Bill McKibben on Slowing Global Warming and Moving Toward a Sustainable Economy

Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and other books, and one of the earliest reporters on global warming, spoke about the movement to slow global warming the other night in an on-stage interview. I found it odd that the conversation wasn't more in-depth considering the audience (imagine a roomful of rich, white San Francisco liberals - kind of preaching to the choir, hmm?), there were a number of points worth mentioning. I'm just going to quicky sketch out some of these below.



The Challenge of Making the Complex Simple
One of the most difficult aspects of communicating about global warming - and sustainability in general - is that it's such a complex, intertwining subject. Everything feeds into everything else, is connected to everything else in more ways than one, impacts and is impacted by everything else. In a world increasingly desperate for easy answers - just push this button - we're faced with laying bare complex issues and attempting to navigate toward not-so-intuitive answers.

Add to that the fact that this isn't exactly a sexy issue and we're faced with quite the uphill battle. As McKibben said, it's a bit like "going to the doctor and being told you have high cholesterol and have to cut the fat out of your diet." No one wants to do it, and those who do are "rewarded" with not being sick. Logically that may be a big, juicy carrot but at the end of the day we're still stuck munching carrots instead of french fries.

The Challenge of a Brand New Movement
The environmental movement has experienced a lot of changes over the decades, and now that the science is finally in (yes, it is), it's been somewhat vindicated. But this shift means that the movement now needs to go beyond merely proving that global warming exists and, instead, tackle the solution. The solution, of course, is massive economic change. I say "of course" as though this is obvious, and it is to those who have done any deeper reading on the subject outside of, say, USA Today. But McKibben points out that the environmental movement, while solid at education etc., isn't necessarily well-equipped to deal with changing the world's economic system.



It seems to me that the movement itself is a little too insular for that. Once derided for its moral overtones and scolding approach, I'm not sure it's really capable of stepping outside that sense of morality. Changing the global economic structure - regulation of the corporate world, public investment in R&D, global manufacturing and transport, you name it - requires the buy-in of so many differing entities that using a moral imperative to drive this change would seem implausible. But maybe that's exactly what we need - a global recognition, from inside the economic paradigm, that our current global economy is simply not meeting the social responsibilities long promised by unchecked markets.

And what of those markets? When McKibben was asked, "How do you minimize growth [McKibben's approach to stopping global warming] without replacing capitalism?" he replied by stressing the need for more focus on local economies. The idea is that a network of strong local economies provides a safety net of sorts for a stronger global economy. "How can I make it bigger?" is the wrong question, says McKibben. We're craving that smaller, local, community connection that the bulk of us [city-dwellers] have essentially missed out on as urbanization and technology has run rampant. But I'm getting on a tangent.

The Challenge of India and China
Although the U.S. is the primary global consumer, this may well change sooner than we realize (or will be ready for). Developing countries have, for the first time in perhaps the world's history, huge leverage in the growth of their own economies. To power the vast populations of China and India, cheap energy is needed. Right now, cheap energy means coal, which is simply too dirty. If these countries rely on coal - as they are currently doing - we'll be powerless to stop global warming. McKibben points to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in 2009 as an key potential turning point. He's of the mind that the only way to succeed in combating global warming is to convince China and India to abandon coal. Good luck with that.

Marking Collective Success
In spite of all the challenges that lie ahead of us, McKibben was careful to point out that as a society, we are actually making great strides towards effective change. He cited not just the mainstream adoption of the subject, but also the increasing number of creative solutions that are cropping up both locally and abroad. In an effort to harness this momentum and maximize it, he's started 350.org,* which asks you and I to put our heads together to come up with new solutions. As he writes on the organization's website:

"What we need most right now are your ideas for how to take the number 350 and drive it home: in art, in music, in political demonstrations, in any other way you can imagine. We will connect actions all around the world and make them add up to more than the sum of their parts–but we don’t have all the ideas and all the inspiration. We need yours."

And that really is what it all boils down to: each and every one of us needs to make a simple decision. Will I work towards change, or will I continue with more of the same? No need to read more into it than that—as a single human being, you don't have to solve the world's problems nor remove yourself from the life you love. But as a group of individuals working towards change, the momentum becomes unstoppable.


*350 parts per million is the maximum safe level of carbon dioxide we can have in the atmosphere. It's McKibben's benchmark for a halt to global warming.