Fossil fuel industry is the only industry on earth throwing its waste out for free. If you run a restaurant, you have to pay someone to cart away your garbage. - inspired by Bill McKibben

 

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Source: Thom Hartman interview with Bill McKibben on July 31, 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLPKXyVivF8&feature=player_embedded#!

Notes: Expanded quote by author and 350.org founder, Bill McKibben:

"The essential policy thing every economist has pointed out for over a decade now: put a price on carbon that reflects the damage it does to the atmosphere.  

The fossil fuel industry is the only industry on earth that gets to pour out its waste for free.  If you run a restaurant, you have to pay someone to cart away your garbage.  It would be cheaper to chuck it out into the street, but otherwise, you would have rats.  This is why civilizations do not allow people to do this, unless they run fossil fuels.  

What we have to do is to assemble a big enough movement to force the fossil fuel industry to do the right thing.  That is going hard to do.  Exxon is the richest industry on earth.  They announced a third quarterly profit of $15 or 16 billion dollars last week, but we are doing to try.     

We are going to assemble a divestment movement that resembles the one that took on apartheid in South Africa, a generation ago.  At 350.org, we are going to announce a nationwide campaign the night after the election...If these guys want to take away our future and our planet, then we are going to take away their money."

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