Bill McKibben. Photo by Marjorie Cook.
Wanaka's weather gods greeted visiting United States
climate-change activist and author Bill McKibben with a deluge
of rain yesterday.
He was in Wanaka as a guest of the Otago University's Centre
for Science Communication to take part in the Festival of
Colour's Aspiring Conversations programme.
The rising lakes and rivers provided a cool counterpoint to
his environmental message of how communities should respond
to the major challenge of slowing global change so societies
could continue to function effectively.
The Harvard University-educated former New Yorker journalist
lives in South Vermont, where a gathering of 1000 people a
few years ago to call for action on global warming was "many
more people than had been seen in one place in a very long
time".
Mr McKibben believed fundamental changes in global energy
systems were needed to head off fast-moving environmental
changes.
Halting environmental change altogether was impossible, he
said.
Mr McKibben is an unashamed bearer of bad tidings, and his
penchant for turning off lights in his home had caused his
daughter to refer to him as "the Dark Lord".
The only way to get the change the world needed, on a scale
needed and within the time required, was to drastically
increase the price of fossil fuel, he said.
Price would drive change, but politicians drove the prices.
It was important for communities not to leave politicians to
their own devices.
Instead, communities needed to build a movement to make
change happen, he said.
Mr McKibben is promoting a world-wide movement on October 24
to try to "set the bar psychologically" for political
delegations attending an environmental summit in Copenhagen
in December.
That "bar" is the number 350, which is 350 parts per million
of carbon dioxide, described by scientists as the "red line"
of emissions above which the world should not go.
But it already has reached 387.
Mr McKibben hoped his 350.org campaign would get through to
politicians everywhere, and wanted every community to hold an
event on October 24, whether it be 350 cyclists going
somewhere or 350 pumpkins stacked at a market.
• Mr McKibben will talk about the 350.org movement in Dunedin
at noon today at the Dunedin Teachers College auditorium.
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