Bill McKibben Quotes

We are upsetting the atmosphere upon which all life depends. In the late 80s when I began to take climate change seriously, we referred to global warming as a "slowmotion catastrophe" one we expected to kick in perhaps generations later. Instead, the signs of change have accelerated alarmingly.

Profiting from companies that are overloading the atmosphere with carbon and changing the atmosphere is wrong.

If there is no cost to be paid for the indiscriminate dumping of pollution into the earth's atmosphere, then it should be a surprise to no one that today we will dump another 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet. ... We have to [act] this year, not next year. Mother Nature does not do bailouts.

Human-caused climate change threatens almost every aspect of human existence.

'Years of Living Dangerously' is a wonderful opportunity to reach a lot of people with the story and importance of climate change in our lives; in recent history, there's no bigger threat to the quality of human life than what is taking place right now in respect of climate change.

You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

The whole of nature cries out at our mistreatment of her. If the planet were a patient, we would have treated her long ago.

The plundering for profit of the world's natural resources has threatened the very sustainability of the planet.

We have to have a planet to pass on to the next generation, and these issues of climate change and climate justice and the disproportionate burdens that communities of color actually bear from our damaging climate is a huge issue.

All countries will feel the increasing effects of dangerous climate change and it is those least able to bear it who are already being hurt first and hardest.

Left unchecked, climate change risks not only making the poorest poorer, but pulling the emerging middle classes back into poverty, too.

Climate change threatens serious economic disruption to us all with serious implications to global stability and the impact it will have on the whole of humanity.

Without sounding too grandiose, the survival of the planet itself is at stake, you have rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans, immigration sparked by climate change, droughts that are much more severe.

The most serious problem facing humankind is climate change. All of these people breathing and burning our atmosphere has led to an extraordinarily dangerous situation. I hope next generation will emerge and produce technology, regulations, and a worldview that enable as many of us as possible to live happy healthy lives.

Unless we stop dumping 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours, which we are doing right now ... the continued acceleration of this pollution would destroy the future of human civilization.

...the world needs to face up to the challenge of climate change, and to do so now. It is clear that climate change poses an urgent challenge, not only a challenge that threatens the environment but also international peace and security, prosperity and development. And as the Stern report showed, the economic effects of climate change on this scale cannot be ignored, but the costs can be limited if we act early

Mother Earth is in pain and ailing because of global warming.

Just like you could dump oil into the Cuyahoga in the 60s and let someone else foot the bill, today you can pump CO2 into the atmosphere and let the whole world foot the bill.

The world's deteriorating ecology poses as great a danger to mankind today as did the nuclear standoff between the superpowers at the height of the Cold War.

I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change. No longer than a decade at most.

So I'm running in the park on Saturday, in shorts, thinking this is great, but are we all gonna die? You know? I can't, I can't figure this out..There were record breaking temperatures across the, 72 in New York City, 69 in Boston on Saturday. A lot of people wondering is it global warming or something much simpler?

What about our refusal to look squarely at the degradation of the planet we inhabit? In the last election cycle many candidates refused even to acknowledge the hard science, irrefutable science, of climate change. The president, while readily accepting the facts, has done far too little to alter them. How long are we, are you, prepared to wait?

The climate is changing, and human activity contributes to that in some manner.

We want our children to live in an America...that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.

We the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency-a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential...the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising...Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on earth itself.