Bill McKibben Quotes

I've seen firsthand the dramatic savings that solar energy can generate.

The roof of my house is covered in solar panels. When I'm home, I'm a pretty green fellow.

Consumers used to think they had to compromise with solar. It was, 'Okay, I'm doing the right thing for the environment; it's cool to see the panels. I have to compromise on the cost and convenience side.' And now they no longer have to. On the cost side, it's cheaper, and on the convenience side, we set it all up.

I love the idea of solar panels, but they are very expensive. I hope, as living sustainably becomes the norm, they will become more accessible.

I say it is impossible that so sensible a people [citizens of Paris], under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.

The sun penetrates me soundlessly like a distant friend that stirs up my laziness, fertilizes it. We bring forth life.

If we use our fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful, and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations. The heat of the sun's rays represents an immense amount of energy vastly in excess of waterpower...The sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land.

You could power the entire United States with about 150 to 200 square kilometers of solar panels, the entire United States. Take a corner of Utah... there's not much going on there, I've been there. There's not even radio stations.

We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun, you don't have to do anything, it just works. It shows up every day.

I think, in a lot of places, the solar panels are a badge of honor; they're trendy. If you go to Hawaii or Japan, people even install fake solar panels because it's cool and it's popular. And so I think solar panels have gotten a lot more attractive. They're sleek, black, they look good on a roof.

With the right infrastructure in place, home solar will be recognized publicly as affordable, easy, and smart, and every new home built in the developed world can have clean energy sources built into it.

I hope climate science becomes the big thing. And then what I want is electrical engineers to solve the world's energy problems, energy distribution problems. I want mechanical engineers to make better transportation systems. I want chemical engineers to develop better solar panels, and so on.

We need to bring sustainable energy to every corner of the globe with technologies like solar energy mini-grids, solar powered lights, and wind turbines.

We need to invest dramatically in green energy, making solar panels so cheap that everybody wants them. Nobody wanted to buy a computer in 1950, but once they got cheap, everyone bought them.

Solar power is going to be absolutely essential to meeting growing energy demands while staving off climate change.

Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards. Wherever I go I meet innovators of wind power equipment, solar energy operators.

The harness of waterfalls is the most economical method known for drawing energy from the sun.

I think the future for solar energy is bright.

People say we're running out of energy. That's only true if we stick with these old 19th century technologies. We are awash in energy from the sunlight.

Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet - nobody taxes the sun yet.

Solar power is clean, renewable and cost effective, but it also needs time to develop.

My house is solar powered. I tell Republicans, 'You can hate the subsidies - I hate the subsidies, too - but you can't hate solar panels.'

Sunlight provides the greatest source of renewable energy on the planet. Sunlight provides more energy in a single day, than we use in a year the world over.

I've been very passionate about renewable energy for many years, particularly solar energy and its capacity to bring abundant clean, sustainable energy to millions around the globe.

Even if you don't care about the environment whatsoever, solar panels are really cool, and are an investment because they save money in the long run.