Writer and activist Bill McKibben has been circling the globe in a personal campaign to alert the masses as to the alarming changes taking place on our earthly home. A scholar in residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, McKibben recently spoke to a sell-out crowd at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills. Lots of young people there, very few men.
McKibben founded an organization called “350.org” to illustrate a growing dilemma. 350.org refers to the level of CO2 parts per million (ppm) beyond which serious changes in the Earth”™s systems become observable and its inhabitants are impacted. We are at 390 ppm and climbing.
McKibben”™s latest book, “Eaarth,” (with an extra “a” to indicate the new planet on which we are now living), paints a painfully clear picture of the changes. It is a planet in which growing seasons are being altered, sometimes dramatically. Excessive rain delays the traditional sowing schedule, rivers overrun their banks, flooding the most arable land, or rains refuse to come. As McKibben says ”“ “The great oceans are more acid and their level is rising; they are also warmer, which means the greatest storms on our planet, hurricanes and cyclones, have become more powerful. Nature will continue to provide an endless series of teachable moments.”
But the question is ”“ who is paying attention?
McKibben spent considerable time discussing what planetary changes are doing to the global food network. If the temperature goes up 4 percent (F) it will reduce the wheat crop by 40 percent. One can quibble about the numbers but one can count on the enormity of the result of a warming climate. Monoculture in the U.S. agriculture system dramatically increases its vulnerability. Meanwhile, there is a real movement toward small farms and interest in local food is soaring.
McKibben says he deplores this country”™s obsession with bigness, centralization and inexorable economic growth. With only 4 percent of the world”™s population, the U.S. creates 40 percent of the world”™s air pollution, largely as the result of an addiction to growth. Even though “green” has been the operative word it has not changed the fundamental drive to grow.
In “Eaarth,” McKibben lays out the enormity of the American way: “Most of all, of course, our time has been the time of bigness ”“ the amazing ever-steepening upward curve where things grew and grew and grew some more. Economics and road networks and houses, inflating until there were entire subdivisions filled with starter castles for entry level monarchs. Stomachs and breasts and lips, cars and debts, portions and bonuses grew. Can we imagine smaller? That is the test of our time.”
McKibben suggests we start aiming in a different direction. By focusing on the local community we can develop a different but more sustainable kind of growth. “You start having a food supply you can count on. You start having an energy supply you can count on and know that it is not undermining everything else that you do. You start building communities strong enough to count on. So that your own individual collection of wealth becomes (less) important than the community in which you participate.”
To many this whole discussion will smack of new-agey stuff from the past. But this is not the ”˜70s, friends. We are at the beginning of the end of the Oil Age and, believe me, oil is in everything, from your food to your toothpaste to all the stuff that we import from China. McKibben is trying to prepare us for the future, much like the Transition Movement is trying to create resiliency in the face of increasing turbulence on the globe.
Surviving the Future explores a wide range of subjects to assist businesses in adapting to a new energy age. Reach Maureen Morgan at maureenmorgan10@verizon.net.
Maureen, thank you for reporting on Mr. McKibben’s talk and message. The good news is there is still time (but not much) to reverse most of the ill be have done up to now, if we ACT!. Unfortunately, up to now the special interests lobbyists have had their way in Washington. I signed up on http://www.350.org, a group helped started by Bill and students, that has grown worldwide. Only with a movement of active, concerned citizens can we change business as usual on Capital Hill. Please do it now, and contact you policy makers for non-carbon energy now.