Quote

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.

Bill McKibben

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bill McKibben
Age: 63
Born: 1960
Born: December 8
Activist
Author
Climate Activist
Environmentalist
Writer
Palo Alto
California
Fighting
Organise
Need
Weren
Needs
Argument
Going
Became
Years
Losing
Would
Fight
Winning
Clear

More quotes by Bill McKibben

Image
we use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness.
Bill McKibben
Image
We're not at the point of trying to stop global warming it's too late for that. We're trying to keep it from becoming a complete and utter calamity
Bill McKibben
Image
I guess the underlying principle might be, don't make it too easy for them to stereotype you.
Bill McKibben
Image
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
Image
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.
Bill McKibben
Image
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
Image
I did very much like [Barack] Obama's attack on fossil fuel subsidies for fossil fuel companies. We asked for that in demonstrations and petitions, and now we'll try to push it forward.
Bill McKibben
Image
The roof of my house is covered in solar panels. When Im home, Im a pretty green fellow.
Bill McKibben
Image
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.
Bill McKibben
Image
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
Image
On the top of these mile thick slabs of ice the water is percolating quickly to the base and greasing the skids, as it were, for the slide of that ice into the ocean.
Bill McKibben
Image
I just keep trying to explain what's going on with our planet - and now, to explain what's going on with our politics, which explains why we're not doing anything about the former.
Bill McKibben
Image
We just see a sort of cascading amount of data of the damage that is being done by those increased temperatures.
Bill McKibben
Image
Katrina opened a good door and Al Gore went through it with his movie.
Bill McKibben
Image
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
Image
A spiritual voice is urgently needed to underline the fact that global warming is already causing human anguish and mortality in our nation and abroad, and much more will occur in the future without rapid action.
Bill McKibben
Image
Very few people on earth ever get to say: 'I am doing, right now, the most important thing I could possibly be doing.' If you'll join this fight that's what you'll get to say
Bill McKibben
Image
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.
Bill McKibben
Image
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
Image
The ability to write compelling emails may be the single most useful talent an organizer can possess.
Bill McKibben