Bill McKibben on tar sands, Obama, geoengineering and population growth The US environmentalist explains why he is now in a 'fight' with the oil in= dustry over climate change Guardian, October 6th 2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/oct/06/bill-mckibben-keysto= ne-pipeline-oil

Bill McKibben, one of the US's leading enviro= nmental writers and campaigners, visited the UK briefly earlier this week t= o teach a course entitled Building Social Movements and Organising for Chan= ge at the Schumacher College in Devon. He was scheduled to also give a lecture this weeken= d at the Schumacher Centenary Festival in Br= istol, but will now deliver it via video-conference as he had to return ear= ly to Washington DC for Friday's final hearing into the proposed 1,711-mile=

Keystone XL pipeline that, if built, would transport oil extracted from Canada's tar sand fields acr= oss the Mid-West and down to ports in the Gulf of Mexico. McKibben was arre= sted in A= ugust during a protestaimed at try= ing to convince President Obama not to authorise the pipeline.

BM: This pipeline fight has turned into the most interesting environmental = battle of modern years. The odds are still probably against us, but they ar= e better than they were a little while ago because people are really starti= ng to pay attention and realise what a terrible idea it is.

big date we are heading towards is 6 November, which is exactly one year b= efore the next election. On that day, we are going to try and circle the Wh= ite House with people which I'm not sure is something tha= t has ever been done before. We'll all be carrying signs from the president= 's last election campaign. No attacks on him, just his own words. "It's tim= e to end the tyranny of oil"; "In my administration, the rise of the oceans=

will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal". The tag line will b= e something like: "If you didn't mean it, you shouldn't have said it. Stop = the pipeline".

LH: What is your ultimate message to Obama, but, perhaps more importantly, = those that might vote for him next year?

BM: The ultimate message is just "stop this pipeline". It is a serious deal= . It's not just some token thing. It is the second largest pool of carbon o= n the planet and it's utter folly to expand the oil operation there. When y= our best federal climate scientist Jim Hansen says heavy tapping o= f the tar sands means game over for the climate, you, as the president, are=

BM: The biggest failure in environmental terms was the failure to get, or e= ven try to get, serious climate legislation and the second is the failure t= o move the diplomatic ball at all. But in both those cases the president ca= n with some accuracy blame Congress for at least part of this failure. Our = Congress is inane at the moment and hard to work with. I have some sympathy=

for the guy when trying to persuade people like Jim Inhofeto do the rig= ht thing. But, in the case of this pipeline, the reason why people are so f= ocused on it is because the president has to make the call all by himself. = Congress has got nothing to do with it. He has to sign something called the=

Presidential Certificate of National Interest and if he doesn't sign the thing the pipeli= ne doesn't get built.

LH: Are you going as far as to say people shouldn't vote for Obama next yea= r if he passes the pipeline?

BM: No. I don't even think that's the issue really. Most hardcore environme= ntalists probably aren't going to go and vote for Rick Perry= . The problem is that they won't be out there building the surge behind the=

this pipeline thing is one of the last chances he has to rekindle even a s= mall part of that.

it's striking the difference between now and then. You were right in the m= iddle of Step it Up, Obama's election was a year = away, it was pre-credit crunch, it was pre-Copenhagen, pre-Climategate, etc.=

You were talking about being very optimistic; that this was your moment an= d predicting that serious global action would happen by 2009...

financial power the fossil-fuel industry had and how they were going to br= ing it to bear. And they have mostly beaten us in these last few years.

LH: But do you think it is just fossil-fuel lobbying etc, or is it an ideol= ogical/psychological opposition to action on climate change and one feeds the other?

BM: The single biggest contributors to the GOP in the last elections were the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch brothers. That ideological pos= ition is rooted in Big Energy more than anywhere else.

LH: I can see how in US politics that's a big deal, but polling in other co= untries also shows a slight decline in interest or concern about climate ch= ange. Is that a credit crunch thing? Or are environmentalists being seen to=

BM: No, I don't think it's that. Yes, when you're in the middle of a seriou= s recession/depression, everything else goes down a notch in interest, but = the new UK government has at least rhetorically and, in some degree, in act= uality stayed on the hunt. The Australians are about to adopt serious clima= te legislation. At root, more than anything else, it's a US problem. And wi= thout the US, you can't get the Chinese on board. The diplomatic failure wa= s one of things that kept the whole thing from advancing at all because eve= ryone began to see that there was no end game. Without the US in motion, ho= w were we going to get anything else to happen? That was the failure of Cop= enhagen. But it's not a "cry wolf" issue at all. Just the opposite. The iro= ny of the last four years is that it has become absolutely clear what globa= l warming is like in its early stages. We've had catastrophes far greater t= han we would have imagined 20 years ago when I wrote my first book about all this. Look at 2010: 19 na= tions set all-time temperatures records, we see wetting on a scale never se= en before, we see drought on a scale we've never seen before. The world's b= iggest insurance company says there's no other explanation for what's going=

BM: That's why we went with the name 350.org, because = it's a very good way of reminding people that we're already passed where we=

need to be. The good news is that our organising efforts of much stronger = than they've ever been. We built a movement over the past four years that w= asn't there before. Now we operate in every country in the world, except fo= r North Korea, and increasingly effectively and loudly. The movement turns = out to be what we didn't understand then, the prerequisite for getting anyt= hing done. Because the financial power of the fossil-fuel industry is so gr= eat it can, and has, delayed any real action of the climate issues almost e= verywhere. Until we find a different currency to work in, we're always goin= g to lose. We're never going to have enough money to compete with these guy= s head on. That's why we're experimenting with lots of different currencies= . There's a lot of spirit, creativity and energy is these global days of ac= tion. And now we're spending our bodies with people getting arrested in wha= t was the largest civil disobedience action in the US on anything for 35 ye= ars.

BM: I assume it goes to more of that. If the question is will it escalate t= o violence, I sure hope not. Our most powerful weapons are the ones we are = starting to use now and I'm glad to see that happening.

BM: Even this year is beginning to reveal that there are all kinds of tacti= cs in the non-violent arsenal from Egypt to Occupy Wall Street. The thing that is becoming clearer=

and clearer is that this is a fight. The idea that held for years that we = could all talk rationally to politicians about this and that they would do = the right thing is now over. What we failed to count on was while we talked=

to them rationally in one ear with science and economics the oil industry = was doubling in the other ear the threats to keep anyone from doing anythin= g.

The money for the Tea Party came from the Koch Brothers. There will always be those who say, "Don'= t tell me what to do', that's a uniquely American idea. But they are a smal= l part of the population. What's given them power and legs is the endless a= vailability of resources from the fossil-fuel industry. In a fair fight, we=

would have won this battle long ago because the science is clear and most = people have a sincere desire to build a different kind of world that will w= ork best for their kids. But the battle is not being fought on science, but=

prevent change for even a few more years while they wrack up records profi= ts. It's the biggest obstacle we face. The other obstacle is the different = levels of development around the world. We are trying to come to grips with=

the reality that the rich world needs to provide the poor world with a tin= y amount of money they have accumulated in 200 years of being allowed to bu= rn carbon to lift their people [out of poverty] without burning more carbon= . That's what makes the diplomatic thing so hard. The hardest part is the s= cience is always shrouded by the power of the fossil-fuel industry.

LH: What is it going to take, ultimately? Will it be another part of the wo= rld, say China, taking the lead and showing the western world what to do? W= ill it take a Gandhi-like internationally respected leadership figure? Or a= n Arab Spring-type uprising of outcry and revolution, driven through social networking?

already happening, but it just isn't big enough yet to fight full on again= st the oil companies, although we are getting closer. This tar-sands battle=

is a good example. Read the New York Times today about the emails from the st= ate department. And the terrific editorial in the New York Times saying stop=

this pipeline. There are signs this movement is beginning to talk hold. Th= ere is some chance that all of this is moot and that we've waited too long = to get started. You know the science. But we have to operate on the assumpt= ion that there may still be enough time.

LH: Will another Katrina-= type event, but in somewhere like a DC or Manhattan, be the difference?

BM: Mother Nature is going to continue to provide a long series of teachabl= e moments and we're waking up a little more with each one of them. Where I = live in Vermont, we have just had the biggest rainfall events ever recorded= . There's not many people left in Vermont denying climate change. The gover= nor said the other day that they most important thing anyone can do is join=

350.org and go to work to stop climate change because Verm= ont was turning into Costa Rica and our terrain and topography couldn't han= dle that.

one of the reasons is that people are beginning to understand that he is w= rong about this issue.

LH: Would Perry running, rather perversely, be a good thing for climate-cha= nge awareness?

was some recent polling that showed the number of people worried about glo= bal warming increased slightly and one of the explanations was that having = Bachmann and Perry in the TV debates was just causi= ng normal, rational Americans to think that if these people think that glob= al warming is nuts then there must actually be something to it.

