[GPSCC-chat] 350.ORG

Tue Nov 12 10:49:04 PST 2013

My personal opinion isthat Derek is too negative about 350.org. While we should be aware that thereare powerful forces trying to manipulate it for evil purposes, there are alsotens of thousands of people involved in it who can become an even more powerfulforce against the fossil fuel industry. And while stopping XL is only a tinystep in ending climate destruction, it is nevertheless an important issue thathas galvanized the movement and can lead to greater victories.

While it is true that weas individuals have to stop consuming oil, personal lifestyle changes can neverdefeat the power of the corporations. Even McKibben has stated (see articlebelow) that we can all be as green as we want, but without a social movementthe planet is still going to die, and all of us with it.

Sharp discussion isgood, it creates change.

In the end, my opinionis that the outcome depends (as always) on what we do. We have to askourselves, are the organizations we are in capable of becoming powerfulvehicles for the kind of social change we need? If so, what are we doingto help them become that?

Sandy

Bill McKibben: "Being Green Won't Solve theProblem"
By Lindsay Abrams, Salon
16 September 13

Thewriter-turned-activist on leading the leaderless climate movement.

self-described"average 51-year-old book author with a receding hairline" turned"unlikely and somewhat reluctant" activist, Bill McKibben these daysis something of a rock star.
McKibbenfirst stepped into the climate scene with "The End of Nature," hisfirst book and one of the first to bring climate change to the public'sattention. More recently, he founded 350.org, an internationalactivist organization. In the course of 25 years, he's gone from writing forthe New Yorker to being a major player in a recent feature published there, whichargues that his work "successfully made Keystone the most prominentenvironmental cause in America."
Hisnew book, "Oiland Honey," is in large part an account of this new role.It's bookended by two major events: a protest at the White House against theKeystone XL pipeline that he organized, and at which he proudly got arrested, and a nationaltour promoting his fossil fuel divestment campaign.Running counter to the campaign narrative is McKibben's relationship with abeekeeper named Kirk, who lives, he writes, at the opposite extreme. Running alocal honey business, Kirk lives off the grid, and never even goes on theInternet.
McKibbenspoke with Salon about protests, beekeeping and how the climate movement hasfinally grown up. The interview has been lightly edited for space and clarity.
Theway you approach climate change has completely changed course since you firstwrote "The End of Nature." Then, you were bringing attention to theissue, but you were reporting on it. Thirteen books later, "Oil andHoney" is the memoir of an activist. Can you talk a bit about thattransformation?
Everyonebelieved, 25 years ago - at least I did - that people would see there's aproblem. That if scientists and the rest of us really explained to policy leaderswhat was going on in the world, then they would take care of the problem. Imean, that's how the system is supposed to work, right? You identify a problem- the biggest problem the world's ever faced, potentially - and people go towork and do something about it.
Iknow I thought that's what would happen, at some level, and I know that that'swhat all the scientists trotting up to Capitol Hill year after year thought.But at a certain point it just began to dawn on us, or many of us, that itwasn't working. And really the reason it wasn't working was the incrediblepower of the fossil fuel industry, based in wealth. They presented an almostinsurmountable obstacle, and we certainly were never going to outspend them. Sothe hunt was on for the other currencies we might work in. The only ones thatanyone could think of was currencies of movements: numbers, passion, spirit,creativity, occasionally spending one's bodies. And I guess with 350, and theKeystone fight, and the divestment battle that we're in now, that's one of theplaces from which they came.
It'sfunny, because I write about the environment, and I feel like a hypocrite whenI drink out of a plastic water bottle. You got to the point where you had to bearrested on the White House lawn for this.
Well,I don't know that I feel like a hypocrite anymore. I mean, I fly all the time,or I have for the past few years as we've organized 350. But this is a systemicproblem. It's going to be solved or not solved by a systemic solution. It'spast the point where we're going to manage to do it one light bulb at a time.The roof of my house is covered in solar panels. When I'm home, I'm a prettygreen fellow. But I know that that's not actually going to solve the problem.So a lot of people have to get on the train and go to Washington to be inprotests.
Youwrite in the book that you're not very comfortable taking on the role of anactivist. But you also say that the real radicals are a different groupentirely.
Wheneveranyone challenges anything, the powers that be try to paint them as extremists,or radicals, or whatever. And I think that's actually nonsense. I think if youlook at, say, Occupy, which is held up as the most radical thing going, orwhatever, well to a large degree what people in Occupy are asking for is asystem that works somewhat the way we were told in civics class it did: whereeverybody had some say in how things came out, and just because you have a tonof money doesn't mean you get to dominate everything.
Inthe case of climate, it's very clear who the radicals are. If you're the CEO ofan oil company, making a huge fortune by altering the chemical composition ofthe atmosphere, then you're doing something so radical that nobody in the '60swould ever have thought of it. I remember reading once that in the '60s, peoplegot really scared, because Abbie Hoffman or someone pretended he was going todump LSD in some town's water supply, and get everybody out of their minds as aprank. What Exxon does on a daily basis is a million times that, and it's goingto last for a million years. It's just craziness.
SoI don't buy that anyone thinks you're a radical for standing up for this. Andthe people that came to get arrested at the White House? They seemed as normalto me as it was possible to be.
Howso?
