Bill McKibben
Image: Flickr/350.org/Nancie Battaglia
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BURLINGTON, Vt. – Bill McKibben is lanky, soft-spoken, scholarly and engaging. He may also be the closest thing the U.S. environmental movement has to a leader.
And he's in show business now. Still soft-spoken, but very, very angry.
On a crisp night earlier this month, a mostly-Gen Next crowd filled the University of Vermont's Allen Chapel to see the dress rehearsal of the coast-to-coast road show that McKibben hopes will ignite a campus movement.
"Do the Math" will visit 20 cities starting Nov. 7. It mixes McKibben's grim analysis with a little inspiration and hope, with a goal of inspiring America's youth to righteous anger, and to lead where the grown-ups have utterly failed.
After a career of teaching and powerful writing on the environment – the book title "The End of Nature" is pretty self-explanatory – McKibben is channeling his quiet rage at the prime culprits in what he views as a looming climate disaster.
He founded 350.org, the grassroots climate action group, and led a huge protest near the White House gates against the Keystone XL pipeline project last year. Now, McKibben is looking beyond America's governmental paralysis and focusing on directly on the fossil fuel industry.
The concept of "Do the Math" came from a July article penned by McKibben for Rolling Stone Magazine that careened around the blogosphere and Twitterverse like few mathematically-themed pieces of prose have ever done. McKibben's data, gleaned from the Carbon Tracker Initiative, strongly suggests that we may have already driven ourselves over a carbon cliff.
With his street-cred as an author, a thinker, and a hell-raiser – he spent three days in jail in Washington, D.C. after the White House protest – McKibben seeks to combine the educational virtues of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth with the motivational virtues of time-honored campus activism.
During the dress rehearsal, McKibben labeled the oil, gas and coal giants "a rogue force, outlaws not against the laws of the state, which they help to write, but against the laws of physics."
McKibben sees only two ways to escape climate misery. "Either Exxon has to bend," he told a packed room of 900 sometimes-raucous admirers, "or the laws of physics and chemistry have to bend." During the show, Exxon/Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson gets a video skewering with his own words, describing climate change as a simple, surmountable "engineering problem."
The quiet rage of Bill McKibben rises to the surface when he speaks of the institutional henchmen in what he sees as a global climate crime. The absence of regular climate change reporting in mainstream news organizations is "one of the most dismal chapters in media history," said in a pre-show interview. Like many environmentalists he's disappointed in the Obama Administration, and holds out far less hope for change should Mitt Romney win the White House.
"They're scared of the fossil fuel industry," he said of both men and their parties. "There's no percentage for these guys in addressing climate."
And while doing the math is not a normal pathway for venting rage, McKibben's show raises some powerful concepts. The title of the show and a good part of the presentation focus on the numbers McKibben and many climate scientists say we need to make to avoid catastrophe. Two degrees Celsius rise in global temperature is one such number, beyond which we're either melting, boiling or baking. Proven oil and gas reserves, just waiting to be lit, will produce five times the carbon needed for the planet to break this two-degree mark.
With little faith in the media or politicians, McKibben will visit a mix of big cities – New York, Philadelphia, L.A. – with college towns like Madison, Wisc.; Berkeley, Calif.; and Boulder, Colo. – in hopes of kindling a student movement based on the anti-apartheid protests of the late 1980's.
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18 Comments
Add CommentSo where is the rest of the scientific community? If McKibben is using consensus data, as he appears to be, then isn't it time for the entire scientific community, including Scientific American to openly endorse his goals? With 4 presidential/vice presidential debates with even the very phrase "climate change" off the table, how long can the scientific community stay silent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt will take decades to institute the technological changes necessary to abate and reverse the anticipated CO2 build up. Fifty years ago, the broad scientific community helped stop atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Isn't it time for an even stronger response.