LH: Where do you stand on some of the solutions being talked up by so-calle= d "pragmatic" environmentalists? Nose-peg technologies, such as nuclear, ge= oengineering, GM foods, etc?

BM: Geoengineering to me looks like a serious dead end. We just have idea i= f they'll work and the early modelling shows they'd be disastrous. I used t= o run a homeless shelter so I knew a lot of junkies. This is just the kind = of answer that junkies provide.

BM: Set aside everything else and just run the numbers. The economics just = doesn't even begin to work. No one is going to set aside everything else po= st-Fukushima so it's just columnist talk, it's not serious talk.

BM: I just spent a day with the guy in China running their CCS programme an= d after a day of him explaining it all to me I asked him what percentage of=

China's coal plant emissions will be captured and buried by 2030. He said = 2%. I realised then that I probably didn't need to have spent a day talking=

to him. Even if you could do these other things there's no getting away fr= om the fact that we have to reduce emissions dramatically.

we have already caused. We need to build bridges and culverts that can wit= hstand far greater rainfall than they were designed to handle. The real cha= llenge is preventing the changes for which we simply can't adapt. To do tha= t we have to get off fossil fuels fast and the only real way to do that is to put a serious price = on carbon. It's always been the only real show in town.

The problem is that it interferes with the most profitable industry the wor= ld has ever seen. Exxon made more money last year than in the history of mo= ney. And it doesn't take much in politics to stop things from happening. Th= eir only goal is to delay action. It took 20 years to work round the delayi= ng efforts of the tobacco industry. And the tobacco industry is a mere pimp= le on the butt of the oil industry. It is the most profitable enterprise th= at humans have every engaged in.

This is going to be a fight. The 'We'll solve this in a rational way' optio= n kind of ended for good when the US Senate refused to take a vote on even = modest, tepid climate legislation. That convinced everyone that it is going=

to be a fight. It's also apparent that we're not going to get any help fro= m peak oil because while co= nventional oil might well have peaked, without a price on carbon, we've now=

found plenty of unconventional oil - shale gas, tar sands etc. This is whe= re we're headed without any political leadership. While we used to have a d= iscussion about how long it would take to transition over to renewable form= s of energy, now it seems there's enough fossil fuels out there to postpone=

peak oil a lot longer than that. And the ones who want to postpone it are = the ones getting rich off oil. And that's why tar sands have emerged as rea= l battles. Clearly, we're under-gunned, but we're fighting even harder now.

The day we got out of jail after being arrested, all the major environmenta= l groups in the US sent out a letter saying that there's not an inch of day= light between them and the protesters. The guy in the cell next to me was G= us Speth. He's in his lat= e 60s and has done every establishment environmental job there is to do. Bu= t he decided at some point in the last couple of years that none of that is=

working. When we were in jail, he managed to smuggle out a statement to th= e press that said, "I've held a lot of important positions, but none of the= m seem as necessary as the one I'm in right now." He sums up some of the fe= eling.

LH: Do you think the western democratic process can deal with a problem lik= e climate change?

LH: Some say that these forms of protest are not democratic; it's just the = actions of a vocal minority?

BM: I disagree. In the history of the US, we see just the opposite. The dem= ocratic forces were the ones working in the civil rights movement. This sum= mer, we had 1,200 people from all 50 states. They weren't radicals in any s= ense. Not in the sense that oil companies are radicals, whereby they are al= tering the composition of the atmosphere, just about the most radical actio= n you can imagine. I think it's purely democratic to try and influence the = system that way. The point of protest like that is to influence other peopl= e, in the same way that Exxon will take out a full-page ad in the Wall Stre= et Journal, or buy a slot for a TV commercial. We don't have the money to d= o that, but we can spend our bodies instead.

LH: Do you anticipate the equivalent of a Million Man March descending on DC within the next five year= s?

BM: We'll see. More helps, certainly. We're going to need lots and lots of = people, but we're starting to get there. We're doing what we can and we're = making it up as we go along as people in this field tend to do. I'm not an = activist by trade, I'm a writer.

LH: Are we trying to deal with the symptom, not the cause? Is it our neo-li= beral, growth-obsessed economy that is, ultimately, the problem?

BM: That's one of these chicken-and-egg questions. For my money, the thing = that bred this growth-based economy around us was the easy availability of = cheap fossil fuels. Without that we couldn't have built the economy that we=

have. I don't know how you would do a frontal assault on the economy. But = I think the best way to get change in the growth model is to restrict what = has been its lifeblood. If oil and coal paid for the damage they do to the = atmosphere, my guess is that within just a few years we'd have things like = really serious local agriculture because we would be able to do the highly = industrialised agriculture that we do now.

