#bill-mckibben — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bill-mckibben, aggregated by home.social.
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More say they’ve experienced extreme cold, AP-NORC poll finds
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions in North America kicked off 2026 wi…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Business #AnnieBraswell #BillMcKibben #ChrisFerro #Climate #Climateandenvironment #climatechange #Climatescience #Commoncold #Generalnews #Heatwaves #JosephBird #NorthAmerica #Publicopinion #Storms #U.S.DemocraticParty #U.S.news #U.S.RepublicanParty #Washingtonnews #weather
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/480121/ -
The relentless flood of information we receive does not necessarily equal an understanding of our situation... It doesn't matter if you hear constantly, night after night, about poor children or abused elders. It matters that you hear about them in some way both deep enough and complicated enough that you'll go out and do something useful.
-- Bill McKibben⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #BillMcKibben #Information
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Panopainting #Flowers #Junkyard #Minnesota
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The great push is always away from individual skill and engagement -- a horse took all sorts of information and insight to handle, and a Model T a little, and a Honda Accord virtually none.
-- Bill McKibben⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #BillMcKibben #Expertise #Technology
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #CoyoteButtesNorth #TheWave #VermilionCliffs #Utah
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I'm reading 'Here Comes The Sun' by #BillMcKibben. I like his analogy that #solar and #wind used to be the Whole Foods of energy and now they are the Costco of energy.
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—>> The Rachel Maddow Show ⦁ #MSNBC <<— Older Americans bring Energy, Experience to anti-Trump Activism #BillMcKibben talks with #RachelMaddow ⏱️0:05:12 #TheRachelMaddowShow #Pol #Politics #GeoPolitics #WorldNews #News #AusPol #CdnPoli #EUpol #NZpol #UKpol #USpol youtu.be/8ccAqYqmMgo
Maddow: Older Americans bring ... -
It was not the longest speech in UN history...
It was not the most provocative speech in UN history...
It wasn’t even the most dangerous speech in UN history...But it was definitely the dumbest speech that delegates have ever had to listen to...
#BillMcKibben #UN #DonaldTrump #ClimateChange
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/the-stupidest-speech-in-un-history -
"There’s no point refuting his climate denialism; evidence, data, and expert analysis bounce off his bronzed hide like tennis balls off a rhino."
#BillMcKibben
https://open.substack.com/pub/billmckibben/p/the-stupidest-speech-in-un-history?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email -
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period. [Unofficial] @[email protected] ·Pluralistic: The enshittification of solar (and how to stop it) (23 Sep 2025)
https://web.brid.gy/r/https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/23/our-friend-the-electron/
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3) The 👆is an important counterpoint to the #Trump administration who would have us believe in the unaffordability of #renewables and the absence of #BatteryTech for #EnergyStorage
Could it be that that they are compromised by promises made to the #Petrogarchy ??? There was the matter of a rather overt solicitation last year 👇
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131
#BillMcKibben #SunDay #CleanEnergy #ClimateChange #CleanTech #SolarPower #GreenTech #USPol
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2) Interesting analysis from #Forbes on the economic virtue of #SolarEnergy
#BillMcKibben #SunDay #CleanEnergy #ClimateChange #CleanTech #SolarPower #GreenTech
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1) Excellent idea from #BillMcKibben and his many supporters who are organizing #SunDay.
Getting more #CleanEnergy solutions installed in every household is an important goal in addressing #ClimateChange
Enabling potential #CleanTech adopters to kick the wheels is essential in making Americans aware of #SolarPower as a great economic and feel good choice
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SAVE THE DATE: Sunday, September 21, 2025 - Day of action celebrating solar and wind power, and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind.
