182 Quotes by Bill McKibben

We’ll look for almost any reason not to change our attitudes; the inertia of the established order is powerful. If we can think of a plausible, or even implausible, reason to discount environmental warnings, we will.

One of the great privileges of living in the affluent parts of the modern world is that we’ve been able to forget that the natural world even exists... a great city seems to produce wealth out of thin air. This is illusion, of course, but powerful illusion.

In fact, there are half as many wild animals on the planet as there were in 1970, an awesome and mostly unnoticed silencing.

There’s no happy ending where we prevent climate change any more. Now the question is, is it going to be a miserable century or an impossible one, and what comes after that.

We have, in other words, changed the energy balance of our planet, the amount of the sun’s heat that is returned to space. Those of us who burn lots of fossil fuel have changed the way the world operates, fundamentally.

If we all used clotheslines, we could save 30 million tons of coal a year, or shut down 15 nuclear power plants. And you don’t have to wait to start. Yours could be up by this afternoon. To be specific, buy 50 feet of clothesline and a $3 bag of clothespins and become a solar energy pioneer.

There are times when I can almost feel myself simply being.

The real negotiation is between humans on the one hand and chemistry and physics on the other. And chemistry and physics, unfortunately, don’t bargain.

After a lifetime of nature shows and magazine photos, we arrive at the woods conditioned to expect splendor – surprised when the parking lot does not contain a snarl of animals attractively mating and killing each other.