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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.

Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben
Age: 63
Born: 1960
Born: December 8
Activist
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Climate Activist
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Palo Alto
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More quotes by 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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For the first time in 150 years, the USDA reported there were more farms in America, not fewer. That has to make you happy.
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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!
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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.
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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.
Bill McKibben
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You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet
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We have to figure out ways to scare and entice our leaders more effectively than the fossil fuel industry has managed to scare and entice them. They've got the big checkbooks. We've got to have the big crowd.
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Profiting from companies that are overloading the atmosphere with carbon and changing the atmosphere is wrong.
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To me, it's more important to take the 60-70% of people who really understand that there's a problem [of climate change] and get some percentage of them active than to try and stamp out the last embers of pre-scientific thought.
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The habits of the West in terms of consumption.
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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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At the moment, the 4 percent of us in this country produce a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide - once you look at maps of rising sea levels and spreading mosquitoes, you realize that we've probably never figured out a way to hate our neighbors around the world much more effectively.
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I think we need to go straight at the fossil fuel industry.
Bill McKibben
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If it's wrong to wreck the planet, it's wrong to profit from the wreckage.
Bill McKibben
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The real negotiation is between humans on the one hand and chemistry and physics on the other. And chemistry and physics, unfortunately, don't bargain.
Bill McKibben
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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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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
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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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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.
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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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