Bill McKibben's visit

"I'm here to fill you with despair," begins Bill McKibben at his lecture in the Keene Valley Central School auditorium.  It's a topic in which he's well versed.  McKibben has spent decades advocating for our struggling earth and inspiring activism in local and global environmental movements.  Tonight, approximately 250 people gather in the wooden bleachers of the school to hear one of America's most notable environmentalists speak his rhetoric and inspire activists old and young.

He's honest; the fossil fuel industry and its politics pose a great threat to the effort to mitigate global climate change.  He's angry about the developments regarding internal knowledge of global warming at Exxon.  At the bottom end of the great power disparity between power and people rest the consumers, every person on earth dependent on oil.  He explains the magnitude of C02 emissions: the rising pH levels in the ocean, melting ice caps, droughts, wildfires, and how it affects those who deserve the retribution least.  The people who experience these events most severely are involved in an “almost perfect inverse relationship between how much [they] cause and how much [they] get hit”. He cites the disparity in the damage resulting from Hurricane Sandy in New York City and in Haiti.    

McKibben understand how important time is in the solution's yet unknown equation.  His job is to convince the world that this problem does have a time limit, that we must redirect our course if we are to, in the best case scenario, succeed at mitigating the effects of climate change.  His organization 350.org has held global rallies, organized historic marches, and set a precedent for how activism can work, for example, in delaying the Keystone Pipeline.  

Started along with 7 undergraduates at Middlebury College, McKibben's organization 350.org influences environmental activism globally. He notes that young people, some as young as middle school, continue to infuse 350 with its fervor. One example of youth at the forefront is the divestment movement happening across college campuses around the world to breakdown the fossil fuel industry. As for some much needed post-graduate advice, McKibben says that “no matter what you're passionate about, it will be useful.  We need theologians, chemists, psychologists, structural engineers.  They all fit into the paradigm of what we’re doing”.  

McKibben admits he's not certain that good will prevail. There are institutions in place rooted in a nearly all-powerful structure. He's desirous, though, and his will to pursue this desire is palpable. A small boy asked, "How many times have you been arrested?". After counting on his fingers to eight, McKibben explained his ethos of nonviolence regarding the earth, in his politics, and in his words. He ends by explaining that "environmentalism is not radical, it's deeply conservative".