Bill McKibben: Actions speak louder than words
DOI: 10.1177/0096340212438383
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2012 68: 1
Bill McKibben is a writer/environmentalist who focuses primarily on
climate change. This article is a discussion between McKibben and a journalist
from the Bulletin. My favorite quote from
this article is "…to go back to the cholesterol example, if a doctor says
your cholesterol is 263, very few people then respond by saying, “I’d like a
disquisition now on the whole lipid system and how it works.” Most people say,
“That’s too high, right? It’s supposed to be 200 or below.” So when we say
350.org, and we say right now it’s 390 parts per million and it’s going up 2
parts per million per year, you don’t have to be a research scientist to get
that there’s too much. It helps people understand that this is not some future
crisis, but one that’s upon us now." This quote demonstrates the human
perspective of the carbon dioxide "number" that is unacceptable. McKibben
founded 350.org, a website that is campaigning to bring knowledge about the
devastating levels of carbon dioxide in the environment and eventually fix the
problem.
Along with the article about fracking this article demonstrates how little people know or want to know about what they do to the environment. a personal connection needs to be created by those involved to get anything done to save the environment. In this case a number doesn't help save the planet without context and i believe McKibben here is trying to give everyone a context that will spur them into acting.
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