Thom Hartmann: And pleased to have with me in the studio one of my favorite people, Bill McKibben. And Bill is going to be introduced by another friend of ours, Bill Bradbury, our Secretary of State in Oregon, and 7 o'clock tonight at the Muddy Boot Organic Festival here in Portland.
He’s also the author of "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future" and runs a website. Do you run that, www.350.org, or you put together?
Bill McKibben: 350.org was my, is our baby. It’s now the biggest global campaign on climate change, so by now I can’t really run it. It’s in fifteen languages, there's people doing all, but it’s what I spend my life on these days.
Thom Hartmann: Wow. So let’s lay out the bottom line here. Why the number 350?
Bill McKibben: 350 is the most important number in the world. Nobody knew it eighteen months ago. You remember summer of 2007. Arctic ice started to melt way ahead of schedule. Way ahead of when the, you know, computer models said that global warming should really take it out. A bunch of other things started to go askew about the same time, and again, all ahead of schedule. Glaciers melting faster, huge epic drought happening in many, many places, on and on and on.
The scientists understood all of a sudden that we’d underestimated how fast climate change was going to happen. They went back to work, Jim Hansen, who you know, the NASA scientist who’s really our greatest climatologist. He and his team put out a paper in January of ‘08 saying, “Here’s the bottom line. We finally understand the climate system well enough to say that any amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in excess of 350 parts per million, is not compatible with the climate on which civilization developed, or to which life on earth is adapted.”
A fairly strong bottom line. Especially strong because, Thom, we’re already past it, we’re at 390 parts per million now, and rising. So the point is, the point is no longer think about climate change as something that is going to happen some day. Think about it as a very present emergency that requires much tougher political action and commitment than we’ve made so far, and that’s what we’re trying to build at 350.org in every country of the world, expect maybe North Korea.
Thom Hartmann: Well, and in fact, this story from “Life Science” just, Louise just handed me this...
"The dramatic changes sweeping the Arctic as a result of global warming aren't just confined to melting sea ice and polar bears — a new study finds that the forces of climate change", which I refer to as atmospheric deterioration. I think we need to adopt language that is actually negative in its implications, atmospheric deterioration, "are propagating throughout the frigid north, producing different effects in each ecosystem with the upshot that the face of the Arctic may be forever altered." And then they say, while the Earth on average has warmed by about 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit ... over the past 150 years, the Arctic has warmed by two to three times that amount."
It is the headline here, Environmental News Network, enn.com, “Arctic Ecosystems Changing, May be Irreversible.” And this is all about getting us back down to 350. 350 parts per million, and in fact Hansen, and I quote that Hansen study. It had not even been published while I was writing "Threshold". But in my new book “Threshold”, I still pulled it out and put it in, because I figured that it would still pass peer review. And I attributed it to him, of course. And he’s basically saying this is our lives. This is the future of out species, and a whole lot of other species.
And Bill McKibben, I know the, 350.org the website, I know the newly-elected Prime Minister of Japan has broken with the old, what in Japan they call the Liberal party, what we over here call the Conservative party, which had control of Japan for the last fifty years, who only wanted an eight percent reduction in Japan’s CO2 output, and he said no, we’re going to shoot for a twenty percent reduction.
This is pretty dramatic stuff. In Copenhagen, there’s going to be this big meeting in December. People from all around the world. The big climate change conference. What are your thoughts about what’s going to happen, and what can we do to push the United States, and particularly this administration, in the direction of doing the right thing?
Bill McKibben: Those are just the right questions Thom. Copenhagen’s going to be the big enchilada, the real point where we either fish or cut bait, as regards climate. And around the world, governments are beginning to sort of stake out their positions. We need far more from everybody, and we’re beginning to get it. And the reason that we’re going to begin to get it, and that we’re going to get more progress in the next couple of months, is because we finally built a movement.
On October 24th, here’s how people can really take part. On October 24th, we’re going to be having thousands and thousands and thousands of demonstrations and rallies and events, all over the world, in almost every country on earth, on that day, all designed to take those three digits, 350, and drive them into the public imagination. To take this data point and make it clear that this represents survival for the planet. And if we do that, if we build that movement, you know we’re not going to beat Exxon and Mobil by spending more money. I mean, you know, they have more money than we're ever going to have.
Thom Hartmann: They have a virtually infinite supply.
Bill McKibben: They made more money last year than any company in the history of money, OK.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah. All the way to the Roman Empire.
Bill McKibben: So that’s not how we’re going to beat them. If we’re going to beat them, it’s going to be if we manage to build a movement and finally we are. The last week, I have been spewing carbon behind me. In the last eight days, I have been in Norway, South Africa, Israel, Palestine, and Mexico. I got to Portland late last night. All around the world, this movement is finally building, and building big. October 24th is going to be the most widespread day of environmental activism everywhere. No matter where people are listening to this today, there’s something going on within a few miles of their home, and we need them to go out and be part of it, to really make some noise.
