Planet Prophet

Aug. 17, 2008

The name of Bill McKibben isn’t well known outside environmental circles, but he’s considered a planet prophet – one of the very first to alert the public to climate change.
McKibben will make a free appear-ance in Traverse City on September 7, compliments of the Michigan Land Use Institute (the nonprofit group that’s strenuously pushed the idea of eating locally with its Taste the Local Difference campaign).
McKibben’s got a lot to say even beyond climate change, but will arrive in town with a nurturing kind of message. He believes that scaling down can make people much happier.
Twenty years ago, McKibben warned of climate change in his book The End of Nature. It was the first such book for a general audience and arrived at a time when scientists were still arguing about the phenomenon. There’s now scientific consensus by the world’s leading scientific bodies that focus on climate change, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
McKibben’s latest effort is Deep Economy, which pushes the idea to “think globally, act neighborly” as one of his friends succinctly put it on a homemade bumper sticker. He warns that America’s hyper-individualism has left millions feeling alone, vulnerable and cut off from their communities.
McKibben’s other major argument for acting neighborly is economic. Soon, the rising cost of fuels will simply make it too costly to transport food vast distances. And the mass production of food has also become unsafe with e-coli poisoning and miserable conditions for workers.
In Deep Economy, McKibben offers examples of towns across the country trying to bring more neighborliness to their lives. Projects range from farmers markets nearly everywhere to one Michigan company installing rooftop wind turbines to generate lower cost electricity. There are few formulaic answers; each solution seems to be as unique as the community, but you’ll find plenty of inspiration.

Here’s an interview with McKibben:

NE: What will prompt people to go neighborly -- idealism or prices? I’m thinking the high gas prices is what finally caused people to drive less.
McKibben: Some of both, don’t you think? …I’m spending most of my time on what we’re calling the 350 Project, and it’s what I’m going to talk about when I get to Michigan. The world is engaged right now in negotiations that will lead to the successor of the Kyoto treaty. It’s supposed to be reaching an agreement before a meeting in September of 2009 in Copenhagen.
At the moment, the negotiations are not meeting the challenge that science poses. As of last year, when the Arctic melted, scientists looked more closely at what the maximum level of carbon dioxide was we could have. That effort was led by Jim Hansen of NASA, who has been researching global warming longer than just about anybody else. He gave us a limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of 350 parts per million. Beyond that, the level is incompatible with our civilization because sea levels will rise quickly, we’ll see shifts in the monsoon, the rapid spread of disease, and on and on.
We’re at 387 now and going up. Our earth is like someone with high cholesterol -- we need to go to the doctor and bring it down. It means urgent action that our leaders right now aren’t ready to contemplate. The group -- 350.org -- is going to spread that number around the planet. Our website has been up six to eight weeks. We have demonstrations and rallies on every continent. We’re building to a day of global action. It’s exciting.

NE: Please talk a bit about this issue of happiness.
McKibben: The same things that are wrecking the atmosphere are also the same forces that are twisting our lives around too -- endless, unthinking consumption. So what’s a different vision of surviving and buying? I think the future has a lot to do with making connections and less to do with hyper-individualism.

NE: You have several examples of your book of neighborly economies. What’s your favorite?
McKibben: I loved being in the little town of Powell, Wyoming. It’s in a county that voted for Bush four-to-one in the last election, but when Wal-Mart was threatening to come into town, they pooled their money and built a mercantile dry goods store to sell clothes. That worked tremendously well.

NE: Speaking of local innovation, there’s a Traverse City builder who’s making very small modular homes that can be heated almost by a candle, yet the homes are very expensive. Do you think people would be wise to make this kind of investment?
McKibben: My wife and I got a state prize seven years ago for building the most energy efficient house, and our payback is getting better all the time. We don’t have a TV at all. The money we save is enough to finance the solar panels on the roof. We don’t have a jacuzzi. We have really good thick insulation in the walls.

NE: Many people who live in Northern Michigan listen to Rush Limbaugh who’s a global warming skeptic. How would you respond to him?
McKibben: There’s no scientific question about it – it’s very clear that there’s a rapid rise in temperature and humans are the cause of it. When I wrote the End of Nature in 1989, it was a hypothesis. We reached widespread consensus in 1995. And last year, even George Bush was saying this. There is no doubt about it.
There’s too much listening to Rush Limbaugh. Americans of all kinds are done with it. There are movements in hundreds of towns where people are figuring out they can’t go it alone and need to do something to make their communities more self-reliant.
This is going to be a tough winter, and I’m on the volunteer fire department. I imagine we’ll find people hypothermic in their homes. I imagine we’ll have people burning down their homes because they’re putting every ridiculous thing in their woodstove to keep warm. This has to be public policy number one -- instead of subsidizing fossil fuels and Exxon, which has made more money than any company in the history of money, we need to give people subsidies to help them insulate homes, help them convert to hybrid cars -- all sorts of things.

NE: It’s interesting to consider the timeline of human existence of 250,000 years and what’s happened in the last 100 years. My late grandma was born in 1901 and didn’t have electricity or a car until her 20s -- it’s been that fast.
McKibben: That’s a key point. With the advent of fossil fuels, we’ve taken millions upon millions of years of biology locked up beneath the rocks, and in 100 years spewed it all into the atmosphere. It’s not surprising it’s having large effects.