LH: But then we move on to the fact that this month the global human popula= tion reaches seven billion for the first time. Our future is one of me= ga-cities, not people living the good life, growing all their own food, etc= ?

BM: I don't agree with that at all. All the data shows that you get more ag= ricultural yield per acre on small farms than big ones. I don't have any Po= l Pot-style aspirations to move peopl= e around, but over time I think it will become clear that many more of us w= ill need to be feeding ourselves. In the US, two-thirds of agricultural pro= duction is in counties adjacent to metropolitan areas; it's just now it dis= appears into the global commodities market. But that's stating to change. I=

hope it does because it's ruinous that we're spreading our form of commerc= ialised agriculture around the world. That's why we have many of the mega-c= ities that we do because we're continuously driving people off land.

LH: Obviously, you wrote a book about it, but where do you stand today on the issue of population control?

BM: I've always been opposed to population control. In climate terms, popul= ation is not the biggest problem going forward. Most of the population grow= th we will see over the next four decades will use very little energy so th= at it doesn't matter that much. The average American family uses as much en= ergy between the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve and dinner on 2 Janua= ry than a Tanzanian family uses across a whole year. In global warming term= s, Tanzanians become almost a rounding error in terms of emissions growth. = Most of the emissions growth is coming from relatively stable populations w= ith rapidly growing consumption. We've done a fairly remarkable job as a sp= ecies in lowering fertility rates. We've figured out how to do that: educat= e and empower women. But we don't really know yet what the answer for consu= mption is beyond putting the real price on carbon.

LH: The environmental movement has long talked about abstinence, cutting ba= ck, reducing, etc, when it comes to consumption, which is a very difficult = sell. Do you think this is a mistake because people hate being told what to=

do, and, ultimately, this is about global action rather than the actions o= f individuals?

too. Individual actions are still important to do. But you can't make the = math work by a process of addition. It's not going to happen fast enough li= ke that - my neighbour does it, then his neighbour does it, etc. It's not a= n either/or, but you also have to figure out how to do multiplication and m= ultiplication means politics, namely, changing the rules under which we bur= n carbon. I always say spend 70% of your spare time doing things close to h= ome and the other 30% doing work at the global and national level.

LH: If they do get the go-ahead and start building the pipeline, will the p= rotests continue?

BM: The greatest moment of leverage is probably right now, but, yes, it wou= ldn't surprise me at all if people who live along that route get out there = protesting and I might well be tempted to join them. This pipeline is a par= ticularly brutal and dumb idea. The US needs to treat tar sands in much the=

call, to try and protect its rainforests. The one thing I think we have ac= complished recently is to get the Canadians themselves to think what on ear= th are they doing ruining their international reputation. Canada was known = for not starting wars and now their legacy for the 21st century will be tha= t they put the final nail in the climate change coffin.

BM: I'm older and wiser now. I understand now that it is really a fight, wh= ich I didn't get before. The fossil-fuel industry is not going to wave the = white flag voluntarily. This is the first truly global issue we've ever had=

to figure out at a species. If we can't figure it out, we're not going to = get through. There's very little question that unchecked climate change wil= l very quickly reduce civilisation into an on-going rescue effort. I try no= t to think about the ultimate destination of all of this because at the mom= ent we've got a window - albeit closing fast - to do something about it.

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Bill McKibben on tar sands, Obama, geoengineering and population growth

The US environmentalist explains why he is now in a 'fight' with the oil industry = over climate change

Guardian, October 6th 2011

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/oc= t/06/bill-mckibben-keystone-pipeline-oil

Bill McKibben, one of the US's leading environmental writers and campaigners, visited the UK briefly earlier this week to teach a course entitled Building Social Movements and Organising for Change at the Schumacher College= in Devon. He was scheduled to also give a l= ecture this weekend at the Schumacher Cente= nary Festival in Bristol, but will now deliver it via video-conference as he had to return early to Washington DC for Friday's fi= nal hearing into the proposed 1,711-mile Keystone XL pipe= line that, if built, would transport oil extracted=

from Canada's tar sand fields across the Mid-West and down to ports in the Gulf = of Mexico. <= font color=3Dblack>McKibben was arr= ested in August during a protestaimed at tr= ying to convince President Obama not to authorise the pipeline.

