Bill McKibben Quotes

I am a person of faith, so I come from a community that's involved in 360,000 churches across the country, that is an institution that could, in a relatively short period of time, provide hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of positive male role models.

The great news is that that sort of group of people and that sort of sensibility is beginning to become more active again. And I think partly it just has to do with the time. It has to do with the culture of resistance. The necessity is for us to pull together and to speak up and to make work and be visible.

Perseverance is my biggest lesson. When I started to get involved in environmental protection some years ago, my people did not take it seriously and they never considered it important. But today, people look at what I do and they truly recognize those efforts, and eventually they join you as "environmental activists" too!

I think the environmental movement is now so large and diverse that it's hard to talk of it as a single entity.

A family-friendly "eco-populism" can mobilize and unite millions who, at this point, would be turned off by a more extreme set of demands. The momentum will build, through these early efforts, for more comprehensive solutions.

I think it's going to open up a wider place for a discussion about we ought to come together in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our work places, in our clubs and our networks. I think it'll be more acceptable to talk about it. We'll see what happens. It'll take some time. But I think it will.

It didn't seem to have relevance, except in Central America or South America, countries where the church was connected to the fight of the people for economic justice. That's why it was so interesting to find myself back with Sister Helen [in Dead Man Walking], this new breed of nuns who were making a difference in the community.

I really believe that you can. Not only do I think it is a part of public service to help young people find their way, just as professors had helped me find mine, but I've been very involved in K-12 education issues. I started a program back in 1992 called the Center for a New Generation, an afterschool enrichment program.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

The politics is far harder than the science. And even if we accept the science we have a big issue of how to deal with it.

A protest meeting on the issue of environmental abuse is not a convocation of accusers, it is a convocation of the guilty. The realization ought to clear the smog of self-righteousness that has always conventionally hovered over these occasions, and let us see the work that is to be done.

Unfortunately, the issues of climate change, unlike many other issues, are very subtle because the changes we observe are very, very subtle.

We have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.

What you saw was the people of New York having a debate, talking through these issues. It was contentious. It was emotional. But ultimately, they made a decision to recognize civil marriage. And I think that's exactly how things should work.

As you're building a country, you have to be thinking about what works at the ground level. And women have their fingers on the pulse of the community. They know what is critical to have in the treaty to stop the war.

The environmental agenda seems swept under the rug a lot, and environmentalists are looked at as tree-huggers who aren't dealing with the real issues when in fact someone needs to be keeping an eye on how we're treating the planet. When politicians bring up the environment, they're immediately labeled as being anti-business. But for the sake of the planet on which we live, we need to take the environment into account.

This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact.

Because I think whenever you sit down with another human being who would absolutely disagree with you on every issue, you learn about them as a person and you relate, in human terms, and it's much more difficult for either side to dismiss out of hand, like that person's a freak, that person's a Nazi.

I want to continue to speak out on issues that matter to me. I want to have even more of a voice.

People of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won't even use the term "sustainability" or "climate change" in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we're all dealing with. The average American doesn't even believe climate change is real, they think it's all a hoax.

I think any show has the potential to bring about social change. I do not think any one show in isolation can do it. I think it is a groundswell that needs to continue to be bolstered from all ends.

I think the environmental movement is the biggest people's movement in the world. Unfortunately, our governments and corporations haven't responded accordingly to protect our planet's natural resources.

I have a great deal of hope. I think that change is here, it's happening. But I know that if we think it's just going to happen on its own, that's not the way it works. We need people to keep talking about women of color writing comics and living the charge. Not just talking but doing. Making art, putting it out there.

I feel good when I'm engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society, and those core issues to me are what's happening to poor folks in this society.

The future's so random, and so mobile, there's no way you're going to get to your vision of what you want your community to be just by chance alone. I really believe you have to let people know, to use your voice, to say, 'this is what I like about my place, I want to keep it this way, this is what I think can be improved, this is what I disapprove of.' That's the only way you can have a part in shaping the future.