Bill McKibben Quotes

Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth's treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply.

Somebody who eats twice as much factory-farmed products as he or she needs to is clearly doing twice as much damage to the planet. From a utilitarian point of view, that's twice as bad.

Big business is willing to destroy the planet for short-term profits

Corporations don't have children. They don't have feelings or souls. They don't depend on uncontaminated water, clean air, or healthy food to survive. They are beholden to one thing - the bottom line.

Most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance.

There is very little evidence that we give a hoot about profit.

Capitalism proceeds through creative destruction. What is created is capitalism in a 'new and improved' form - and what is destroyed is self-sustaining capacity, livelihood and dignity of its innumerable and multiplied 'host organisms' into which all of us are drawn/seduced one way or another.

The ethos of most films is that you make a film, you exploit the community, you exploit the environment, and it's OK because you made a great film, you know?

I think we need to take responsibility for the things we put on this planet, and also take responsibility for the things we take off the planet. We need to have limiters on how far we allow ourselves to go - ethical, moral limiters.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

But men are so full of greed today, they'll sell anything for a little piece of money.

What we're doing to the planet is inexcusable.

It's no surprise companies that quickly grow in value attract those who may want to also profit from the hard work of others.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet - the only one in the whole Milky Way - with a century of transportation whoopee.

They are feeding the world that will devour them and their children.

We know that BP cuts safety corners, takes risks, and is unconcerned about anything other than their own profit.

What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.

The white man is destroying the world.

Runaway technology, whose only law is profit, has for years poisoned our air, ravaged our soil, stripped our forests bare, and corrupted our water resources

War and preparation for war is not a matter of national honor and national defense, but a matter of profit for the few.

War is capitalism with the gloves off …

Capitalists are generating death.

I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.

We'll never move beyond oil until we stop rewarding oil companies with ridiculous taxpayer subsidies and start making them pay for the harm they cause our families and our planet.

People who work in diamonds and in oil wreck a lot of the Earth and a lot of the people on it.