Bill McKibben is an author and environmentalist who in 2014 was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel.’ His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in 24 languages; he’s gone on to write a dozen more books. He is a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized twenty thousand rallies around the world in every country save North Korea, spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.
Bill McKibben
Feature
A Moral Atmosphere
THE LIST OF REASONS for not acting on climate change is long and ever-shifting. First it was “there’s no problem”; then it was “the problem’s so large there’s no hope.” There’s Continue reading
Feature
Which Side Are You On?
Movements ripen, sometimes suddenly. The evils they battle have often existed for decades or even millennia (slavery, say) but the moment comes when the fight needs to happen. As James Russell Continue reading
Feature
The Era of Small and Many
Earlier this year, my state’s governor asked if I’d give an after-lunch speech to some of his cabinet and other top officials who were in the middle of a retreat. It’s Continue reading
Feature
A Little Leeway
HISTORY IS FULL of tasks that have been rendered obsolete by technology, but which were in their day so dominant that they left us dozens of metaphors and maxims still in Continue reading
Feature
Irony by the Sea
WHEN I ACTUALLY saw the setting for December’s big climate conference, I wondered if perhaps the UN — bulwark of bureaucratic earnestness — had somehow acquired a sense of irony. If Continue reading
Feature
Duty Dodgers
I DON’T THINK of myself as especially hard working. I started my career at The New Yorker as a young staff writer — and in those days in New York publishing Continue reading
Feature
The Only Way to Have a Cow
MAY I SAY — somewhat defensively — that I haven’t cooked red meat in many years? That I haven’t visited a McDonald’s since college? That if you asked me how I Continue reading
Feature
Take the Plunge
I’M WRITING THIS COLUMN in late July, midway through the busiest year of my life by far. I’ve already visited countries from New Zealand to Sweden to Turkey; later today I Continue reading
Feature
Beyond Radical
I REMEMBER, LONG AGO as a college reporter, interviewing the Libertarian candidate for president in a Boston hotel room. He held forth at great length on the Libertarian platform, which could Continue reading
Feature
Plants Suck
A fair amount of my mail — electronic, conventional — comes from people who Know that they have The Answer to our environmental woes. The Answer varies from year to year Continue reading