Bill McKibben Quotes

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.

We can no longer continue with a status quo energy policy. We must create sustainable clean energy jobs and leave the planet to our children and grandchildren in better shape than we found it.

California continues to pass the most ambitious laws in the world to expand clean energy and combat climate change.

When it comes to climate and energy, Gates is a radical consumerist. In his view, energy consumption is good - it just needs to be clean energy.

I have been working for years to promote a responsible energy policy that works to increase energy efficiency and invest in alternative and renewable energy sources.

The clear and present danger of climate change means we cannot burn our way to prosperity. We already rely too heavily on fossil fuels. We need to find a new, sustainable path to the future we want. We need a clean industrial revolution.

It is our duty as states, citizens, and industry leaders to make the energy transition a reality with the ultimate aim of reconciling two major priorities: to meet ever-increasing demand and to confront the complex issue of climate change.

Why would we build a thousand mile pipeline taking almost a million barrels of oil from the most carbon intensive fuel source on the planet when wind energy is a whole lot cheaper and a whole lot cleaner.

Clinton understands that climate change is real, is caused by human activity and is one of the great environmental crises facing our planet. She knows that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move aggressively to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

I'm determined to use all of my powers to make sure that Britain leads the way in sourcing the energy we need from low carbon sources.

I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.

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.

It's imperative that we opt out of the fossil fuel endgame.

Preventing global warming from becoming a planetary catastrophe may take something even more drastic than renewable energy, superefficient urban design, and global carbon taxes.

Since stepping down as laboratory director in 1999, I have devoted an increasing fraction of my time to international issues. I am involved with energy, environment, and sustainability issues, particularly as they involve new energy sources free of greenhouse gases.

In reality, studies show that investments to spur renewable energy and boost energy efficiency generate far more jobs than oil and coal.

Think on a 50-year scale, which is a much more natural time-scale for global warming. The US is right now spending about 200 million dollars annually on research into renewable energy.

Many countries - as well as cities, states and provinces - are taking global warming seriously and are working to reduce emissions and shift to cleaner energy sources.

Some solutions are relatively simple and would provide economic benefits: implementing measures to conserve energy, putting a price on carbon through taxes and cap-and-trade and shifting from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources.

By encouraging conservation, increasing investments in clean, renewable sources of energy, and promoting increased domestic production of oil and gas, we can build a more secure future for our country.

I was distressed by the poor quality of the debate surrounding energy. I was also noticing so much green wash from politicians and big business. I was tired of the debate - the extremism, the nimbyism, the hair shirt. We need a constructive conversation about energy, not a Punch and Judy show. I just wanted to try to reboot the whole debate.

I don't believe that a hydrogen economy depends on a carbon economy at all.

We are launching a campaign called Wind, Not War, which is about the alternatives to a fossil-fuels-based economy and looking at wind, an alternative energy, as key to that in terms of issues of global climate change as well as issues of democracy.

Try everything. Do everything. Nuclear. Biomass. Coal. Solar. You name it. I support them all.

I think really what needs to happen is the people of the United States need to stand up and say, 'Oil is an energy model from the past. It doesn't work for the planet, it doesn't work for the people, it never has and it never will.'