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.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the concept of radicalism by highlighting the true radical actions of corporations harming the environment.
Bill McKibben's quote challenges the perception of activism as radical by contrasting it with the destructive practices of large oil companies. He asserts that the real radicals are those who prioritize profit over the health of the planet, specifically pointing to executives who knowingly alter the atmosphere for their gain, which is far more radical than any form of civil disobedience or environmental activism.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech at an environmental rally to emphasize the importance of activism.
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.
The laws of Congress and the laws of physics have grown increasingly divergent, and the laws of physics are not likely to yield.
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.
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.
One of the immutable patterns of history is the rise and fall of great powers. Those that survive are the ones that adapt as the world changes.
If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn't we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.
There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.
People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world.
We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It's not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.
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