The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the growing disconnect between legislative actions and scientific realities.
Bill McKibben's quote emphasizes that while laws created by Congress may shift with political tides, the immutable laws of physics remain constant and cannot be altered by human legislation. It serves as a warning that ignoring scientific truths can lead to significant consequences, especially in areas such as climate change and environmental policy.
In practice
During a seminar on climate change, this quote can be used to stress the importance of aligning policy with scientific findings.
The religious environmental movement is potentially key to dealing with the greatest problem humans have ever faced, and it has never been captured with more breadth and force than in RENEWAL. I hope this movie is screened in church basements and synagogue social halls across the country, and that it moves many more people of faith off the fence and into action.
Remember...this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas...This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.
Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free.
We've built a new Earth. It's not as nice as the old one; it's the greatest mistake humans have ever made, one that we will pay for literally forever.
You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in D.C. in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We're not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history.
Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on this planet. The one thing that needs to be bigger is our movement to stop it.
The word 'chance' then expresses only our ignorance of the causes of the phenomena that we observe to occur and to succeed one another in no apparent order. Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, and in part to our knowledge.
If you think that the distance from the Earth to the nearest planet where we could live comfortably... is being, like, from New York to Australia... what we've achieved so far, in going to the moon, that's about two-and-a-half inches. So that's the challenge.
This new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community.
A doctor can save maybe a few hundred lives in a lifetime. A researcher can save the whole world.
...for a long time I wanted to become a theologian... now, however, behold how through my efforts God is being debated in astronomy.
The total disorder in the universe, as measured by the quantity that physicists call entropy, increases steadily over time. Also, the total order in the universe, as measured by the complexity and permanence of organized structures, also increases steadily over time.
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