Bill McKibben

Wal-Mart may sell organic, but it also thrives on ruined downtowns and long freight hauls.

I've always been a bit appalled by the polite applause with which some enviros greet Wal-Mart's "green" initiatives. Seems to me that the only way the company could really "go green" would be to stop selling cheap plastic crap shipped in from halfway around the world in vast suburban megastores. In other words, completely change it's business model -- not, say, adopt "green" building techniques for its appalling superstores, or haul mass-produced "organic" food from California, Mexico, and China to stores nationwide, thus burning lots of fossil fuel and potentially squeezing profits for farmers and sparking consolidation and industrialization in a movement that arose to challenge same.

Deep breath.

Sometime Grist contributor Bill McKibben nails it in the latest Mother Jones.

Money quote:

An artist invokes the spirit of courageous Americans, past and present

Editor’s note: We asked painter Robert Shetterly to share part of a portrait collection and book he’s created called “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” In addition to eco-legends such as Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, and even Grist friend Bill McKibben, the artist profiles lesser-known activists who have shown us how to fight […]

A new essay

What follows is a new essay by Bill McKibben, addressing -- in the context of reviewing five new books -- just how close we are to ecological catastrophe, and what reasons there are for hope.

The essay will appear in the Nov. 16 edition of the New York Review of Books. The NYRB editors gave Tom Engelhardt's excellent TomDispatch permission to publish it in advance; he in turn gave me permission to run it here. Thanks to Tom and to the NYRB editors.

Don't miss this one.

Will evangelicals help save the earth?

Copyright 2006 by Bill McKibben. First published in OnEarth, a publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Reprinted by permission. First came the mighty winds, blowing across the Gulf with unprecedented fury, leveling cities and towns, washing away the houses built on sand. Toss in record flooding across the Northeast, and one of the warmest […]

Watch

Despite my best efforts, I can never get the videos on Big Picture TV to work. (I wish everyone would just switch to Flash, a la YouTube.) But perhaps you can. If so, go check out the three clips of Bill McKibben they just put up.

And let me know if they're any good.

Bush’s climate plan will kick-start a new era of bargaining over the planet’s future

On your mark … Get set … Go? Photo: iStockphoto And so the bargaining has begun. After almost two decades of inaction, at long last America seems ready to start considering some kind of action to address global warming. With states setting conflicting standards, with the scientists announcing weekly updates on the speed and size […]

A new natural capitalism

I'm going to sit the fence on Kit's poll by saying that reigning in climate change will require both a re-envisioning of capitalism and a revision of our core values.

An excellent professor of mine at MIT introduced our class to the concept of "natural capitalism," pioneered by Paul Hawkins and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins. Their 1999 book on the subject, probably familiar to many of you, was an eye-opener for me at the time. Here is a short synopsis of the book from Publisher's Weekly:

The Present Future

Glimpsing the predicament of our moment, of "a human world newly and suddenly vulnerable to the forces of a changed planet," writer and artist team up to question the fantasy of human control over destiny.

That's the tag line for "The Present Future: Paintings for a very hot planet," a showcase of paintings by Alexis Rockman, accompanied by an essay from Bill McKibben, in the latest issue of Orion Magazine. Check it out.

Climate change is pushing this easygoing enviro over the edge

The one and only time I ever saw my mother become aggressive in public went like this. We were out as a family for a weekend leaf-peeping drive, an impulse apparently shared by most of the rest of New England, because the traffic along New Hampshire’s Kancamagus Highway was endless 90-degree gridlock. Every once in […]