That's what's changed : there is now a big, big movement that was not there five years ago. Bill McKibben More Quotes by Bill McKibben More Quotes From Bill McKibben Our weird problem is an abundance of resources and a shortage of hard economic reasons not to use them. Bill McKibben abundanceproblemuse Community is as endangered by surplus as it is by deficit. If there is too much money floating around it enables people to have no need of each other. Bill McKibben communitymoneypeople The seasons don't matter to most of us anymore except as spectacles. In my county and in many places around this part of the nation, the fair that once marked the harvest now takes place in late August, while tourist dollars are still in heavy circulation. Why celebrate the harvest when you harvest every week with a shopping cart? Bill McKibben shoppingaugusttime TV is sometimes accused of encouraging fantasies. Its real problem, though, is that it encourages-enforces, almost-a brute realism. It is anti-Utopian in the extreme. We're discouraged from thinking that, except for a few new products, there might be a better way of doing things. Bill McKibben realmightthinking I guess the underlying principle might be, don't make it too easy for them to stereotype you. Bill McKibben stereotypeprinciplesmight Remember...this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas...This is what climate change looks like in its early stages. Bill McKibben russiatexasyears These new technologies are not yet inevitable. But if they blossom fully into being, freedom may irrevocably perish. This is a fight not only for the meaning of our individual lives, but for the meaning of our life together. Bill McKibben being-freetechnologyfighting ... the constant flow of images undercuts the sense that there's actually something wrong with the world. How can there really be a shortage of whooping cranes when you've seen a thousand images of them - seen ten times more images than there are actually whooping cranes left in the wild? Bill McKibben cranesflowworld We believe that we live in the 'age of information,' that there has been an information 'explosion,' an information 'revolution.' While in a certain narrow sense this is the case, in many important ways just the opposite is true. We also live at a moment of deep ignorance, when vital knowledge that humans have always possessed about who we are and where we live seems beyond our reach. An Unenlightenment. An age of missing information. Bill McKibben ignoranceoppositesbelieve It drives me crazy to see so much of this planet's life so casually endangered. The first steps are so easy (drive smaller cars, for instance) that it's very hard to understand why we haven't taken them. But I know that this is the issue our generation will be judged by. Bill McKibben our-generationcrazytaken What we're talking about is the endless, gullible elevation of necessary levels of comfort and status and everything else at the complete expense of all around us. It's going to take us a long time to learn how to climb down a little bit from the heights on which we have put ourselves. Bill McKibben comforttalkinglong everyone knows, at some level, that the sharp line between "good weather" and "bad weather" is a fiction, that we need rain as surely as we need sun. Bill McKibben rainweatherneeds Oil companies are radical because they're willing to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere. Bill McKibben atmospherechemicalsoil We celebrate the birth of one who told us to give everything to the poor Bill McKibben christmastiesgiving We have built a greenhouse, a human greenhouse, where once there bloomed a sweet and wild garden. Bill McKibben biodiversitygardensweet The Old Testament contains in many places, but especially in the book of Job, one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man. The argument gets at the heart of what the loss of nature will mean to us....God seems to be insisting that we are not the center of the universe, that he is quite happy if it rains where there are no people - that God is quite happy with places where there are no people, a radical departure from our most ingrained notions. Bill McKibben rainjobsbook Absent the net, we certainly couldn't have organized in 190 countries around the world. It's no substitution for face to face interaction - that's why we have "days of action" where people are in real contact with each other - but it's the cheap (and low-carbon) way to do an awful lot of the planning and organizing. And we can build, for $20k, a website as good as one Exxon can build for $20 million. Bill McKibben realcountrypeople what sets wilderness apart in the modern day is not that it's dangerous (it's almost certainly safer than any town or road) or that it's solitary (you can, so they say, be alone in a crowded room) or full of exotic animals (there are more at the zoo). it's that five miles out in the woods you can't buy anything. Bill McKibben exoticanimalzoos The religious environmental movement is potentially key to dealing with the greatest problem humans have ever faced, and it has never been captured with more breadth and force than in RENEWAL. I hope this movie is screened in church basements and synagogue social halls across the country, and that it moves many more people of faith off the fence and into action. Bill McKibben religiouscountrymoving Until it's understood to involve justice for those in poverty, a future for generations yet unborn, and a commitment to the rest of creation, it's unlikely we'll be able to overcome the status quo. Bill McKibben overcomingjusticecommitment
