16 June
Dear Ellie Young,
Thanks for your good work, and for taking time to write. I’m not at all sure I have great answers to those questions, but here’s what it looks like from my point of view.First, as you say, we have solutions in our grasp. This was less true a decade or two ago; now scientists have knocked the price of solar and windpower, and the batteries to store them, relentlessly down. They’re the cheapest power on planet earth, and there is no economic or technical reason we wouldn’t be going all out to cut carbon emissions before they do any more damage. (And no reason that we aren’t trying to end, simultaneously, the air pollution from coal, oil and gas that kills 9 million a year, and the flow of hydrocarbon money that keeps despots like Putin in business).But we’re obviously not doing this quickly enough, and I fear the reason is clear: the vested interest of the fossil fuel industry weighs heavily on our political and economic system. And so our elected leaders, and the bankers and other financiers who dominate our economic life, end up helping the forces that stand between us and a working future.Which is why I think the place where activists need to come together is in weakening the power of that industry. Yes, we also should work on the thousand other great ideas , from regenerative agriculture to bikeable cities, that will make our planet a better place. But if we’re serious about slowing climate change before it makes life impossible for the poorest and most vulnerable people (and soon thereafter everyone and everything else), we have to be strategic.That’s why I’m always glad to see efforts coalescing around things like fossil fuel divestment, or standing up to the banks that lend for new pipelines, or calling attention to the politicans taking money from Big Oil. We’ve done a lot to weaken these corporations, but not quite enough: in the States, for instance, the fossil fuel industry’s most heavily funded politician, Joe Manchin, is the single vote blocking climate action in the U.S. Senate.Our problem, it seems to me, has never been a lack of good ideas. But we’ve too often thought we were having an argument, and that if we simply advanced enough data we’d win and change would happen. We’ve won the argument, but it turns out that we’re actually in a fight, and that it’s a fight about the thing most fights are about: money and power.We’ll never mobilize as much money as the Exxons and the BPs. So our job is to build power by building movements—movements that can do many things, but come together when necessary to stand up to the source of the trouble.Billp.s.—Young people, it seems to me, are doing their part and more. That’s why I’m increasingly organizing among old people like me. Tell your grandparents about Third Act.
Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben