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
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Multiplication Saves the Day
In my last column for the magazine I wrote about numbers. Now I’d like for us to do some math. Let’s assume, generously, that 5 percent of Americans are deeply concerned Continue reading
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When Words Fail
I ALMOST NEVER write about writing — in my aesthetic, the writing should disappear, the thought linger. But the longer I’ve spent working on global warming — the greatest challenge humans Continue reading
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Where Have All the Joiners Gone?
CHEAP FOSSIL FUEL has made us what we are. Which is to say: rich, powerful — Look at us! We can make the ice caps melt! The oceans rise! But something Continue reading
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The Unsung Solution
From his desk in an office in Chicago, Jeff Smith has a bird’s-eye view of the American landscape. Combing through a huge database of information compiled by the EPA, he can, Continue reading
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Planet Protectors
T HIS MAY COME as less of a shock to others, but it’s my own recent discovery: we live on a planet. In the last year, in the course of reporting Continue reading
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The Crunch
I write this on the fifth day of January in the year of our Lord 2007. Here in Vermont we’ve just come through the most snowless and warmest December in our Continue reading
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Of Mites and Men
A FEW NOTES ABOUT HONEYBEES, for a lazy summer day with a low, humming buzz coming from the direction of the squash patch: Under ideal conditions, a single colony can produce Continue reading
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The Present Future
NONE OF US WERE PREPARED for the sight of the Louisiana Superdome lapped by floodwaters and with strips of its roof peeled back by the winds of Hurricane Katrina. In that Continue reading
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Mad Max Meets American Gothic
CAN YOU FEEL THE MOOD SHIFTING? I can. A year of spiking speculation about peak oil and the death of suburbia has rattled lots of Americans. Plenty of people suddenly feel Continue reading
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The Submerging World
WARM WATER takes up more space than cold water does. That simple fact of physics, utterly inexorable, is one of the two or three most important pieces of information humans will Continue reading