BY MARC MAXIMOV
W
hile the election was looming and the northeastern United States was drying its socks from the latest semiannual “storm of the century,” author-turned-activist Bill McKibben was girding for battle. The day after the election would see the start of his consciousness-raising, coast-to-coast “Do the Math” tour, an attempt to recruit an army of college students to fight the fossil fuel industry—a rapacious behemoth that’s prepared to burn the last drop of oil on the planet, whatever kind of planet is left to burn it on. Shortly before the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, journalist Marc Maximov spoke with McKibben about the tour, Hurricane Sandy, derelict millionaire ocean-dumpers and Elvis.
What is this tour about? The real point of it all, the reason we’re doing it the night after the election no matter who wins, is our sense is that the time has come to stop spending all our effort trying to reach our political leaders and instead reach the people who are really in charge of things, the fossil fuel industry. I wrote a piece for Rolling Stone [www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-2012 0719] this summer that went oddly viral, became one of the most shared pieces. And it laid out the mathematics behind the fact that, really, the fossil fuel industry is turning into a kind of rogue industry at this point, doing enormous damage. They have in their reserves about five times the amount of carbon than even the most conservative government thinks would be safe to burn. So, as Desmond Tutu says in a video that he put together for this road show, after the fight against apartheid, this is the next great moral issue for the planet, and we need to bring some of the same kinds of tools to bear. One of the things we’ll be doing is trying to launch divestment campaigns on college campuses across America to get those institutions to get rid of their stock in fossil fuel companies.
Tell me what you think about the election. Are both sides too beholden to these industries? Both sides are too beholden. That doesn’t mean there [weren’t] differences between the candidates. Only one of them devoted his summer to mocking the idea that trying to slow sea-level rise might be a good idea, a line that wasn’t very funny when Mr. Romney used it at the Tampa convention, and sure as hell wasn’t very funny by the time Sandy had come ashore. … Our job is clear: It’s to build a movement that presses them to do things. Barack Obama, without pressure, won’t do the things that we need. With pressure there’s at least some chance that he’ll pay attention.
Since your article this summer about the math of climate change, you had another article in Rolling Stone about the Greenland ice sheet [www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-arctic-ice-crisis20120816]. How frequently do you speak to climate scientists? Have you heard anything since then?
BILL MCKIBBEN TALKS ABOUT THE FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
I keep up with climate scientists regularly. I saw yesterday, in Charlotte, N.C., Michael Mann, one of our great climate scientists, who was at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. And Mike was there chairing a session on sea-level rise. And of course, that was given new pungency by the events of last week in New York and New Jersey. You know, that huge storm surge rode in on an ocean that was a foot higher than it would have been without climate change. So that’s of course one of the things that people are focused on right now.
“A HELL OF OUR OWN MAKING” continued on page 12 OPINION
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IN ROTATION
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DECEMBER 13, 2012
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RN&R
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