We began the interview by discussing his battle to stop the pipeline…<= /p>

BM: This pipeline figh= t has turned into the most interesting environmental battle of modern years. The = odds are still probably against us, but they are better than they were a little while ago because people are really starting to pay attention and realise w= hat a terrible idea it is.

LH: What's going to ha= ppen on Friday?

BM: It's just the last=

hearing and they will say they are not going to make any decisions for another 6-8 weeks. Friday will be another rally, but the big date we are heading toward= s is 6 November, which is exactly one year before the next election. On that day= , we are going to try and circle the White=

House with people which I'm not sure is something that has ever been done before. We'l= l all be carrying signs from the president's last election campaign. No attac= ks on him, just his own words. "It's time to end the tyranny of oil"= ; "In my administration, the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and t= he planet will begin to heal". The tag line will be something like: "= ;If you didn't mean it, you shouldn't have said it. Stop the pipeline".

LH: What is your ultim= ate message to Obama, but, perhaps more importantly, those that might vote for = him next year?

BM: The ultimate messa= ge is just "stop this pipeline". It is a serious deal. It's not just so= me token thing. It is the second largest pool of carbon on the planet and it's utter folly to expand the oil operation there. When your best federal clima= te scientist Jim Hansen says heavy tapping of the tar sands means game over for the climate, you, as the president, are paid to pay attention to stuff like that.<= /font>

LH: Would this be a bi= gger failure on Obama's record than, say, Copenhagen?

BM: The biggest failur= e in environmental terms was the failure to get, or even try to get, serious cli= mate legislation and the second is the failure to move the diplomatic ball at al= l. But in both those cases the president can with some accuracy blame Congress=

for at least part of this failure. Our Congress is inane at the moment and hard=

to work with. I have some sympathy for the guy when trying to persuade people like Jim Inhofeto do the right thing. But, in the case of this pipeline, the reason why peopl= e are so focused on it is because the president has to make the call all by himself. Congress has got nothing to do with it. He has to sign something called the Presidential Cer= tificate of National Interest and if he doesn't sign the thin= g the pipeline doesn't get built.

LH: Are you going as f= ar as to say people shouldn't vote for Obama next year if he passes the pipeline?

BM: No. I don't even t= hink that's the issue really. Most hardcore environmentalists probably aren't go= ing to go and vote for Rick Perry. The problem is that they won't be out there building the surge behind the president that got him elected in the first place. Presidents get elected, = at some level, by movements of people deciding that there's something good her= e. And that's what people did in 2008 with Obama. It almost feels as if this pipeline thing is one of the last chances he has to rekindle even a small p= art of that.

LH: I was re-reading a= n interview the Gu= ardian did with you in 2007 and it's striking the differenc= e between now and then. You were right in the middle of Step it Up, Obama's election was a year away, it was pre-credit crunch, it was pre-Copenhagen, pre-Climategate, etc. You were talking about being very optimistic; that this was your momen= t and predicting that serious global action would happen by 2009…<= /o:p>

BM: I think what we classically failed to understand then was just how much financial power the fossil-fuel industry had and how they were going to bring it to bear. And t= hey have mostly beaten us in these last few years.

LH: But do you think i= t is just fossil-fuel lobbying etc, or is it an ideological/psychological opposi= tion to action on climate change&nbs= p;and one feeds the other?

BM: The single biggest contributors to the GOP in the last elections were the Chamber of Comme= rce and the Koch brothers. That ideological position is rooted in Big Energy more than anywhere else.<= o:p>

LH: I can see how in U= S politics that's a big deal, but polling in other countries also shows a sli= ght decline in interest or concern about climate change. Is that a credit crunc= h thing? Or are environmentalists being seen to cry wolf?

BM: No, I don't think = it's that. Yes, when you're in the middle of a serious recession/depression, everything else goes down a notch in interest, but the new UK gove= rnment has at least rhetorically and, in some degree, in actuality stayed on the h= unt. The Australians are about to adopt serious climate legislation. At root, mo= re than anything else, it's a US problem. And without the US, you can't get the Chinese on board. The diplomatic failure was one of thing= s that kept the whole thing from advancing at all because everyone began to s= ee that there was no end game. Without the w:st=3D"on">US in motion, how were we goi= ng to get anything else to happen? That was the failure of = w:st=3D"on">Copenhagen. But it's not a "cry wolf" issue at all. Just the opposite. The irony of the last four year= s is that it has become absolutely clear what global warming is like in its earl= y stages. We've had catastrophes far greater than we would have imagined 20 y= ears ago when I wrote my first book ab= out all this. Look at 2010: 19 nations set all-time temperatures records, we se= e wetting on a scale never seen before, we see drought on a scale we've never seen before. The world's biggest insurance company says there's no other explanation for what's going on other than rising greenhouse gases.

