Environmentalist and Author Bill McKibben Calls for Global Action On Climate Change

BOSTON/Jamaica Plain - Calling himself a "professional bummer-outer," author and environmental activist Bill McKibben last night described to an audience of about one hundred supporters of the Jamaica Plain based Bikes Not Bombs organization, the monumental changes he said our planet will go through if humans don't stop polluting the Earth with carbon and other industrial wastes.

Using vivid imagery: "I'm working on a new kind of low carbon technology, that I call virtual Powerpoint," McKibben also described the variety of global demonstrations and citizen actions that slowly have convinced government policy makers that climate change - and the human activity suspected of driving global warming - should be on top of the world's political agenda.

He has written extensively about the environment and the global economy. His books include "The End of Nature" and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."

His presentation at English High School last night served as a fundraiser for Bikes Not Bombs, which is holding it's annual bike-a-thon and Green Roots Festival next month.

Several years ago, McKibben and students at Middlebury College in Vermont launched a website and campaign called 350.org. That number, easily translatable into any language says McKibben, is the amount of carbon (in parts per million) scientists believe the Earth can sustain for any length of time. Currently, the carbon saturation equals more than 380 parts per million.

McKibben is travelling extensively to promote October 24th, 2009, as an "international day of climate action." He was in Cambridge this week to discuss strategy and fund raising with staff from the Hunt Alternatives Fund, an agency that links funding sources with "innovative and inclusive approaches to social change at local, national, and global levels."

Comparing the environmental and racial equality movements he quoted 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker who said, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice." Adding his own twist, Mckibben paraphrased, "the arc of the physical world is short and it bends towards heat, and if we do not solve this soon, we will not solve it."

OMB Audio / Bill McKibben Part 1: Consequences of Global Climate Change

OMB Audio / Bill McKibben Part 2: Activism can help!

Web Resources:
http://www.350.org/oct24
http://www.bikesnotbombs.org