eaarth

Bill McKibben lecures at Pomona College

Notes and quotes from Bill McKibben’s lecture Thursday night (10/27/11): He named his recent book Eaarth because the planet needed a new name. It is a different planet than that seen in the 1968 Apollo 8 photo of Earth rising. The ocean is 30% more acid and there is 40% less ice in the summer in the Arctic.

Since Eaarth was published 18 months ago, we’ve seen the warmest year on record. In July, 2010, Pakistan hit 129 degrees Fahrenheit. Warm air holds hold more vapor, and so the planet is 4% wetter than it was 40 years ago. The hydrological cycles that had been steady through the Holocene now involve more drought and evaporation. Russia, the third largest grain exporter, stopped all grain shipments after 8 days of 100 degree weather, fire and drought, causing a 70% spike in grain prices, which is a disaster if you are poor and buy cornmeal for your food source. Drought in the Horn of Africa is the worst. Texas and Oklahoma are dryer than it was in the dust bowl years. Austin is fighting fires in conditions of lower humidity and higher temperatures than ever before.

Water vapor stays in the atmosphere 6-7 days, and then it comes down. Incredible downpours in Pakistan dumped 12 feet of rain in a week. The Indus flooded 20% of the country and made 20% of the people homeless. Record rains also overfilled U.S. rivers. Hurricane Irene went up the East coast encountering New York and New Jersey seawater warmer than ever and soaked it up, dumping it on Vermont and taking 150- and 200-year-old covered bridges downstream. Flood records were broken by 30%. There were record rains in El Salvador, Guatamala, Manilla, Ghanna, Bangkok. Bangkok has experienced rising water like they’ve never seen.

All of this is from a temperature increase of one degree. Another degree rise is in the pipeline. If we don’t get our act together, there will be a five- to six-degree temperature rise before the end of the century. With every degree of temperature increase, Stanford agronomists say there will be a 10% reduction in grain yields. Peace, stability, and development are not possible with 10-30% fewer calories; we cannot allow that to happen.

How do we do something about all of this? So far we’ve basically done nothing as a country and a world. There have been 20 years of bipartisan doing nothing in Washington. McKibben wrote The End of Nature at the ages of 26 and 27, and he thought people would read it and change, and they did read it. He thought that our best scientists would explain all of this to our leaders, who would put a price on carbon and do other such things. This was a valid expectation, but it is not how things turned out, because it did not factor in the fact that the fossil fuel industry would be bellowing threats and promises that would keep the politicians from acting. We need a movement.

He especially realized this when he went to Bangladesh, where the rivers pour into the Bay of Bengal and the land is incredibly fertile. They face trouble with sea water backing up into the fresh water, but there was an acute problem there as well. The warm wet planet is ideal for mosquitoes, including those that spread deadly Dengue fever, which he caught but survived. For Bangladesh to have problems from climate change is incredibly unfair because they have no carbon footprint. They drive rickshaws. The 4% of us that are in the U.S. are responsible for 40% of the bad gases that have been added to the atmosphere.

He called his writer friends in Vermont and said, “Let’s go to Burlington and get arrested on the steps of the Federal building.” His friends thought that was a great idea, but when one of them called the police there to ask what would happen if they had a protest on the steps of the Federal building, the police said, “Absolutely nothing.” So instead, they had a protest walk to Burlington, 1,000 of them, camping in fields on the way. And they got their politicians to sign a large piece of cardboard with a document that only scientists had thus far signed, and all of their representatives signed it, including a woman who didn’t believe in global warming. And in ’06, that was sadly the largest demonstration on climate change in the U.S. to date.

He and seven students at Middlebury College started 350.org, named after the 350 ppm cut-off for acceptable CO2 levels pinpointed by outspoken award-winning NASA scientist James Hansen. (We’re at 390 ppm now and rising.) On 10/24/09 there were 5,100 demonstrations around the world, including 15,000 people in the street in Addis Ababa, and a 3-part artwork with the three numbers 3, 5, and 0 in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel, respectively. Supporters from around the world sent in photos in solidarity. There were pictures of Bungee jumping from a coal-fired power plant in Africa to council meetings in the water in the Maldives to bring attention to the fact that they will be underwater in 50 years. Most of the protestors did not look like environmentalists. They included many poor people of color. (And the world’s largest solar array is in Abu Dhabi!) One hundred and seventeen nations signed on to the 350 target, but they were the wrong nations. Rich addicts like us didn’t sign. Six months later the Senate couldn’t even bring modest measures to a vote. The 60 Democrats were scared of the fossil fuel industry.

The current focus is the Alberta-Texas pipeline. If this second-largest carbon pool in the world were burned overnight it would take the atmosphere from 350 to 540–essentially “game over” for the climate. We’ve got to stop it. The President will either grant it a Certificate of National Interest or not. Over two weeks 1,253 people have been arrested. A few days ago 1,000 people in San Francisco chanted, “Yes we can…stop the pipeline,” when President Obama was there. A guy was dragged out of one of his speeches. A State Department review, farmed out to Entrix (that has Trans-Canada Pipeline as a major client), said it would have negligible impact. Thursday (10/26/11), Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders joined Senator Wyden from Oregon and Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island to seek an investigation of the scandal. Senator Kerry just responded to constituent demands to do the same. Today, there is going to be an effort to circle the Whitehouse with signs containing quotes from President Obama in 2008: “End the Tyranny of Oil,” “Oceans Will Begin to Heal,” “Transparent Administration.” It is President Obama’s chance for a shot from the top of the key. The fossil fuel industry has more money than God. Exxon-Mobil made 10.1 billion this quarter. How can we keep them from stopping the progress to fix the planet?

Those of us who have burned fossil fuels all our lives should bear some of the burden of this movement. The students have been the real leaders of the pipeline protests and the global warming fight. Political scientists say the odds are too high to overcome. Scientists say we’ve gone too far to recover. But we can’t make those bets. Morally responsible people must get up every morning and work to change the odds. There are those in so many places where they have done nothing to cause the problem but are willing to work with those of us who have. There are people who will fight this problem and it is great to be with those who are willing to fight, and he will fight shoulder to shoulder with you as long as he can.

Maldives supporters

Xian, China, supporters

Cape Town supporters

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