Bill McKibben Quotes About Fossil Fuels

Quotes about: Fossil Fuels

• If [a student's] college’s endowment portfolio has fossil-fuel stock, then their educations are being subsidized by investments that guarantee they won’t have much of a planet on which to make use of their degree.

  Bill McKibben

  College, Degrees, Guarantees

• There is an urgent need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, dramatically reduce wasted energy, and significantly shift our power supplies from oil, coal, and natural gas to wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources.

  Bill McKibben

  Wind, Oil, Coal

  "It’s Time for Interfaith Moral Action on Climate Change" by Bill McKibben, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 9, 2012.

• Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free.

  Bill McKibben

  Business, Fuel, Waste

  "Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math" by Bill McKibben, www.rollingstone.com. July 19, 2012.

• You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet

  Bill McKibben

  Healthy, Balance, Fuel

  Bill McKibben (2013). “Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist”, p.103, Macmillan

• These things are happening in large measure because of us. We in this country burn 25 percent of the world's fossil fuel, create 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide. It is us - it is the affluent lifestyles that we lead that overwhelmingly contribute to this problem. And to call it a problem is to understate what it really is. Which is a crime. Crime against the poorest and most marginalized people on this planet. We've never figured out, though God knows we've tried, a more effective way to destroy their lives.

  Bill McKibben

  Country, People, Fuel

• We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)

  Bill McKibben

  Math, Fuel, Fossils

• When you go to China and the developing world, people understand more clearly the dangers that are coming at them because they're living closer to the margin. They don't have any of the false sense of invulnerability that Americans have. People from developing countries also feel that it's their right, if you're talking in terms of justice, to use fossil fuels like we did for a hundred years to get rich. It's hard for them to give up that vision.

  Bill McKibben

  Country, Giving Up, Talking

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

  Bill McKibben

  Fuel, Fossils, More Money

  Source: www.opendemocracy.net

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

  Bill McKibben

  Thinking, Political, Fuel

  Source: thinkprogress.org

• We spend probably more of our time than we should, just because it's close to home, worrying about the West. But it's equally important to figure out how we're going to free up the resources to let the developing world leapfrog the fossil fuel age. That's at least as mathematically important, and at least as morally crucial.

  Bill McKibben

  Home, Worry, Important

  Source: www.opendemocracy.net

• Because the financial power of the fossil-fuel industry is so great it can, and has, delayed any real action of the climate issues almost everywhere.

  Bill McKibben

  Real, Issues, Climate

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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

  Bill McKibben

  Thinking, Needs, Fuel

  Source: thinkprogress.org

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

  Bill McKibben

  Feet, Fuel, Fossils

  Source: www.opendemocracy.net

• 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.

  Bill McKibben

  Thinking, Fuel, Want

  Source: thinkprogress.org

• 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

  Thinking, Needs, Movement

  Source: www.opendemocracy.net

• With each month that passes, a solar panel gets 2 or 3 percent cheaper. So while we're holding the fossil fuel industry in check, the engineers in the renewable energy world are undercutting them from the other side.

  Bill McKibben

  Energy, Each Month, Fuel

  "Environmentalists Cheer Keystone XL Pipeline Decision As 'Decisive Moment'". "All Things Considered" with Kelly McEvers, www.npr.org. November 6, 2015.

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

  Bill McKibben

  Energy, Fuel, Fossils

  Source: thinkprogress.org

• 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.

  Bill McKibben

  Wind, Fuel, Want

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Fossil fuel is very seductive stuff. [John Maynard] Keynes once said that, as far as he could tell, the average standard of living from the beginning of human history to the middle of the eighteenth century had perhaps doubled. Not much had changed, and then we found coal and gas and oil and everything changed. We're reaping the result of that, both ecologically and socially.

  Bill McKibben

  Average, Oil, Seductive

• Other thing we need to understand is that the financial power of the fossil fuel industry has so far prevented even any minor progress. They have a sweetheart deal unlike any other business on Earth: they're allowed to dispose of their waste for free, to use the atmosphere as an open sewer. And they will do all they can to defend that special privilege.

  Bill McKibben

  Atmosphere, Special, Progress

  Source: www.wolverinefarm.org

• 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

  School, Cities, Fuel

  "Donald Trump Is a Disaster for the Earth on Every Single Level". Interview with Julia Lurie, www.motherjones.com. November 11, 2016.

• In the United States, cheap fossil fuel has eroded communities. We're the first people with no real practical need for each other. Everything comes from a great distance through anonymous and invisible transactions. We've taken that to be a virtue, but it's as much a curse. Americans are not very satisfied with their lives, and the loss of community is part of that.

  Bill McKibben

  Real, Distance, Taken

• 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

  Trying, Fuel, Subsidies

  Source: www.wolverinefarm.org

• 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.

  Bill McKibben

  Leader, Scare, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

• 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

  Europe, People, Energy

  Interview with Diane Silver, www.resilience.org. January 2009.

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