Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben, 2016.
Bill McKibben, 2008.

William Ernest "Bill" McKibben (born December 8, 1960 in Palo Alto , California ) is an American environmental activist and author.

Life

McKibben has authored a variety of books on global warming and alternative energy . Furthermore, he advocates a localization of the economy. In the summer of 2006, he led the largest anti-global warming demonstration in American history. In 2009 he led the activities of the organization 350.org , which held 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries to raise awareness of the global warming problem.

Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 global thought leaders and MSN named him one of the most influential people of 2009.

McKibben takes an active part in the public debate about ways out of the climate crisis . He is a co-signer of an open letter published in December 2018, in which politicians are accused of having failed in addressing the crisis and are called on to join movements like Extinction Rebellion and to refrain from consumption .

He currently lives in Vermont with his wife Sue Halpern and their daughter Sophie (* 1993) .

Publications

McKibben has published articles in The New York Times , The Atlantic Monthly , Harper’s , Orion magazine , Mother Jones , The New York Review of Books , The Middlebury Campus , Granta , The National Geographic , Rolling Stone , and Outside, among others .

His first book, The End of Nature , was published by Random House in 1989 . It is considered to be one of the first books that brought the topic of global warming closer to a broad masses . It has been translated into over 20 languages. In the United States, several editions have now been published, including a version that was revised in 2006.

His second book, The Age of Missing Information , was published in 1992. It's about an experiment in which McKibben recorded every TV show of the 100 cable TV channels that were on the air for one day . He then spent over a year viewing over 2,400 hours of video footage and likening it to spending a day in the mountains near his home. This book is widely used in school lessons and was reprinted in 2006.

Other books were:

  • Hope, Human and Wild , via Curitiba (Brazil) and Kerala (India). Here he reports on cities in which people live with a smaller so-called ecological footprint ;
  • The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation is about the Old Testament , biblical book of Job and the Environment ;
  • Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single Child Families is about population growth ; ISBN 0-684-85281-0 .
  • Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously over a year of training at elite level;
  • Enough about what he believes are existential threats from genetic engineering and nanotechnology ;
  • Wandering Home is about a long hiking trip from his current home in Vermont to the Adirondacks .
  • Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future , published March 2007, was a national bestseller. It deals with the disadvantageous aspects of the growth-based economic model from the author's point of view and advocates a transition to an increasingly localized economy.
  • In autumn 2007 he and other members of the Step it up Team published Fight Global Warming Now , a handbook for activists planning local activities.
  • In 2008, The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life , a collection of essays that paraphrase his work, was published.
  • Also in 2008 was American Earth , a collection of American environmental science publications since Henry David Thoreau , edited by McKibben.

Awards

Honorary title :

Campaigns

  • Step It Up 2007 is a grassroots US-wide campaign (organized from the grassroots) that was founded by McKibben and that campaigns for the US Congress to take action against advancing global warming. In the late summer of 2006, he and others went on a 5-day march through Vermont to emphasize his call to do something about global warming. Newspapers reported this action as one of the largest demonstrations against climate change. In January 2007 he founded "Step It Up 2007", which organized rallies in hundreds of American cities and villages on April 14, 2007 to demand an 80% reduction in CO 2 emissions by 2050. The campaign quickly gained widespread support from environmental and student groups as well as religious associations. In August 2007, McKibben announced "Step It Up 2," which took place on November 3, 2007. In addition to the 80% reduction target by 2050, a 10% reduction in emissions in three years was required ( hit the ground running ), a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and a Green Jobs Corps that equips private and commercial buildings so that the set Goals can be achieved.
  • The same core team launched the “ 350.org ” campaign in March 2008 . The aim of the organization is to initiate a global movement, the name of which is derived from the required maximum CO 2 concentration in the earth's atmosphere of 350 ppm. This numerical value goes back to the climatologist James E. Hansen , who classified an atmospheric CO 2 concentration of more than 350 ppm (parts per million) as unsafe if the goal of mankind is to preserve the earth as it was during development most of what humanity looked like. In the abstract of his publication he made the assertion: "If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO 2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that. " 350.org has offices in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. The aim was to manifest the number 350 as a target in the run-up to the 2009 World Climate Conference in Copenhagen. On October 24, 2009, 350.org coordinated more than 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries. With the creative use of modern Internet applications, the day was organized and its success was documented. This was one of the strongest examples of social networking. In addition, 350.org supported the 10:10 campaign , which aimed to reduce CO 2 emissions by 10% by 2010.

Fonts

items

See also

Web links

Commons : Bill McKibben  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / library.thinkquest.org
  2. ^ Growing Local, Eating Local ( Memento from September 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) publisher = PBS
  3. ^ Board of Directors 350.org
  4. ↑ http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/30/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=full
  5. ↑ http://lifestyle.msn.com/your-life/bigger-picture/staticslideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=22815182 ( Memento from December 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Act now to prevent an environmental catastrophe. The Guardian, December 9, 2018, accessed January 22, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Stockholm's Right Livelihood Award Foundation rewards commitment to human rights, freedom of the press, civil liberties and the fight against climate change. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved September 24, 2014 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.rightlivelihood.org  
  8. ↑ http://www.stepitup2007.org/#letter
  9. ↑ Hansen, J. , Mki. Sato, P. Kharecha, D. Beerling, R. Berner, V. Masson-Delmotte, M. Pagani, M. Raymo, DL Royer, and JC Zachos , 2008: Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? The Open Atmospheric Science Journal, 2, 217-231, doi : 10.2174 / 1874282300802010217 .
  10. ^ Elisabeth Rosenthal: Obama's Backing Raises Hopes for Climate Pact . In: The New York Times , March 1, 2009. Retrieved April 1, 2010. 
  11. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / experiencematters.criticalmass.com
personal data
SURNAME McKibben, Bill
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McKibben, William Ernest (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American environmental activist and author
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Palo Alto , California