Bill McKibben
William Ernest McKibben (born December 8, 1960)[1] is an American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of global warming. He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College[2] and leader of the climate campaign group 350.org. He has authored a dozen books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature (1989), about climate change, and Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (2019), about the state of the environmental challenges facing humanity and future prospects.[3]
Bill McKibben
In 2009, he led 350.org's organization of 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries. In 2010, McKibben and 350.org conceived the 10/10/10 Global Work Party, which convened more than 7,000 events in 188 countries,[4][5] as he had told a large gathering at Warren Wilson College shortly before the event. In December 2010, 350.org coordinated a planet-scale art project, with many of the 20 works visible from satellites.[6] In 2011 and 2012 he led the environmental campaign against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project[7] and spent three days in jail in Washington, D.C. Two weeks later he was inducted into the literature section of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[8]
He was awarded the Gandhi Peace Award in 2013.[9] Foreign Policy magazine named him to its inaugural list[10] of the 100 most important global thinkers in 2009 and MSN named him one of the dozen most influential men of 2009.[11] In 2010, the Boston Globe called him "probably the nation's leading environmentalist"[12] and Time magazine book reviewer Bryan Walsh described him as "the world's best green journalist".[13] In 2014, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "mobilizing growing popular support in the USA and around the world for strong action to counter the threat of global climate change."[14] He has been mentioned as a possible future Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of Energy should a progressive be elected President.[15]
Early life[edit]
McKibben was born in Palo Alto, California.[1][16] His family later moved to the Boston suburb of Lexington, Massachusetts, where he attended high school.[17] His father, who once, in 1971, had been arrested during a protest in support of Vietnam veterans against the war, wrote for Business Week, before becoming business editor at The Boston Globe, in 1980.[17] As a high school student, McKibben wrote for the local paper and participated in statewide debate competitions.[17] Entering Harvard College in 1978, he became an editor of The Harvard Crimson and was chosen president of the paper for the calendar year 1981.[18]
In 1980, following the election of Ronald Reagan, he determined to dedicate his life to the environmental cause.[19]
Graduating in 1982, he worked for five years for The New Yorker as a staff writer, writing much of the Talk of the Town column from 1982 to early 1987. Inspired by the Gospel of Matthew, he became an advocate of nonviolent resistance.[20] While doing a story on the homeless, he lived on the streets; there, he met his wife, Sue Halpern, who was working as a homeless advocate. In 1987, McKibben quit The New Yorker after longtime editor William Shawn was forced out of his job.[19] He and his family shortly after moved to a remote spot in the Southeastern Adirondacks of upstate New York, where he began to work as a freelance writer.[21]
Views[edit]
In 2016, McKibben wrote in The New York Times that he is "under surveillance" by "right-wing stalkers" who photograph, pursue, and inquire about him and members of his family in search of ostensible instances of environmental hypocrisy. "I'm being watched", he reported.[47] Two years later, he wrote in the Times that he had been receiving death threats since the 1990s.[48]
In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, McKibben signed a letter endorsing the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritizes the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."[49][50]
Personal life[edit]
McKibben resides in Ripton, Vermont, with his wife, writer Sue Halpern. Their only child, Sophie, was born in 1993 in Glens Falls, New York. He is a Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, where he also directs the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism.[51] McKibben is also a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. He is a longtime Methodist.[52]
Since 2013, McKibben has been listed on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education.[53]