LH: But shouldn't thes= e enliven people more than talk of distant targets on the far horizon such as 2050?

BM: That's why we went=

with the name 350.org, because i= t's a very good way of reminding people that we're already passed where we need t= o be. The good news is that our organising efforts of much stronger than they= 've ever been. We built a movement over the past four years that wasn't there before. Now we operate in every country in the world, except for North Korea, and increasingly effectively and loudly. The movement turns out to be what = we didn't understand then, the prerequisite for getting anything done. Because=

the financial power of the fossil-fuel industry is so great it can, and has, delayed any real action of the climate issues almost everywhere. Until we f= ind a different currency to work in, we're always going to lose. We're never go= ing to have enough money to compete with these guys head on. That's why we're experimenting with lots of different currencies. There's a lot of spirit, creativity and energy is these global days of action. And now we're spendin= g our bodies with people getting arrested in what was the largest civil disobedience action in the US on anything for 35 years.

LH: What is the next g= ear shift for the campaign? Where do you go next?

BM: I assume it goes t= o more of that. If the question is will it escalate to violence, I sure hope not. = Our most powerful weapons are the ones we are starting to use now and I'm glad = to see that happening.

LH: Without resorting = to violence, what other ways could you step it up?

BM: Even this year is beginning to reveal that there are all kinds of tactics in the non-violent arsenal from Egypt to Occupy Wall Stre= et. The thing that is becoming clearer and clearer is that this is a fight. The idea that held for years that we could all talk rationally to politicians a= bout this and that they would do the right thing is now over. What we failed to count on was while we talked to them rationally in one ear with science and economics the oil industry was doubling in the other ear the threats to kee= p anyone from doing anything.

The mon= ey for the Tea Party= came from the Koch Brothers. There will always be those who say, "Don't tel= l me what to do', that's a uniquely American idea. But they are a small part of = the population. What's given them power and legs is the endless availability of resources from the fossil-fuel industry. In a fair fight, we would have won this battle long ago because the science is clear and most people have a sincere desire to build a different kind of world that will work best for t= heir kids. But the battle is not being fought on science, but on money. There is=

an enormous interest within the fossil-fuel industry to prevent change for eve= n a few more years while they wrack up records profits. It's the biggest obstac= le we face. The other obstacle is the different levels of development around t= he world. We are trying to come to grips with the reality that the rich world needs to provide the poor world with a tiny amount of money they have accumulated in 200 years of being allowed to burn carbon to lift their peop= le [out of poverty] without burning more carbon. That's what makes the diploma= tic thing so hard. The hardest part is the science is always shrouded by the po= wer of the fossil-fuel industry.

LH: What is it going t= o take, ultimately? Will it be another part of the world, say China, = taking the lead and showing the western world what to do? Will it take a Gandhi-li= ke internationally respected leadership figure? Or an Arab Spring-type uprising of outcry and revolution, driven through social networking?

BM: A bit of everythin= g, probably. But the last of those is the most likely at this point, I think. = It's going to take a movement. In a sense, that is already happening, but it jus= t isn't big enough yet to fight full on against the oil companies, although w= e are getting closer. This tar-sands battle is a good example. Read the = New York Times t= oday about the emails from the state department. And the terrific editori= al in the New York Times saying stop this pipeline. There are signs this movement=

is beginning to talk hold. There is some chance that all of this is moot and t= hat we've waited too long to get started. You know the science. But we have to operate on the assumption that there may still be enough time.

LH: Will another = Katrina-type event= , but in somewhere like a DC or Manh= attan, be the difference?

BM: Mother Nature is g= oing to continue to provide a long series of teachable moments and we're waking up = a little more with each one of them. Where I live in <= st1:place

w:st=3D"on">Vermont, we have just had the biggest rainfall events ever recorded. There's not many people left in Vermont denying = climate change. The governor said the other day that they most important thing anyo= ne can do is join 350.org and go to work to sto= p climate change because Vermont was turning into Costa Rica and our terrain = and topography couldn't handle that.