Well,they were incredibly diverse. They came, I think, from all 50 states, and therewere a wide range of ages. When I wrote the letter to ask people to come, Isaid I don't think it should just be college kids, because in our economy,maybe an arrest record is not the best thing on your résumé when you go out fora first job. But past a certain point, what the hell are they going to do toyou? We didn't ask people how old they were, but we did ask who the presidentwas when they were born, because we wanted a sense of what era people werefrom. And the two biggest groups came from the FDR and the Trumanadministrations. A guy was arrested on the last day with a sign around his neckthat said, "World War II Vet, Handle With Care." Most people were inties and dresses. It couldn't have been a more normal group of people.Scientists, students, preachers, businesspeople, retired people, just peoplewho understand that the climate fix we're in is truly dire. And one of the manythings it means is we've got to leave the carbon that's in the ground in theground. It's just so crazy to go open up vast, more fields for exploitation.
Iwrote an essay a few weeks back about how this is largely a leaderlessmovement. The thing that's really impressed me in the last six months is justthe degree to which this movement has spread out. I wrote an essay on this afew weeks back. It looks to me the way we'd like the energy system to look:millions of solar panels on millions of rooftops, not a few big power plantssomeplace. And the same with the movement - it is the most open-sourced,spread-out, horizontal, beautiful sprawling thing. Which is precisely what it'sgoing to have to be because standing up to the fossil fuel industry, which issuch a protean, sprawling thing itself, will require that kind of movement.
TheNew York Times just published an article about 350.org's divestment campaign,in which administrators are arguing that having stocks gives them influence.They say they can sway oil companies toward better practices from the inside -
Yeah,this seems like exactly the same article that people were using when theydidn't want to divest from South Africa 25 years ago. It's theoretically a goodargument, but they've been theoretically doing it for 25 years, right? And ithasn't worked at all.
Infact, the big oil companies have gone in the opposite direction. Ten years ago,BP was talking about being "beyond petroleum." In the last three orfour years, they've sold off their wind and solar divisions. That's just anexcuse for inaction. These are not people who are serious about engaging thisissue.
Happily,there are lots of boards of trustees and politicians who are. And we'llconvince the rest of them over time the old-fashioned way. It will just become clearthat students, faculty and alumni at colleges, and voters in various cities,and parishioners in churches and synagogues, just don't want to be involved andinvested in this mess.
Doyou see that as something that's more symbolic, or do you think it could have areal economic impact?
Ithink it'll have its real economic impact, oddly, through symbolic action. Wecan't bankrupt Exxon. But we can politically and morally bankrupt them. Wecan't bankrupt them financially in the short run - they have lots of money. Butwe can reduce their political power dramatically. When the United Church ofChrist, the oldest Protestant denomination in the country - it traces its rootsback to the pilgrims - when they say, we don't want to be invested in theseguys, involved with these guys, that counts.
WhenNelson Mandela got out of prison, one of the first foreign trips he took was tothe U.S. He did not go first to the White House, he went first to California,to say to people, thank you for your help in overcoming apartheid. We obviouslyliberated ourselves, but we couldn't have done it by ourselves.
Backto the book, one of its core ideas is the tension between localizing andglobalizing: Should we all be out protesting at the White House, or should weretreat to subsistence agriculture? Do you think there's a happy medium there?
Ithink it's sort of summed up in the physics of the problem. We have to adapt tothat which we can't prevent, which means all our communities are going to haveto start thinking hard about how they secure food and shelter in a difficultworld. We certainly learned that lesson in Vermont as Hurricane Irene sweptthrough. So for me, the most hopeful part of this whole book is all the stuffabout Kirk and his bees, and new ways of doing some of this stuff - and thepower and beauty of it.
Atthe same time, the trouble we see already was caused by raising the temperatureone degree. If we raise the temperature four or five degrees Celsius, which iswhat the scientists tell us we will do if we keep on our current path, then itdoesn't matter how organic your farm is - it's still not going to work. Youcan't grow food if it rains every day for 30 days, or if it doesn't rain at allfor 30 days. Then you're just stuck. So I think the mantra is: "Adapt tothat which you can't prevent, prevent that to which you can't adapt." Kirkwas working hard on the adaptation part, and I was doing my best on theprevention side.
Howare Kirk's bees doing?
Thiswas not a good year for honey, because it was very rainy and wet in the earlypart of the summer. But I just talked to him yesterday, and the queens-rearingbusiness is going well. It's good that he has a business that stands on severaldifferent legs, but he was disappointed in the honey crop.
Sothe honeybee die-off hasn't been affecting him?
Comparedto what could be going on, exactly right. You really should see how beautiful... I've got to say, I was just mesmerized learning about bees. There's justsomething about the fact that they manage to be both wild and sort ofdomesticated at the same time, in a way that no other creature I can think ofis.
Whatabout you? Do you plan on staying in the activist role for much longer?
Ithink this movement has many, many leaders, so I'll be happy to help if peopledo good things. But the young people I started 350 with were 21 and 22 when webegan. Now, at 28, 29, they're the most accomplished activists I know. Theydon't need much help from me - they're really fantastic at what they do.
Ithink it's important to realize that I'm not essential to it. That's kind of anodd thing to say since I've written a book about it, but for me, the mostimportant realization I had - I almost ended the book there - was when I got upon the stage at this big climate rally in D.C. in February, which was thebiggest thing of its kind ever. And the only thing I could think of to say was,"I've always wanted to see what the climate movement was going to looklike, and now I have."

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