McKibben Urges Action on Climate Change

Twenty-five years ago, in his book The End of Nature, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben sounded the alarm on climate change, predicted the end of civilization as we know it, and waited for the world to act.

As he waited, the earth’s temperature rose by 1 degree Celsius, the oceans became 30 percent more acidic, and California experienced the worst drought since 1150. And, barring some significant action on the climate front, the planet is on track to see temperatures rise between 4 and 5 degrees Celsius this century.

McKibben delivered these sobering statistics in a Sept. 16 lecture sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. A capacity crowd of 500 people attended the talk in Lecture Center 100, and approximately 100 people watched streaming live video in an adjacent room.

As he rallied support for the historic Sept. 21 People’s Climate March in New York City, McKibben confessed to some weariness in his decades-long struggle to safeguard the planet’s future. Part of him, he said, resented having to march for something scientists have so clearly articulated as the “greatest problem the world has ever faced.”

“My theory of change basically was – people will read my book, and then they will change,” said McKibben. “Reason alone has proved completely insufficient.”

In his lecture, McKibben attributed the lack of progress made on climate change to two factors: power and perception. Power, in the hands of fossil fuel industry titans, has halted any significant advances to solving the climate crisis, and oil company executives, McKibben argued, are “stealing the future of the planet.”

McKibben countered the stereotype that environmentalists are “stale, pale males” pursuing a radical agenda.

“There’s not the least thing radical about what we’re asking for here,” McKibben said. “Radicals work at oil companies. If you are willing to get up in the morning and make a fortune by altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere once you’ve watched the arctic melt…You are a radical on a scale we’ve never seen before on this planet.”

McKibben said he became a climate change organizer when he realized the limitations of writing in effecting worldwide change. Together with seven undergraduates from Middlebury College, where he is a Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies, McKibben founded 350.org, the first planet-wide climate change movement.

The organization’s name stands for 350 parts per million, or the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Any amount over that threshold is “not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and on which life on the earth is adapted,” said McKibben, quoting NASA climatologist James Hansen.

Hoping to showcase the diverse faces of climate change, 350.org volunteers from around the globe organized an International Day of Climate Action on Oct. 24, 2009. The day featured 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries, and images were shown around the globe. CNN called it the “most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”

McKibben shared images of the demonstrations, saying, “The thing I want you to see is who your brothers and sisters in this fight are.” McKibben said it took only a half hour of watching photos stream in from around the globe to dispel the notion that environmentalists are a wealthy, racially and ethnically homogenous group.

In images from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, China, South Africa, and elsewhere, participants held signs saying, “350,” “Connect the dots,” and “Your actions affect me.” In the backgrounds, landscapes bore witness to floods, droughts, tropical storms and other extreme weather events.

Though he spoke in a measured, soft voice, McKibben delivered an urgent message. “Most scientists think that although we can’t obviously stop global warming, we can slow it down enough that we won’t utterly wreck all that those who came before us have built,” he said. “That’s going to take everything we’ve got in order to make it happen.”

In urging the crowd to attend the march in New York City, held before world leaders were scheduled to gather for a landmark United Nations summit on climate change, McKibben acknowledged that he was neither a great orator nor entirely confident that climate change activists would prevail.

“My intention is to try to be as honest as I can, and part of that is admitting that we don’t know if this is a winnable fight,” said McKibben, who drew a contrast between the environmental and civil rights movements.

“People in the civil rights movement had to be very brave…but they did have the great luxury of a certain kind of confidence that they would ultimately prevail. Dr. King always said, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’…Our position is the arc of the physical universe is short and bends toward heat, and if we don’t get this done soon, we will not get it done. It is a time test. That’s why it seems so urgent to me.”

McKibben’s lecture was made possible by a generous contribution from LA&S alumnus Howard Goldblatt (’73, political science), and his wife Leila Goldblatt.

To view the complete lecture, click here.