NE: If you were the new president come January, what’s the first thing you’d do?
McKibben: I’d travel to the rest of the world and talk to every leader I could think of, particularly the Chinese and Indians, on how to solve this tangle of problems of energy, the climate, and the food crisis. It’s by far the biggest economic challenge and our greatest foreign policy challenge. Terrorism is extremely minor in comparison.

NE: Michigan leads the country in coal plant permits and our governor is reluctant to put caps or regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. There are now eight new applications for coal-fired power plants. Comment?
McKibben: Michigan, I’m afraid, is threatening to become the world leader in all kinds of dinosaur technologies. Right now, you’re the lead in producing SUVs that no one wants to drive. The track record of Michigan dealing with technologies of the future is weak.
It’s sad to watch Toyota and Honda eating the lunch of GM and Ford who weren’t thinking about the future. The same is true of these coal-fired power plants. This is 18th century technology.
It’s very clear the real action in the (coming) years is going to be wind and solar. Wind is the fastest-growing energy. Sticking yourselves with this kind of legacy is as stupid as the legacy of Ford Expeditions. …The one smart thing Detroit is talking about is building a new generation of hybrid cars. Chevy is supposed to bring out the Chevy Volt a year from now. I’ll run it off the sunlight on my roof, and I won’t need a gas station again.

NE: I have a friend who is making a documentary and is skeptical that going local is enough to save the planet. He thinks it’s critical to reduce the population.
McKibben: The good news is we’ve come farther dealing with the population than with other big problems. Thirty years ago, women across the world had an average of six children. The number is down to 2.7 and continuing to fall. The demographers say we will not double population. We’re at 6.3 billion, and we’ll top out at 9 billion mid-century. For global warming purposes, most of the increase is coming from poor countries that use an incredibly small percentage of resources.
I wrote a book, Maybe One, which was an argument for single-child families, of which I am a father of one. I think it’s particularly important for Americans to think about that. We use such vast quantities of energy. One American child in a stroller is the equivalent -- in terms of energy used -- to 50 or 60 Tanzinians lined up in strollers, not that they have strollers. The reason people decide to have a second child is there’s a lot of fear of only children being spoiled or crazy. I did the research and it turns out, there’s no need to worry. They’re fine and indistinguishable from other children.

NE: China’s in the news this week with the Olympics, and their fabulous opening ceremony was definitely in the “more, more, more” category.
McKibben: The Chinese are producing as much carbon dioxide as we are this year. …The only way we can only do anything effectively is if we first take the lead in cutting our emissions and then figure out a way to get China and India on board. We need the equivalent of a Marshal Plan to help them with their legitimate need and right to develop a basic standard of living, and to do it without burning coal, of which they have an abundance. That will be in the center of negotiations as the world tries to come to grips with this.

NE: How does the Iraq war play into your thinking?
McKibben: We’re going to keep on having wars as long as the crucial resources in our economy come from unstable and difficult countries. The wars will stop when we figure out ways to be self sufficient. …We can convert over to renewable resources. The biggest obstacle is it’s going to take money to do it. And the biggest rat hole we’re pouring down is our endless military adventures. The current estimate is we’ll spend $2 trillion on the war in Iraq, which could have easily put a solar panel on every roof in the United States.

NE: You talk about solar and wind energy, but critics say there are limitations. Electricity from these sources must be used immediately because it’s difficult to store (current batteries are expensive, short lived, and deeply discharge, making them unable to meet high power demands).
McKibben: They’re increasingly being proved wrong by the experience. It’s hard to store wind or solar, but you can build a smart grid in the community that takes advantage of the fact that when the sun is shining, the wind is still. The wind is always blowing somewhere. You build a grid around that. It’s not easy, and it’s not simple, so we’d better get to it. What is possible is to live in a world that we’re not wrecking.

NE: Are churches helping the cause?
McKibben: In the last couple of years they’ve had a strong involvement on climate change, and it’s really helping. … I was at Calvin College not long ago, and I couldn’t have had a better time.

Bill McKibben will speak on September 7, 6-9 p.m., at Lars Hockstad Auditorium in Central Grade School at 301 W. Seventh Street in Traverse City. The event is free, and the first 350 attendees under the age of 21 will receive a free t-shirt.



Highlights from Deep Economy

On happiness ….
… one report in 2000 found that the average American child reported now higher levels of anxiety than the average child under psychiatric care in the 1950s; our new normal is the old disturbed.
… in 1991 the average American family owned twice as many cars, drove two and a half times as far, used 21 times as much plastic, and traveled 25 times farther by air than did the average family in 1951. … What’s odd is, none of this stuff appears to have made us happier.

On water …
In China, recent surveys show that the water table under the North China Plain, which produces half the country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is falling fast. Every day in the countryside of Beijing, you run across people whose wells have suddenly gone dry; a World Bank study reports that wells drilled in the area now have to descend a thousand meters; more than half a mile, to tap fresh water.
Californians alone (almost all of whom have access to clean tap water) now throw away 1.2 billion single-serving water bottles annually.

On food …
… the average bite of American food has traveled more than 1,500 miles before it reaches our lips . … A pound of grapes flown in from Chile effectively gives off six pounds of carbon dioxide.
Seventy-six million Americans fall ill annually from food-borne illness ... Salmonella is the biggest culprit, and its prevalence has doubled since the 1970s, which makes sense when you consider the enormous poultry barns and cattle feedlots that grew up in those years.
Here’s the bottom line: if the oil runs out, we won’t be able to farm or trade this way any longer. And if we took global warming seriously, we’d stop doing it right now.