Bill McKibben Quotes

Probably nothing that we have ever managed to do quite equals the basic undermining of the physical stability of the planet on which most of the world's poor people depend.

I think [George W.] Bush has done nothing right about global warming.

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.

I think that so far the political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry has trumped all else.

I think that some of it is electoral - helping candidates that are willing to take dramatic actions, not just to say a few words about how climate change might be a problem.

I think we need to go straight at the fossil fuel industry.

Policies that engage us again in the international fight for real climate protection.

I don't think the fossil fuel industry will listen, not until we build up a lot of pressure. I do think we can persuade some shareholders that they don't want to be involved in this enterprise.

We have to transition to new technologies, making it more expensive to continue with the old and polluting technologies and cheaper to go to the clean ones.

We just see a sort of cascading amount of data of the damage that is being done by those increased temperatures.

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?

My guess is that liberating the fossil fuel industry to frack anywhere they want will drive down the rate at which we're converting to sun and wind. And it's entirely a rate problem at this point.

We'll never get there if we let the climate crisis bloom unchecked, so for the moment the key is to organize, organize, organize!

There's a part of all of us whose impulse is to say, "Let's keep everything the same until I die and then you can do whatever you want afterward." And that's a difficult part.

Renewable energy is far more labor-intensive than fossil fuel production.

A price on carbon sufficient to keep 80% of current reserves underground, rebated directly to citizens.

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

It's off the charts - and if you don't believe the scientists, ask the insurance industry, the people we pay to analyze risk in our society.

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.

If one wanted to stigmaitise, that's how one would do it - lots and lots of people saying "we're severing our ties".

Climate change is a huge problem, an almost insoluble problem.

We'd like to get the fossil fuel industry on the back foot for a while, having to deal with us.

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.

We couldn't outspend the fossil fuel industry - they have more money than God.

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.

[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.

At least I sure hope it will - and I see good signs all the time, especially in things like the rise of local agriculture.

The habits of the West in terms of consumption.

Here, there's more of a movement, it doesn't mean we're winning any more, but we're at least fighting.

We had other currencies that we could find work in - the currencies of movements: passion, spirit, creativity.

Sometimes, I, anyway, get tired of playing defence, and like to play offence.

...only in relatively recent times have people decided that "because I want to" is sufficient reason for annoying others.

Management" of anything as complicated as a woods requires more humility than comes easily to our species, at least in its American incarnation.