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We have assumed control where once we worked with what we were given.

Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben
Age: 63
Born: 1960
Born: December 8
Activist
Author
Climate Activist
Environmentalist
Writer
Palo Alto
California
Worked
Control
Given
Assumed

More quotes by Bill McKibben

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I don't know how to make people who absolutely have to be obsessed with paying a week's energy bills... obsessed with climate change... It's very hard.
Bill McKibben
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A voluntary simplification of life-styles is not beyond our abilities, but it is probably outside our desires.
Bill McKibben
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All the signs of incipient activism and uprising, from Tahrir square to Zuccotti Park to [the recent] shutdown of the Internet to protest web censorship. People are getting smart and getting connected.
Bill McKibben
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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.
Bill McKibben
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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.
Bill McKibben
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We've abnegated the Kyoto treaty, we've instituted a voluntary program that's obviously not been working, we've taken every effort to excise references to global warming from official documents, to try to undermine international conferences that work on environmental issues, and on and on and on.
Bill McKibben
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[Kids] will grow up into a world that's difficult and wonderful, and they'll make the best of it they can, and hopefully help turn it in the best possible direction.
Bill McKibben
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TV makes it so easy to postpone living for another half hour.
Bill McKibben
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Oil companies are radical because they're willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
Bill McKibben
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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.
Bill McKibben
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We spend a lot of time playing defence against bad things. So, in the US, one of the focusses has been this huge Keystone Pipeline project, another has been the coal ports on the Pacific Ocean.
Bill McKibben
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For the first time in 150 years, the USDA reported there were more farms in America, not fewer. That has to make you happy.
Bill McKibben
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The most blatant examples are increased power and frequency in hurricanes and the increased depth and frequency of heat waves.
Bill McKibben
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Delhi is locked in a complete choking smog at the moment - they've had to close schools in one of the world's biggest cities. They have their own reasons for needing to get off fossil fuels fast.
Bill McKibben
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Where people aren't as deeply reliant on fossil fuel as in the United States, it's far easier for them to imagine change on this scale. When you go to Europe, they're much more ready. They use half the amount of energy per capita that we use. They can imagine using less than that. They see the benefits. They're ready to go.
Bill McKibben
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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.
Bill McKibben
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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.
Bill McKibben
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When you have solar panels, your electricity gets there for free, no one's figured out how to meter the sun yet. And that's good.
Bill McKibben
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Most of the men and women who vote in Congress each year to continue subsidies have taken campaign donations from big energy companies.
Bill McKibben
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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?
Bill McKibben