholic community, the Jewish community, the mainline Protestant community, and in the Evangelical community.”

Years Lasts Certain Community Religious Issues Focus Movement Amount Couple Areas Years Ago Catholic Environmental Protestants Evangelical Jewish Community Religious Community

Author:Bill McKibben

“The fact that Washington has been a complete logjam for anything for the last six years has got to change because we need to have federal policy that really allows us to move quickly and nimbly.”

Needs Years Has Beens Facts Lasts Moving Policy Six

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.”

“From some tiny portion of the wealth the west accumulated in a hundred years of filling the atmosphere with carbon.”

Years Wealth Hundred West Tiny Atmosphere Portions Carbon Filling

Author:Bill McKibben

“I'm guessing the most efficient way would be to transfer an awful lot of technology, but also direct aid to deal with climate emergencies already underway. Hillary [Clinton] has already said $100 billion a year would be appropriate.”

Way Years Said Would Be Deals Technology Direct Clinton Climate Aids Billions Awful Appropriate Efficient Emergencies Transfers Guessing

Author:Bill McKibben

“Warm air holds more water vapor than cold, and so the atmosphere is about 4% wetter than it was 40 years ago. This loads the dice for flood and drought, and we're seeing both in stunning abundance.”

Years Water Seeing Air Cold Years Ago Warm Atmosphere Abundance Load Flood Stunning Dice Drought Vapor

Author:Bill McKibben

“In the last two years 24 countries have set new all-time temperature records. We've seen flooding on an epic scale in every continent .”

Years Two Country Lasts Records Scales All Time Two Years Continents Epic Temperature Flooding

Author:Bill McKibben

“One of my favorite places is the Maldives, an all-Muslim nation in the Indian Ocean with a culture that stretches back 5,000 years. But since the highest point in the archipelago is a meter or two above sea level, even the next hundred are not guaranteed. They've committed to becoming the first carbon-neutral nation on Earth by 2020, building windmills as fast as they can.”

Years Firsts Two Earth Culture Next Nations Levels Sea Building Becoming Ocean Highest Hundred My Favorite Committed Indian Carbon Meter Favorite Places Windmills Maldives

Author:Bill McKibben

“For the first time in 150 years, the USDA reported there were more farms in America, not fewer. That has to make you happy.”

Years Firsts America First Time Farms Fewer Make You Happy

Author:Bill McKibben

“We'd won the argument 15 years before, we were just losing the fight. And so it became clear to some of us that we would need to organise to fight, that we weren't going to win.”

Needs Years Fighting Winning Clear Losing Argument

Author:Bill McKibben

“In the States we've had by far the largest demonstrations in the last few years. The largest civil disobedience actions about anything in US history in the last 30 years have all been centred around the climate.”

Years States Action Lasts Climate Demonstration Disobedience Us History Civil Disobedience

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

“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

“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.”

“I am still a consumer; the consumer world was the world I emerged into, whose air I breathed for a very long time, and its assumptions still dominate my psyche—but maybe a little less each year....There are times when I can feel the spell breaking in my mind….There are times when I can almost feel myself simply being.”

World Feels Years Mind Littles Long Stills I Can Air Long Time Consumers Assumption Spells

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.”

Ifs Years Used Energy Waiting Millions Feet Plant Nuclear Bags Afternoon Coal Pioneers Nuclear Power Power Plants Solar Energy Clotheslines

Author:Bill McKibben

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