bill mckibben

Bill McKibben/wikimedia commons

Munich getting half of its energy from solar panels is quite simply impossible, for the simple reason that the majority of energy consumption is not in the form of electricity.[read more]

coal mining/shutterstock

Finishing the fight against Old King Coal today while amping up the innovation needed to develop the affordable, scalable alternatives needed to ultimately tackle Big Oil as well is a winning climate strategy.[read more]

Natural Gas end-use

So, what do New York’s old and leaky pipes have to do with the claimed emissions reductions due to shale gas? Precisely zero. Here’s why.[read more]

Bill McKibben from Wikipedia

In a world where we need reliable power to continue to do work and where we obviously need to take action to make that power cleaner, I fail to understand why climate activists like McKibben are so fearful of nuclear energy. He fails my test of seriousness about climate change.[read more]

Environmental Activist and 350.org Founder Bill McKibben had a lot to be excited about when he walked onto the Colbert Report last night. After wondering publicly whether the environmental movement could accumulate 500,000 messages in 24-hours from citizens opposed to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, by last night he announced that...[read more]

The following is a lengthy essay explaining why I would approve the Keystone pipeline despite finding myself on the side of those concerned over the negative environmental impact of tar sands development. I will debunk much of the misinformation going on in the pipeline debate and ultimately lay out my conclusions. I intend for this to...[read more]

Every major weather event raises the same debate over the same unanswerable question: was it caused by climate change?And every time, some prominent name or public figure, fed up with media coverage or with the persistence of skepticism about science or the lack of action, throws statistics out the window and says yes. Or says something...[read more]

   What have you done lately about climate change? In the last two weeks, about 700 Americans – with more to come – have been arrested in front of the White House, calling on President Obama to block the construction of the $7 billion, 1700-mile Keystone pipeline project that will bring Canadian tar sands oil to largest...[read more]

Why, if activism won’t do, would I ever link to 350.org‘s tar sands campaign? Simple: Activism of the sort that gives us lists of “10 things you can do to save the planet” is impotent at best and counterproductive at worst. Recycling, refusing plastic and paper, eating local, biking to work, or avoiding bottled water are all good. I do...[read more]

From Bill McKibben Avoids the Fetal Position (last Q/A exchange): MJ: Well, how do you stay hopeful, or at least engaged? How do you keep people from just curling up into the fetal position? BM: You know what, at some level I’ve given up trying to figure out whether I’m pessimistic or optimistic. I get up in the morning and do what I can...[read more]

Getting people to understand energy efficiency, especially the massive opportunity that exists in the residential building sector, is one of Energy Circle’s core missions. As such, we’re big fans of clever, creative communications that spread the message broadly and use all the available channels. Video is one of the best, evident in the...[read more]

Bill McKibben hews to the bone, again: Climate change, above all issues, requires a transformative and not an incremental vision. We have fundamental change to make, and a very short window to make it in — Obama’s typical (and often quite savvy) little-bit-at-a-time approach doesn’t square with the physics and chemistry that govern this...[read more]

Via Treehugger, a ten minute interview by Revkin of McKibben. (I think they talk past each other a bit without noticing. Revkin injects a bit of Pielkeism in there and I don't know if McKibben even notices.) But McKibben has come to the same place in the last year or so that many of us have. Our future is down to difficult vs impossible...[read more]

In a time when little to nothing is getting done about climate change at the legislative level, much of the efforts of the frustrated environmental movement must be symbolic in nature. Such is the mood and motive of Bill Mckibben, and others en route to Washington D.C. with one of the now-legendary Jimmy Carter solar panels that once...[read more]

Bill McKibben nails it in, Oil Slick You Can’t See Threatens the Entire Ocean: If you think that slick of oil spreading across the Gulf of Mexico is a nasty sight … well, it is. And so we’ll probably do something about it. Within hours of the crude reaching the coast, an aide to President Barack Obama said new offshore drilling would...[read more]