.gif) April
6, 2008 Guest – Bill McKibben
Program: Treating Our Planet Courteously
Bill McKibben is a writer and
avid environmentalist. Currently a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College in
Vermont, he has written several books, and contributes regularly to publications
such as The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Orion, and Mother Jones. He is
on the board of
Grist Magazine, for which he also writes articles.
McKibben's books vary in nature; however, it was his first book that established
him as an environmental writer. The End of Nature, published in 1989,
spoke to the issue of climate change. Originally serialized in The New Yorker,
it was considered the first public-oriented alarm about climate change. With
tragedies like Hurricane Katrina finally bringing global warming into sharper
focus for everyone (not only scientists and environmentalists), his writings
have grown even more important. An active participant in the Methodist Church,
he sees religion playing a vital role in protecting the future of Earth. A
recent document called the Evangelical Climate Initiative led McKibben to write
an article asserting that "even in the evangelical community, "right wing" and
"Christian" are not synonyms…given that 85 percent of Americans identify
themselves as Christians, and that we manage to emit 25 percent of the world's
carbon dioxide – well, the future of Christian environmentalism may have
something significant to do with the future of the planet."
Today, he examines the economy, the environment, and the overall happiness of
the US. McKibben writes that formerly, it was accepted that growing the economy
would make people wealthier, and therefore happier. Now, he says, "Growth is
bumping up against physical limits so profound – like climate change and peak
oil – that trying to keep expanding the economy may be not just impossible but
also dangerous. And perhaps most surprisingly, growth no longer makes us
happier." McKibben's latest book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and
the Durable Future, states the need "to move beyond growth…begin pursuing
prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions
producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy…". This
idea builds on his 2003 book, Enough, which imagines genetic engineering,
progress, and growth taken too far, and wonders whether it is not better to be
fully human than unnaturally perfect.
In 2006, McKibben led a five-day walk across Vermont, demanding legislation to
slow US carbon emissions. In early 2007, he founded
stepitup2007.org. This unique idea called on people and local groups
(including not-so-local groups such as the Sierra Club and the NWF), to organize
their own rallies on April 14, 2007. The rallies ranged from a large group of
people dressed in blue in Manhattan's Battery Park, lining up approximately
where the sea level would rise with continued glacial melting, to small groups
viewing Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth." All called for Congress to
pass strict laws to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050. |
