Bill McKibben

"The most important thing is to change the trajectory we're on"

"We need to think about climate change not as a future threat but as a present reality"

"Fossil fuels are the most important thing holding back the emergence of a more just and peaceful world"

"If it's wrong to wreck the planet, and it is, then it's wrong to profit from that wreckage"

"The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that seven and a half billion people must pay the price—in the form of a degraded planet—so that a couple of dozen polluting interests can continue to make record profits"

"We've increased the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 40 percent since the beginning of the industrial age"

"The math is brutally simple: we have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn"

"If we accept that a child born today will see average temperatures rise by four degrees Celsius, we're looking at a fundamentally different planet"

"The fight against climate change is the great moral battle of our time"

"We need a complete transformation of our energy systems"

"Divestment is a moral stance"

"Community is where you make your stand against the big currents of history"

"The most important thing we do is tell stories about what's possible"

"We need to fall back in love with the planet"

"Hope is a choice we make"

"The arc of climate change is toward increasing difficulty"

"We need systems change, not individual change, though individual change supports systems change"

"The fossil fuel industry has become a rogue industry"

"We live in the age of manufacture—the manufacture of consent, the manufacture of identity"

"Technology won't save us if we don't change how we live"

"The moment of global consensus on climate change has passed"

"We are running the most dangerous experiment in human history"

"Nature doesn't care about our spreadsheets"

"The day may come when we will wish we had done more"

"We are waging war on the planet"

"Education is the key to making change possible"

"The time for incrementalism has passed"

"We need to build a movement, not just pass a bill"

"The powerful will not hand us what we need; we must take it through organization and struggle"

"Young people are our greatest hope for change"