Scientists are telling us that 350 parts per million [of carbon] in the atmosphere is the upper limit. We're at 387 parts per million now, and we're up in that zone where the risk of going past irrevocable tipping points is elevated. It's no different than going to a doctor and learning your cholesterol is too high, and you're at risk for a heart attack. You have to work to lower your cholesterol and hope to get there before the heart attack comes.
Bill McKibbenIt's much to the credit of the rest of the world that they have gone ahead and tried to do the Kyoto accords on their own. It makes it unbelievably difficult to do that, for a variety of economic and regulatory reasons, without the participation of the biggest energy user in the world.
Bill McKibbenRemember...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.
Bill McKibbenHere, there's more of a movement, it doesn't mean we're winning any more, but we're at least fighting.
Bill McKibbenI'm not sure I'm a very good source of advice since we're kind of making this up as we go along.
Bill McKibbenI've got no advice. You guys know where you are and what will work. Just know that there are people all over the place working on this and that there's a great deal of solidarity around the world and we should try to build this big, sprawling movement that looks like the kind of energy system that we want - building lots of solar panels on lots of rooftops that are all interconnected.
Bill McKibbenWe finally know where the red line for climate really is. After the rapid melt of arctic ice in the summer of 2007, our best scientists, led by NASA's Jim Hansen, went back to work and produced a series of papers showing that with more than 350 ppm (parts per million) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we couldn't have a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted."
Bill McKibben