Episode 2: Bill McKibben - Part 2

“I really understand at some deep level now that the iron law of climate change is that the less you did to cause it, the sooner and the harder you get hit. And so that sense of injustice and just wrongness and evil about it is stronger than it was 30 years ago." -Bill McKibben

America’s most prominent environmentalist continues his conversation with the Mother Earth Podcast. Bill McKibben was the first American author to warn the general public of the dangers of climate change in his 1989 book, The End of Nature. With this publication, Bill embarked on a three-decade journey from introverted author to America’s leading environmental journalist and trailblazing global climate activist. Bill is the founder of 350.org, the organization that created the first global, grassroots climate movement. In 2009, 350.org organized 5,200 simultaneous climate demonstrations in 181 countries. The organization has staged twenty thousand rallies around the world and continues to be at the cutting edge of the climate crisis today.

In the second part of our conversation with Bill, he recounts a formative moment of his youth when he and his father joined other concerned citizens in his hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts to support a protest by a young John Kerry and Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. He discusses his first full-length article in the New Yorker and how it led to his realization that the Earth is a fragile place. And he stresses the importance of the current campaign at 350.org and sister organizations to divest from fossil fuel infrastructure, including how anyone with a pair of scissors and a credit card from certain financial institutions can get involved. Bill explains why the divestment movement has been so powerful and is critical to halting the climate crisis. 

While working overtime to save humanity and creation from the climate crisis, including by getting himself arrested, Bill has continued his writing career and is America’s foremost writer on the environment. He has written seventeen books including Eaarth, Deep Economy, Enough, Oil and Honey and published a compilation of essays, The Bill McKibben Reader. Bill has contributed to publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The Rolling Stone, and Outside. He seems to be everywhere these days, with an article or op ed on the climate crisis in a prominent publication coming out nearly every week. Please note that this episode was recorded prior to the pandemic.

Visit motherearthpod.com for show notes with more information about Bill and how you can get involved in helping to solve the climate crisis.