In Monterey County, people will gather 11 am to 3 pm at Window on the Bay Park in Monterey. Program includes music by the Cypressaires! To volunteer, contact David Prina of Monterey County Climate Action Coalition. https://bikemonterey.org/act-on-climate-monterey-county.html
#SunDay #SunDayEvents #SunDay2025 #DayOfAction #ThirdAct #BillMcKibben #RenewableEnergy
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"Tolerance by itself can be a cover for moral laziness. In a world with real and pressing problems, tolerance is merely a precondition for politics -- it is not itself a meaningful politics." - Bill McKibben
#Tolerance #Intolerance #Politics #Resistance #MoralLaziness #BillMcKibben
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The relentless flood of information we receive does not necessarily equal an understanding of our situation... It doesn't matter if you hear constantly, night after night, about poor children or abused elders. It matters that you hear about them in some way both deep enough and complicated enough that you'll go out and do something useful.
-- Bill McKibben -
The relentless flood of information we receive does not necessarily equal an understanding of our situation... It doesn't matter if you hear constantly, night after night, about poor children or abused elders. It matters that you hear about them in some way both deep enough and complicated enough that you'll go out and do something useful.
-- Bill McKibben⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #BillMcKibben #Information
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Panopainting #Flowers #Junkyard #Minnesota
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Monday MLK Day gathering livestream at noon EST with @RebeccaSolnit #BillMckibben and more.
Because the way we get through the challenging times is Together~Connected.
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Factors that caused the LA fires🔥 🔥
Scientists gave us “the kind of painstaking research that make clear the result when a climate-induced drought (it’s only rained 0.16 inches in LA since May) and climate-induced heatwaves (the LA basin had some of its hottest stretches ever this past summer) and perhaps the climate-induced increase in the intensity of Santa Ana winds combine to created a firestorm unlike any other.”
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#BillMckibben writes with such clarity. Here, he asks what the Earth is “worth”— and shows how the financial damages from not adequately addressing #ClimateChange are like fighting a big war permanently.
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WE ALL JUST WON!
A few minutes ago the New York Times moved a story saying that the White House has decided to pause permitting for new #LNG terminals—if it’s true, and I think it is, this is the biggest thing a U.S. president has ever done to stand up to the #FossilFuel industry.
#Climate #Biden #GoodNews #LeaveItInTheGround
https://open.substack.com/pub/billmckibben/p/um-i-think-we-all-just-won
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> We have accepted the idea that continents can drift in the course of aeons, or that continents can die in a nuclear second. But normal time seems to us immune from such huge changes. It isn’t, though...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1989/09/11/the-end-of-nature
#EndOfNature with #WilliamMcKibben #BillMcKibben has me thinking of William Empson's discussion of a TaoChien poem and how we have two incompatible ways: one instant of pain or pleasure or one lifetime of 70 years... -
The Political Project of MCRC v. EPA, 2
Second In A Series
In this Greg Peterson photo from the Cedar Tree Institute site, Northern Great Lakes Synod Lutheran Bishop Thomas A. Skrenes blesses one of the trees faith congregations planted on Earth Day, 2009.
Activists Afoot!As I suggested in my first post in this series on MCRC v. EPA, the complaint filed by the Marquette County Road Commission would have us believe that “anti-mining” forces worked secretly with and even infiltrated the EPA, and the agency’s objections to CR 595 followed a “predetermined plan.” The EPA, it claims, had decided to oppose the haul road even before the MCRC application was reviewed.
This sounds like legitimate cause for concern: permit applications should be reviewed on their merits, not pre-judged and not according to some other anti- or pro- agenda. We certainly wouldn’t want someone in the Environmental Protection Agency to be “pro-mining”; there are enough well-paid mining lobbyists already haunting the hallways in Lansing and Washington, DC. But in this case, the anti-mining label is being used as a term of opprobrium, and to distort and deliberately misrepresent what the Environmental Protection Agency is chartered and required by law to do: in short, to enforce the Clean Water Act and protect the environment.
When it comes to proving the insinuations it makes, the MCRC complaint offers slim evidence.
For example, the complaint makes a big fuss over a November 28, 2012 letter from Laura Farwell, who lives in the Marquette area and is described here as “a prominent environmental activist.” The letter is addressed to Lynn Abramson, then a Senior Legislative Assistant for Senator Barbara Boxer, and Thomas Fox, Senior Counsel of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, asking them to “weigh-in” with the EPA on CR 595. (Exhibit 1).