LH: But what about the=

Texas drought an= d Rick Perry…<= o:p>

BM: You know what, I d= on't think Rick Perry is going to go all that far and one of the reasons is that people are beginning to understand that he is wrong about this issue.<= /o:p>

LH: Would Perry runnin= g, rather perversely, be a good thing for climate-change awareness?=

BM: I think he's alrea= dy started to expose the folly of his position. There was some recent polling = that showed the number of people worried about global warming increased slightly=

and one of the explanations was that having Bachmann<= /font> and Perry in the TV debates was just causing normal, rational Americans to think that if these people think that global warming is nuts then there must actually be something to it.

LH: Where do you stand=

on some of the solutions being talked up by so-called "pragmatic" environmentalists? Nose-peg technologies, such as nuclear, geoengineering, = GM foods, etc?

BM: Geoengineering to = me looks like a serious dead end. We just have idea if they'll work and the early modelling shows they'd be disastrous. I used to run a homeless shelter so I knew a lot of junkies. This is just the kind of answer that junkies provide= .

LH: Nuclear?

BM: Set aside everythi= ng else and just run the numbers. The economics just doesn't even begin to work. No=

one is going to set aside everything else post-Fukushima so it's just columnist talk, it's not serious talk.

LH: CCS [<= font color=3Dblack>carbon, capture = and storage]?

BM: I just spent a day=

with the guy in China runni= ng their CCS programme and after a day of him explaining it all to me I asked = him what percentage of C= hina's coal plant emissions will be captured and buried by 2030. He said 2%. I realised then that I probably didn't need to have spent a day talking to hi= m. Even if you could do these other things there's no getting away from the fa= ct that we have to reduce emissions dramatically.

There's=

no easy fix. There's stuff we have to do now to adapt to the things we have already caused. We need to build bridges and culverts that can withstand far greate= r rainfall than they were designed to handle. The real challenge is preventin= g the changes for which we simply can't adapt. To do that we have to get off fossil fuels = fast and the only real way to do that is to put a serious price on carbon. It's always been the only real show in town.

The problem is that it inter= feres with the most profitable industry the world has ever seen. Exxon made more money last year than in the history of money. And it doesn't take much in politics to stop things from happening. Their only goal is to delay action.=

It took 20 years to work round the delaying efforts of the tobacco industry. A= nd the tobacco industry is a mere pimple on the butt of the oil industry. It i= s the most profitable enterprise that humans have every engaged in.

This is=

going to be a fight. The 'We'll solve this in a rational way' option kind of ende= d for good when the US Senate refused to take a vote on even modest, tepid climate legislation. That convinced everyone that it is going to be a fight= . It's also apparent that we're not going to get any help from peak oil beca= use while conventional oil might well have peaked, without a price on carbon, w= e've now found plenty of unconventional oil – shale gas, tar sands etc. Th= is is where we're headed without any political leadership. While we used to ha= ve a discussion about how long it would take to transition over to renewable for= ms of energy, now it seems there's enough fossil fuels out there to postpone p= eak oil a lot longer than that. And the ones who want to postpone it are the on= es getting rich off oil. And that's why tar sands have emerged as real battles= . Clearly, we're under-gunned, but we're fighting even harder now.=

The day=

we got out of jail after being arrested, all the major environmental groups in the=

US sent=

out a letter saying that there's not an inch of daylight between them and the protesters. The guy in the cell next to me was Gus Speth. He's in=

his late 60s and has done every establishment environmental job there is to do.=

But he decided at some point in the last couple of years that none of that is working. When we were in jail, he managed to smuggle out a statement to the press that said, "I've held a lot of important positions, but none of = them seem as necessary as the one I'm in right now." He sums up some of the feeling.

LH: Are we entering an=

age of great environmental activism?

BM: I hope so!

LH: Do you think the w= estern democratic process can deal with a problem like climate change?<= /span>

BM: Protests are a key=

part of the western democratic process.

LH: Some say that thes= e forms of protest are not democratic; it's just the actions of a vocal minority?

BM: I disagree. In the=

history of the US, we see just the opposite. The democratic forces were the ones working in th= e civil rights movement. This summer, we had 1,200 people from all 50 states. They weren't radicals in any sense. Not in the sense that oil companies are radicals, whereby they are altering the composition of the atmosphere, just about the most radical action you can imagine. I think it's purely democrat= ic to try and influence the system that way. The point of protest like that is=

to influence other people, in the same way that Exxon will take out a full-pag= e ad in the Wall Street Journal, or buy a slot for a TV commercial. We don't hav= e the money to do that, but we can spend our bodies instead.

LH: Do you anticipate = the equivalent of a Million Man Marc= h descending on DC within the next five years?

