Ralph discusses with environmental champion, Bill McKibben, how to take the fight for the climate to “the next level of intensity,” plus his new book, “The Flag, The Cross, And The Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.”
Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, and activist who founded 350.org –a global grassroots climate campaign – and Third Act – which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate change, racial equity, and the protection of democracy. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker climate change series “Annals of a Warming Planet”, and his new book is The Flag, The Cross, And The Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.
Even the oil companies are past the point of pretending that climate change isn’t real. And now denial comes mostly in the form of endless delay. Endless insistence that their business plan is somehow still compatible with a climate-safe world.
Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, The Cross, And The Station Wagon
There are two levers big enough to be worth pulling. One of them is marked “Politics,” and we’ve all been pulling it as hard as we can, and we’ll continue to do so… The other lever that’s worth pulling is marked “Finance.”
Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, The Cross, And The Station Wagon
There is a bit of a gerontocracy in DC. There is no question. And we haven’t heard that much from them [at Third Act]. And truthfully our goal is not necessarily to keep people of a certain age in power. In fact, I think our hope is to partner more and more with young people.
Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, The Cross, And The Station Wagon
The urgency, which you have articulated better than probably anybody in the world over climate chaos, requires a much more rigorous choice. We know that all activity flows in the same river, eventually… These corporations can drag things on all the way to Armageddon. And we need something extremely dramatic that the press cannot ignore.
Ralph Nader
Bill McKibben