Changing
attitudes
B ill McKibben has pursued the
truth about global warming for
more than 25 years. It's up to
all o f us to catch up.
BY SUE ZALOKAR
S T A F F W R IT E R
o matter where you live on the
planet, you are most certainly
noticing intense and changing
weather patterns. There is much debate
about what that means and how to interpret
all of the empirical data that scientists have
collected for decades.
Bill McKibben has been writing and
lecturing on the topic for more than 25
years, practically introducing global warming
to a new generation. More recently, he has
participated in and organized acts of civil
disobedience to bring attention to the global
warming crisis.
Last month, a leaked draft of the United
Nations upcoming report of the U .N .
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
stated that scientists are convinced that
human activity is behind the increase in
global temperatures.
McKibben is currently the Schumann
Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College
in Vermont. He volunteers for 350.org, a
climate change awareness and activist group
that he founded in 2007.
I first asked him about his experience
many years ago, working on story about
homelessness for The New Yorker, which is
that. It was a pretty remarkable and
also how he happened to meet his wife,
Dickensian operation. I spent some time at
author Sue Halpern.
another place called Palace Hotel. Which was
one of the last of the real Bowery flophouses
Bill McKibben: I’ve done a lot of
in New York. In those days, if you had $3,
reporting on homelessness for The New
you could have a cot. They were all lined up
Yorker. This was back in the days when
next to one another with men sleeping as
homelessness was still a phenomenon in
though in one long bed. If you had $5-, you
America, at least in the way that we thought
could have a cot inside a little chicken wire
about it.
cage — which for obvious reasons was
At the time, we thought about it as a
preferable. I didn’t generally have $5.
crisis. It needed to be covered all the time in
One of my take aways from that
the media. And we thought it was like a new
experience was that being homeless was one
thing that was going to go away, that we
of the hardest jobs in the world. I was never
would, as a society, quickly figure out that we
so tired.
didn’t want hundreds of thousands of people
living outside.
S.Z.: You’ve said that “it’s already too late to
I wrote some pieces about it and I spent
prevent global warming. What we have to do
some time living as a homeless person. I also
now is learn how to deal with the reality. ” What
started and ran a homeless shelter in the
is the reality?
basement of my church that served 10 men
each night.
B.M .: Well, it is too late to prevent it
My (now) wife had been doing a lot of
altogether, but it is not too late to keep it
fundraising for groups that were working on
from getting worse than it can get. We’ve
the homelessness crisis - that is how we
raised the temperature one degree so far
met.
«
and that’s going to cause us untold problems.
One of the great tragedies is that people
We’re almost certainly going to raise the
have stopped thinking about homelessness
temperature two degrees — there is already
as a crisis and have started thinking about it
enough momentum in this system to all but
as something that just happens. It is just an
guarantee that. That will cause us more than
indelible part of American life. There are
twice as many problems.
those of us old enough to remember that
At one degree, we have already melted the
that wasn’t always the case. That it was
Arctic. So that should give you some idea of
shocking when it first started emerging.
the stakes that we are playing with. There is
no happy outcome. We’re probably still at a
Sue Zalokar: What was the experience like
place where we can maintain the planet. But
- sleeping on the street?
that only happens if we take swift action —
much swifter than governments are planning
B.M .: It added up to weeks I stayed
- to get us off fossil fuel. If we don’t, the
outside. My editor asked me to find out what
same science that told us about one degree
it was like (to be homeless) and in those
now tells us with confidence that it will be
days, at The New Yorker, there was plenty of
four or five degrees before the century is
time to do things. I’m trying to think about
out. I’m talking Celsius here, so that would
the various places that I lived actually. The
be eight or nine degrees Fahrenheit. So, the
Armory close to 158th Street. In those days,
stakes are really high. We have to prevent
if I’m remembering this right, that place
that change from happening even as we’re
slept 5,000 people a night, if you can imagine
N
adapting to the change that we can no longer
prevent.
S.Z.: 2012 was the hottest year on record
since we started keeping track. What do the
facts tell us about the m eaning o f this?
B.M .: It’s a very good year to think about.
It got really hot in the U .S . and there were
two very dramatic results. One is that we can
no longer grow food in the most fertile land
on earth. It just got too hot in the summer of
2012 to grow corn in Iowa across the grain
belt. Beyond a certain temperature, it is too
hot for corn to fertilize. The price of grain
went through the roof and a lot of poor
people around the world had a lot less to eat
than they wanted to as a result.
Another dramatic thing that happened -
well there were a bunch of dramatic things -
was wildfire season and this season has
already been worse. *
The other truly dramatic event was
Hurricane Sandy. It was the lowest
barometric pressure ever recorded North of
Cape Hatteras. It was the largest wind field
we’ve ever measured in a hurricane.
If anybody ever had any doubt before that
whether climate change was a serious threat
to a highly developed technological
civilization, watching the New York City
subway system fill with seawater should have
answered that question once and for all.
S.Z.: What effect does climate change have
on poor people?
B.M .: For poor people everywhere, it is
particularly hard. A study came out in
January from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. It said
that we ve already reached the point where it
is hot and humid enough that people’s ability
to labor and be outdoors is cut about 10
See CHANGING, page 5
P H O T O C O U R T E S Y OF
BILL M C K IB B E N