Little things like having the Attorney General for the State of Virginia be very nasty to a climate scientist (Michael Mann), and having Rush and Senator Inhofe call your area of expertise a gigantic hoax on mankind tends to make one a bit shy I would imagine. The denialists have won the day pretty much since the climate-gate emails were grabbed and exploited. If you repeat something often enough, lots of people begin to believe it, and no one likes being called a perpetrator of a hoax.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Sisko: Isn't it wonderful that science is true even when victims of tribal politics such as yourself rant and rave against the data? I think your ideas might find more traction over at tinfoilhats.com or foxnews.com--they have forums for people like you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrrusan
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou seem to have prejudically concluded that someone who does not agree that there is reliable evidence that a warmer world is a pending disaster or that "we" must take highly expensive and ineffective actions to mitigate it is a republican or conservative. I am an engineering and an independent. Talk to me about the science and you will find that my conclusions are factually correct.
Only in your dreams.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMike
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI notice that you and the others who fear more CO2 seem unable to reasonably discuss the science or point out aything I have written that is not correct.
"Bill McKibben Launches Campus Crusade for Climate"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe above headline says it ALL. A Crusade is a religious battle or endeavor. The "high priests" must occasionally address the zombified followers, in order to maintain the faith.
I prefer, the scientific method, of observational science, over the faith based video games/models. Not as entertaining, to be sure, but of more value to society than the alarm klaxons, that never stop alarming. GK
What about all the non-human species that will be affected? What about the habitat that will be changed due to climate change? Already, millions of acres of pine trees have been killed by a shift in the range of pine bark beetles due to warming. And CO2 is causing acidification of the oceans, which threatens coral and lots of other species that make shells, etc., of calcium.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd what will you say when Tuvalu floods? Will you blame land subsidence, or random tidal fluctuations, or what?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps the people living in Tuvalu should move or build better infrastructure if the weather there is prone to flood the island.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"""1. The climate models used by the IPCC have provided inaccurate results that greatly over stated potential warming and failed to accurately forecast future conditions. """
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLie.
"""a. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/adding-multi-model-means-to-model-v-observations-graphs/"""b. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/observations-v-models-model-weather/"""
Cherry-picked.
"""2. Sea level is not rising at the feared rate of 2 meters by 2100 or the rate predicted by the IPCC of .6 meters by 2100 but at a rate of under 1 foot by 2100."""
Lie.
"""a. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/"""
Biased/misinterpreted source.
"""3. There is nothing scientifically special about CO2 levels at 350 ppm. """
So?
"""4. The idiot geek advocates that all Americans should send $100 to the corrupt government of Bangladesh. At a time when we can not balance our own budget you think that is a good economic policy huh? """
Yes, I do, Your Idiocy. If you think that we should let 50 million people worldwide get inundated, you are a heartless monster.
350.org is just a waste of time and money-Any organization or person that is saying things like "we can solve the climate crisis" or "we can stop global warming" are making statements that are just "Advertising Slogans" impossible to accomplish.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo actually "stop global warming" or "solve the climate crisis" human beings would have the ability to control the following to name a few:
The Sun
Volcanic Activity
The Weather
The Atmosphere
All Human Activities
The Oceans
No matter how aggressively heat-trapping emissions are reduced, some amount of climate change and resulting impacts will continue. Consequently, there is a need for adaptation and mitigation.
http://www.earthlyissues.com/globalwarming.htm
The Sun is not causing global warming. Increased CO2 is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not caused by volcanoes. Humans put out 100 times as much CO2.
And all of the other endangered species should do likewise?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you were really concerned about other species you would hope for a reduction in the human population and be far less worried about CO2. The large increase in the human population is the root cause of the change to the environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Humans put out 100 times as much CO2."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am certain you meant to say that humans produce 3% of natural CO2 emissions, and which volcanic eruptions are just another emitter. Of the 3% man contributes, what is your best estimate of reductions that realistically can be cut? 0.5% at maximum effort and a trillion dollars??
Seems that ideology is being expressed... NOT science. Especially when considering the benefits to the biosphere of enhanced CO2 and seems to ignore the fact of no significant warming for 16 years. Y'all need to seriously understand the word significant better.
Your social ideology will have to wait for social enlightenment, as the climate scare won't do it on its own. Other opportunities will present themselves, I'm sure. GK
"I am certain you meant to say ...."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow would you describe someone who would say such a thing? The words that come to mind are "arrogant fool."
"When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page3.php