Thom Hartmann: You’re going to have to spend a little carbon to stop the carbon, I guess. Unfortunately.
Bill McKibben: I’m afraid I’m a global warming machine this year. Next year, I’m going home to Vermont, and holing up and never leaving again.
Thom Hartmann: In a good cause. I’ve bought carbon offsets, although I know that that’s very controversial. But let’s not digress into that. 350 is the number. We’re talking with Bill McKibben. 350.org is the website. And it means 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide, and we’re now at 390. I thought we were at 385, Bill.
Bill McKibben: It’s going up two parts per million a year. You know you can’t avert your gaze for even a minute.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah, I guess I got distracted for a year or two. You know, it’s 390, that’s incredible. And what this means, is that any time we’re above 350, we are putting ourselves, if you want to put the most selfish spin on it possible, and every other form, you know, at least every highly developed form of life anyway. Well, coral are bleaching.
Bill McKibben: Well, look. We’ve changed. In the last fifteen, twenty years, the ocean has grown thirty percent more acid. The smallest marine organisms at the bottom of the food chain are now having trouble forming their shells.
Thom Hartmann: That's the krill. The stuff that whales live on.
Bill McKibben: Exactly.
Thom Hartmann: And the stuff that little tiny fish live on.
Bill McKibben: Coral, all those things are affected. You get the point of the numbers just right. In essence, it’s like all of a sudden you’ve gone to the doctor, and the doctor is not saying “Some day if you keep eating donuts, you know, ten times a day your cholesterol will be too high.” The doctor is saying, “Look, dude, you are in the zone. You’re going to have the heart attack. Get it down right now.” We’re already having the heart attack when the Arctic melts, ok, that’s a bad sign. This is one of the biggest physical features on the planet. It’s been stable for millions of years. It’s not good when all of a sudden it’s open water. We’ve got to take action now, and fast, and hard.
Thom Hartmann: So action, and by the way, I think one of the most brilliant parts of this, Bill, and I love hearing you talk like this, is, and I’ve been saying this basically since the election of President Obama and the Democrats took over, is that there is a difference between a movement and a party, and a lot of people don’t know that. They don’t realize that distinction and we can’t rely on a party to basically do anything. Because we have to be building movements in all these different areas, in the environmental area, in the public health area, in the fill in the blank.
Bill McKibben: That's right. Let’s say that Obama wants to do, let’s grant that he wants to do the right thing. We got to give him the political room to maneuver.
Thom Hartmann: Right. And that means having a movement.
Bill McKibben: Exactly right. There is no short cut around it.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah, And so you’re building a movement. What can, and I, you know, a couple of weeks ago on this programme, we got into a rather depressing hour where I was going through, you know, if all of us moved to fluorescent light bulbs in our homes, we would have like, you know, a ten percent impact. You know, the biggest spewers of pollution in the United States are not you and me. Even you and me flying around. It’s industry, and the military. I mean, we’ve got some really serious systemic problems in this country and around the world. How do we take that on? What do we do?
Bill McKibben: Here's what, if Copenhagen goes well, here’s what will happen. We’ll get an agreement that respects the science and puts a cap on carbon. And the effect will be finally that carbon has to pay a price for the damage it does to the environment. The minute that that happens, the minute that it’s no longer just free to spew the most dangerous gas in the world out into the atmosphere, that’s the moment when everything starts to change. That’s the moment when industrial agriculture on the scale that we do it no longer makes sense. That’s the moment at which we finally and forever cease driving semi-military vehicles to the grocery store. That’s the moment when government and human beings begin to make real and powerful change.
Thom Hartmann: A little bit of good news on the front page of today’s “Financial Times”: Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President, has said, “I will not accept a system ... that imports products from countries that don’t respect the rules [on carbon emission reductions]. We need to impose a carbon tax at [Europe’s] borders. I will lead that battle.” Cause right now, much of our carbon production in the United States is actually being offshore to China. He’s saying we’re gonna charge for that carbon. If you want to make something in a country where they’re running coal-fired power plants, like China, we will charge for that. It’s tariffs.
Bill McKibben: It’s really hard, of course, because most of the global warming that is going on now on the planet is caused by coal and oil that we burned in the West over the last hundred years. It’s not yet China causing most of the problem, and they’re still poor, and we’re going to need to make a deal that looks something like the Marshall Plan at the end of the Second World War, but in carbon terms, where we provide some aid and assistance to allow them to develop without that coal. It’s practical, it’s idealistic, but most of all, it’s scientifically required.
Thom Hartmann: Bill McKibben. You can check out his website 350.org and also the author of numerous books, the most recent one, oh here it is, "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future". Check out Bill’s writing. Get over to 350.org Bill, thanks so much for being here.
Bill McKibben: Thank you so much, brother, good fun.
Transcribed by Gerard Aukstiejus.
