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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the increasing frequency and severity of weather-related disasters due to climate change.
Bill McKibben highlights the alarming reality of climate change by pointing to a series of unprecedented weather-related disasters and record high temperatures. He urges awareness that these extreme weather events are early signs of the broader climate crisis, illustrating how human activities are drastically affecting the environment and urging immediate action to address these challenges.
In practice
During a climate change conference to stress the urgency of environmental reforms.
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.
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.
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.
No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed.
Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,_x000D_ Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:_x000D_ The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,_x000D_ On ev'ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;_x000D_ Harmonious lays the feather'd race resume,_x000D_ Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.
Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf.
Human beings grew up in forests; we have a natural affinity for them. How lovely a tree is, straining toward the sky.
I have always loved a window, especially an open one.
We need to send a message to Congress and the president that we want them to take the actions that are needed to preserve climate for young people and future generations and all life on the planet.
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