Graduate Environmental Program

Listen to Bill McKibben’s talk here:download here

On 11 May 2009, leading environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben discussed the implications of the latest findings in climate science, and the unique international campaigns that have emerged to fight global warming. In front of an audience of over 300 people, he proposed a path forward that is focused on action, creativity, and the rapid mobilisation of an international social movement.

Even two years ago, scientists could offer only vague ideas of how much carbon in the atmosphere was too much. But in the wake of the rapid melt of Arctic sea ice in 2007, it has become clear that this is a problem not only for the future but very much for the present.

Bill McKibben (http://www.billmckibben.com) is a leading writer on the environment, based in Vermont, USA. His is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship among other awards.

McKibben’s first book, ‘The End of Nature‘, was published in 1989. It is regarded as the first book for a general American audience about climate change, and has been printed in more than 20 languages. ‘Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future‘ (2007) presents the shortcomings of the growth economy, how vibrant local economies are challenging globalisation, especially through the localisation of enterprise and food production.

He trained as a journalist and joined the ‘New Yorker’ magazine as a staff writer, and wrote much of the “Talk of the Town” column from 1982 to early 1987. He is a frequent contributor to various publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Granta, and Rolling Stone. He is also a board member and contributor to Grist Magazine.

McKibben has most recently been involved in leading the organisation of the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history, the ‘Step It Up 07‘ campaign. He is currently on tour, talking about the 350.org campaign, which he heads. He has just presented a 2009 Sydney Ideas lecture (downloadable).

Introductory remarks by Simon Batterbury

Bill McKibben’s tour of Australia and New Zealand is promoting 350.org, a campaign to reduce global C02 emissions. Thankyou to his team for giving us the change to host this event in Melbourne.

We will follow tonight’s lecture with a vote of thanks by Ellen Sandell from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, and we also acknowledge Environment Victoria, Beyond Zero Emissions and other NGOs and organisations that have been disseminating information about his lecture and helping in other ways.

I would like to offer a few words of introduction on tonight’s speaker, Bill McKibben. Bill has occupied the status of a leading writer and commentator on environmental issues for 20 years, and he also has an outstanding career as a journalist and author in the US. What he calls his “youthful” book, The End of Nature (1989), became an international bestseller. My own copy was purchased in the UK, and was read when I was a grad student at Clark University in New England among the stunning shades of the autumn leaves. I was working as an assistant on the Earth Transformed by Human Action project and book. This was Clark University’s effort to bring George Perkins Marsh into the 20th century. It was not as readable as End of Nature, of course, being several hundred pages long. My copy of EoN has covered approximately 20,000 “book miles”, which is unfortunate considering its subject the subject is the irrevocable transcendence of the human-nature divide through atmospheric global warming. McKibben’s early alert on this issue sent a ricochet through the US at a time when the government had begun to publish some findings on global warming, but the public were insufficiently aware of the magnitude of the problem. The “end of nature” in the title refers, of course, the coming to an end of a “set of human ideas about the world and our place in it”, as science was beginning to show the gravity of anthropogenic change, and also beginning genetic modification in a serious way. McKibben felt we could not look at a landscape, or a tree, in the same way again and forecasted that eventually “our mistaken sense of nature as eternal and separate will be washed away and we will see all too clearly what we have done”. This moment of truth is now well and truly upon us. It has taken 15 years for American and indeed Australians to become generally conscious of global change, but the seeds were sown by Bill, by Steve Schneider, and other prophetic commentators.

A sense of loss, and of a certain annoyance about the intransigence of a consumerist and technologically driven society, pervades End of Nature. Since that time Bill has written extensively, for The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion Magazine, and other publications. In Orion in 2008, for example, he argues that having a sustainable lifestyle is unfortunately not going to be enough for the planet – the greatest contribution a citizen can make to reduce emissions is actually to lobby to promote large scale actions by the state and corporations, actions like international climate treaties and retooling energy generation. The sentiment probably shocked a few complacent middle class Greens last year. He has also written Enough (2004) on the perils of genetic engineering, Maybe One (1998) on population growth and children, Hope, Human and Wild (2002) on sustainable futures, consumption and spirituality, and two major anthologies have just come out, American Earth (2008) and The Bill McKibben Reader (2008). His Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (2007) presents the shortcomings of the growth economy, showing how vibrant local economies are challenging globalisation, especially through the localisation of enterprise and food production.

Much of McKibben’s analysis has relevance to Australia. We sit in an environmentally active city, in an elite university. But we have to remember that despite Australia’s low population density we in Victoria are running out of water fast, our marine environment is deteriorating rapidly, we are still logging native forests and have recently suffered tragic bushfires. Melbourne is growing outward into bushland at such a place that it resembles parts of the US, where growth controls are, officially at least, far less severe. Our reliance on brown coal urgently needs to be reduced.

Bill’s response to these issues in the American context is also relevant to Victoria. Following through on the sentiments of his books and articles over many years, Bill has more recently found himself needing to act. He promotes a simpler life, but has also spearheading large scale actions and non violent demonstrations against lack of action on global warming. The ‘Step It Up 07′ campaign started very small, and became the largest environmental campaign in US history, at least since Earth Day 1970. With Wendell Berry, he has recently been at the forefront of actions at coal fired power stations including civil disobedience against the Capitol Power Plant in Washington.

We have, therefore, a rare opportunity to hear from someone who has transcended the divide between words and action, and whose agile activism is balanced by originality and cutting edge scholarship.