EPA must determine whether to uphold its original objections to proposed County Road 595 under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), pursuant to its supervisory authority over Michigan’s delegated wetlands permitting program. Tom may remember that during the August 30, 2011 meeting at EPA Denise Keehner of EPA’s office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds definitively reiterated EPA’s position and stated that the haul road would not happen.
Thus, this letter is to request, respectfully, that you weigh-in as soon as possible with the EPA on its decision.The MCRC complains about Farwell’s use of the word “definitively” here and casts the 2011 meeting in a sinister light:
on August 30, 2011, a very different type of meeting regarding CR 595 took place at USEPA Headquarters in Washington, DC. MCRC was neither invited to nor informed of the meeting. In attendance (as far as is known at the present time) were top USEPA officials, Congressional staff, KBIC representatives, and a prominent environmental activist opposed to the construction of CR 595. It further appears that USEPA made no formal record of the meeting.
Without a formal record, it’s impossible to know what transpired at this meeting, and if the complaint is going to rely on Farwell’s memory of the conversation, then it should also take into account her intentions in paraphrasing and recounting it, one year after it took place. The language here — “a very different type of meeting,” “neither invited nor informed,” “as far as is known at the present time,” “no formal record” — doesn’t help in that regard, and it’s meant to suggest that conjurations were already afoot.
It’s clear the MCRC was not included in some discussions at EPA. There’s nothing extraordinary or illicit about that. All concerned parties had been meeting with and petitioning the EPA for several years at this point. The complaint is still a long way from proving that the EPA “surreptitiously met with a number of environmental activists vocally opposed to the road,” and an even longer way from proving that there was anything like an anti-mining coalition assembled in secret at the offices of the EPA.
In an ironic twist, these allegations of secrecy and whispering behind closed doors may come back to haunt the MCRC: at a Marquette County Board of Commissioners meeting this month, the Marquette County Road Commission itself faced accusations that it had violated the Open Meetings Act in planning to bring its suit against the EPA. Public officials who intentionally violate that act are ordinarily fined and incur other liabilities; in this case, there would be some eating of words as well.
By November 28, 2012, the EPA had, in fact, “decided against the proposed haul road,” as Farwell puts it in the email she sent along with the letter to Abramson and Fox. The EPA had entered objections to the Woodland Road Application (in March, 2010) and announced their objections to CR 595 (in March, 2012). Even so, a Fall 2012 public meeting held by the EPA “in Marquette…for more input” had Farwell worried. She was not at all confident the EPA would uphold its original objections to the haul road. The matter was still far from being “definitively” settled.
Whatever reassurances Farwell was given at that 2011 meeting — or thought she had been given, or recalled having been given, one year later — were clearly at risk of getting lost in the bureaucratic shuffle. The purpose of her letter is to prevent that.
There is nothing surprising in all this. Those watching new mining developments in the Upper Peninsula are constantly having to chase after the EPA and demand that the regulator step in and do its job.
Jeffery Loman, a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and a former federal regulator, has repeatedly put the EPA on notice and complained of the agency’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act.
In May of this year, the grassroots environmental group Save the Wild UP filed a petition with the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board, arguing that Eagle Mine was issued the wrong regulatory permit. The appeal requested that the EPA require Eagle Mine to obtain a Clean Water Act permit in order to protect the Salmon Trout River and other surface waters from the discharge of mining effluent. The Appeals Board did not contest the facts put forward in the petition, but dismissed it for lack of jurisdiction. They hardly proved themselves to be staunch allies.
So watchdogs and environmental groups, too, have reason to gripe about the EPA and often feel powerless in the face of bureaucratic inertia and ineptitude. Laura Farwell herself seems to have felt that way, and that’s why we find her asking Abramson and Fox for help. The MCRC complaint exaggerates her influence at the EPA when it describes her as “a prominent environmental activist.” The epithet is used here to create the misleading impression that within the offices of EPA Region 5 and the confines of Marquette County there are political opponents with resources to match the power of multi-billion dollar, multinational mining companies.