BM: We'll see. More he= lps, certainly. We're going to need lots and lots of people, but we're starting = to get there. We're doing what we can and we're making it up as we go along as people in this field tend to do. I'm not an activist by trade, I'm a writer= .

LH: Are we trying to d= eal with the symptom, not the cause? Is it our neo-liberal, growth-obsessed economy = that is, ultimately, the problem?

BM: That's one of thes= e chicken-and-egg questions. For my money, the thing that bred this growth-ba= sed economy around us was the easy availability of cheap fossil fuels. Without = that we couldn't have built the economy that we have. I don't know how you would=

do a frontal assault on the economy. But I think the best way to get change in=

the growth model is to restrict what has been its lifeblood. If oil and coal pa= id for the damage they do to the atmosphere, my guess is that within just a fe= w years we'd have things like really serious local agriculture because we wou= ld be able to do the highly industrialised agriculture that we do now.

LH: But then we move o= n to the fact that this month the global human population reaches seven billion for the first time. Our future is one of mega-cities, not people living the goo= d life, growing all their own food, etc?

BM: I don't agree with=

that at all. All the data shows that you get more agricultural yield per acre on sm= all farms than big ones. I don't have any Pol Pot-style aspirations to move people around, but over time I think it will become cle= ar that many more of us will need to be feeding ourselves. In the US, two= -thirds of agricultural production is in counties adjacent to metropolitan areas; i= t's just now it disappears into the global commodities market. But that's stati= ng to change. I hope it does because it's ruinous that we're spreading our for= m of commercialised agriculture around the world. That's why we have many of the mega-cities that we do because we're continuously driving people off land.<= o:p>

LH: Obviously, you wrote a book about it, but where do you stand today on the issue of population control?=

BM: I've always been o= pposed to population control. In climate terms, population is not the biggest prob= lem going forward. Most of the population growth we will see over the next four decades will use very little energy so that it doesn't matter that much. Th= e average American family uses as much energy between the stroke of midnight = on New Year's Eve and dinner on 2 January than a Tanzanian family uses across = a whole year. In global warming terms, Tanzanians become almost a rounding er= ror in terms of emissions growth. Most of the emissions growth is coming from relatively stable populations with rapidly growing consumption. We've done = a fairly remarkable job as a species in lowering fertility rates. We've figur= ed out how to do that: educate and empower women. But we don't really know yet what the answer for consumption is beyond putting the real price on carbon.=

LH: The environmental = movement has long talked about abstinence, cutting back, reducing, etc, when it come= s to consumption, which is a very difficult sell. Do you think this is a mistake because people hate being told what to do, and, ultimately, this is about global action rather than the actions of individuals?

BM: Maybe, but I also = think many people have been inspired by that message, too. Individual actions are still important to do. But you can't make the math work by a process of addition. It's not going to happen fast enough like that – my neighbo= ur does it, then his neighbour does it, etc. It's not an either/or, but you al= so have to figure out how to do multiplication and multiplication means politi= cs, namely, changing the rules under which we burn carbon. I always say spend 7= 0% of your spare time doing things close to home and the other 30% doing work = at the global and national level.

LH: If they do get the go-ahead and start building the pipeline, will the protests continue?<= /o:p>

BM: The greatest momen= t of leverage is probably right now, but, yes, it wouldn't surprise me at all if people who live along that route get out there protesting and I might well = be tempted to join them. This pipeline is a particularly brutal and dumb idea.=

The US needs to treat tar sands in much the same way that Brazil has risen in recent years, following an international call, to try and protect its rainforests. The one thing I think we have accomplished recently is to get = the Canadians themselves to think what on earth are they doing ruining their international reputation. Canada was known for not starting wars and now their legacy for the 21st century w= ill be that they put the final nail in the climate change coffin.

LH: Compared to the op= timism you expressed in 2007, where do you stand now? Are you pessimistic about th= e future?

BM: I'm older and wise= r now. I understand now that it is really a fight, which I didn't get before. The fossil-fuel industry is not going to wave the white flag voluntarily. This = is the first truly global issue we've ever had to figure out at a species. If we c= an't figure it out, we're not going to get through. There's very little question that unchecked climate change will very quickly reduce civilisation into an on-going rescue effort. I try not to think about the ultimate destination o= f all of this because at the moment we've got a window – albeit closing fast – to do something about it.

[Environmentcomm] FW: Bill McKibben on tar sands, Obama, geoengineering and population growth

Bill McKibben on tar sands, Obama, geoengineering and population growth