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we use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness.

Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben
Age: 63
Born: 1960
Born: December 8
Activist
Author
Climate Activist
Environmentalist
Writer
Palo Alto
California
Use
Tranquilizers
Even
Unpleasantness
Things
Dilute
Blot
Distress
Unhappiness
Confusion
Loneliness

More quotes by Bill McKibben

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I'm not sure I'm a very good source of advice since we're kind of making this up as we go along.
Bill McKibben
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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.
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We'll never get there if we let the climate crisis bloom unchecked, so for the moment the key is to organize, organize, organize!
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Look - every time is the wrong time and the perfect time to have a kid, and you just do it when you can.
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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.
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From some tiny portion of the wealth the west accumulated in a hundred years of filling the atmosphere with carbon.
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The technology we need most badly is the technology of community, the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done.
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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.
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The thing about global warming is that you can address it on a great number of levels - in fact you have to.
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We're mathematically past the point where the accumulation of individual actions can add up quickly enough to make a difference. The individual action that actually matters is not being an individual. It's joining together with other people in groups large enough to change the political dynamic around climate change.
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I imagine a certain amount of consumer impulse will be replaced by community connection. You can already see it starting with things like the local food movement.
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what you do every day is what forms your mind and precious few of us can or would spend most days outdoors.
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Without a movement pressing for change, there's little hope. We've got to work the political system to make this happen fast. The physics and chemistry are daunting. The resources on the other side are very large.
Bill McKibben
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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!
Bill McKibben
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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.
Bill McKibben
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There's always the danger that people will simply sign online petitions, the way they used to just mail in checks, and there's the greater possibility we'll just spend our whole lives staring at screens and never get anything done.
Bill McKibben
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After a lifetime of nature shows and magazine photos, we arrive at the woods conditioned to expect splendor - surprised when the parking lot does not contain a snarl of animals attractively mating and killing each other.
Bill McKibben
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Solar power seems to be truly bipartisan in its appeal.
Bill McKibben
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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.
Bill McKibben
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The roof of my house is covered in solar panels. When Im home, Im a pretty green fellow.
Bill McKibben