Laura Farwell and her husband Frank moved to the area in 2006 from Madison, Wisconsin. They are members of the St. Paul Episcopal Church and participate, along with their son Cody, in the church’s Earth Day tree plantings. The couple donated some money to the UP Land Conservancy. Farwell has also organized events for the Cedar Tree Institute, which works to bridge “faith communities and environmental groups.” (She is described on the Institute’s site as “a concerned mother and local citizen.”) She is thanked for “working quietly behind the scenes” in a 2011 Earth Keeper TV video on the environmental risks posed by the Eagle Mine; and she’s copied along with many other local citizens in a Google Group post dated April 9, 2012, urging people to comment on CR 595 before the public comment period is closed.
Farwell’s commitments to land conservation are pretty clear, and while the complaint asks us to recoil in horror at the phrase “prominent environmental activist,” cooler heads are just as likely to be impressed by Farwell’s dedication to the people around her and the place where she lives. Maybe that dedication is all it takes to be a prominent environmental activist in the view of the Marquette County Road Commission.
Some locals, on the other hand, are legitimately concerned that nationally and internationally prominent environmentalists — like Bill McKibben, George Monbiot, Naomi Klein and their ilk — ignore the current situation around Lake Superior, or fail to give it the serious attention it deserves. National media have barely taken notice. Farwell herself admits that to the great and powerful in Washington DC “the proposed haul road may seem like some little back trail in the middle of nowhere,” but she urges that it will cut through “critical wetlands resources” and “enable the industrializing of this rural Great Lakes watershed by international mining interests.”
Farwell’s letter tries to create some urgency around the CR 595 issue by putting the road in context and specifying whose interests would be served by the industrializing of the region. A serious assessment of CR 595 would significantly widen the lens, taking into account the cumulative effects of all the new mining activities around Lake Superior: all leasing, exploration, development and active mining throughout northern Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario. Otherwise, we miss the big picture, and without that perspective, it’s just too easy to parcel out the land, the water, and the future of the region to the highest bidders.
The MCRC complaint, too, places CR 595 in the context of “mining and economic development in the Great Lakes region” in a few places, but only to make the specious argument that those who oppose or question the road are opposed to mining and therefore opposed to the region’s prosperity. These are the ideological leaps the complaint makes. Those who don’t make these leaps are called activists or anti-mining obstructionists. That is a political, not a legal argument.
It’s never too late to have a serious discussion of what sustainable economic development and true prosperity for the Great Lakes region might look like. How might we best organize our lives together in this place? is a fundamental political question. But at this juncture, it appears, the MCRC can’t afford to let that conversation happen. This lawsuit is an attempt to shut it down and stifle dissent. Where business leads, society must obediently follow. To question this order of things, as Laura Farwell seems to have repeatedly done, quietly, behind the scenes, is to commit some kind of nefarious act.
This is where the attitude on display in this complaint gets worrisome. With this lawsuit, the MCRC pretends to have the political authority to direct economic development in the region (not just to build and repair roads). But that is only pretense, and things in Marquette County are not as they appear. The public still does not know who is funding the Road Commission lawsuit, what they stand for and what they expect in return for their support. The real powers lurk behind the scenes.
#501c4 #antiMining #BillMcKibben #CedarTreeInstitute #CleanWaterAct #corporatePoliticalActivity #corruption #CountyRoad595 #CR595 #EagleMine #EarthDay #environmentalEthics #environmentalPolitics #environmentalism #EPA #GeorgeMonbiot #JefferyLoman #LauraFarwell #LundinMining #LynnAbramson #MarquetteCounty #MarquetteCountyRoadCommission #MarquetteCountyRoadCommissionVEPA #MCRCVEPA #mining #NaomiKlein #OpenMeetingsAct #politicalAuthority #politics #power #SaveTheWildUP #secrecy #StandUP_ #ThomasFox #TomCasperson #Water
