This article was originally published on Common Edge.
The biennale UN climate conference, COP28, concluded in Dubai this week with a commitment to the eventual “phasing out” of fossil fuels. It was a classic glass-half-empty/glass-half-full gesture. Yes, as optimists pointed out, it was the first time any reference to moving away from fossil fuels had made it into the text of the final communique. But, like previous COPs, this resolution, too, is nonbinding and was reached over howls of protest from both oil-producing countries and developing countries reliant on existing energy supply chains for future growth. The tortuous nature of the outcome, watered down and officially toothless, left me feeling glum. If we can’t agree on the nature of the problem, it will be exceptionally difficult to fix it.
To offer perspective, I reached out to longtime activist Bill McKibben. A professor at Middlebury College, he has published 20 books; his first, The End of Nature, appeared in 1989. He was, along with Dr. James Hansen, one of the first to sound the climate alarm. McKibbin is a contributing writer to the New Yorker, and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. In collaboration with seven Middlebury students, he founded 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign.
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MCP:Martin C. Pedersen
BM: Bill McKibben
MCP: COP28 was held in Dubai, of all places, amid controversy about the involvement of fossil fuel companies. The final resolution was a tepid one that was, of course, unbinding and left everybody unsatisfied. What do you make of these gatherings? Do they serve any useful purpose?
BM: I think the Paris COP served a useful purpose, and perhaps the Glasgow one a few years later, and in both cases this was because there’d been enough movement building beforehand that leaders felt as if they couldn’t come home empty-handed. But it’s important to keep in mind: the COP is the scoreboard, not the game—that is, it reflects the current state of the zeitgeist, how much pressure there is on the system. This year’s COP produced a single sentence that will be useful for campaigners: the promise by nations to transition off fossil fuel. By itself it means nothing, but it will be a potent weapon in activist hands whenever countries propose fossil fuel expansions. The real fight is always going to be on the ground in various nations, halting fossil-fuel expansion, and aggressively building out renewables.
MCP: If the world can’t come to any agreement about “phasing out” fossil fuels—let alone doing the one thing that might quickly reduce emissions, instituting a binding carbon cap—what hope does this give us?
BM: It shouldn’t discourage us overly—there are other discouraging things—because the UN negotiating process was always going to be a lagging indicator, serving the lowest common denominator. The main hope lies in the rapid fall in the price of renewables and hence their rapid buildout. The challenge for the movement lies in catalyzing that transition off fossil fuel to happen even faster.
MCP: For many years, scientists have warned about the dangers of earth warming 1.5 degrees. It was seen as a sort of Rubicon that we couldn’t cross. Now we seem poised to blow past this in the coming years. What does this mean? And how do we proceed in the climate movement?
BM: It means far more of the weather havoc we’ve seen around the world, and the growing certainty that fundamental systems—the jet stream, the great ocean currents, the rainforests, the poles—are being deeply damaged. The questions now are not about stopping climate change, they’re about stopping it short of the place where it makes civilizations of the kind we’ve known impossible.
MCP: One of the positive pieces of climate news involves the continued growth of renewable energy. How do we keep that momentum going in the face of certain opposition from fossil-fuel companies?
BM: The fight has always been with the money of the fossil-fuel companies, and the solution has always been to try and overwhelm that money with the power of millions of engaged people. Easier said than done, but people do love solar power. The basic idea of energy from heaven not from hell finds friends everywhere.
MCP: A complete transition to renewable energy will require different infrastructure, a green grid. Talk about the challenges there.
BM: It will be built incrementally as solar and wind resources go up; the rapid fall in battery prices is quickly changing potential grid architectures, and eliminating the need for fossil backup. Right now there’s huge possibility for the rapid consolidation of “virtual power plants” composed of homeowner’s panels and batteries. In at least one state this VPP is already the biggest single generation source.
MCP: A number of leading fossil-fuel companies recently announced plans to continue and even step up oil exploration in future decades, a move done with the tacit approval of the Biden administration. This is future oil that can’t be burned, if we hope to have a habitable planet for future generations. What is the appropriate practical and political response to this?
BM: Appropriate? Criminal prosecution. Likely? A constant ongoing fight to sap their political power, made easier by the ongoing financial competition from renewable energy.
MCP: We have a presidential election looming. One of the leading candidates is someone who might charitably be described as a “climate denier,” among many other things. Other Republican contenders seem hostile to climate action as well. How do you see the election shaping up, especially as it relates to the future of the planet?
BM: If the GOP wins, we get at least a four-year pause in progress, not just here but around the world. This election could cost us our democracy and our planet.
MCP: Our audience is principally architects, designers, planners, and policy people, some of whom have been active in the green-building movement for years. What should they do now, on both a professional and personal level?
BM: You know better than me on a professional level. On a personal level, we need people to be, aside from their professions, active citizens. That mostly happens on nights and weekends.
MCP: So many of these challenges and solutions seem so complex and so deeply ingrained, with enormously wealthy forces committed to the status quo, that individuals can often feel powerless. How can we effect change on an individual level?
BM: I’m glad I’ve got solar panels all over the roof, and that they connect to an EV in the garage, but I don’t try to fool myself that that’s how we’ll solve this crisis. The math isn’t going to square one Tesla at a time, not in the few years we have left. So the most important thing an individual can do is be less of an individual, and join together with others in movements large enough to change the basic economic and political ground rules. That’s why we build organizations like 350.org or Third Act—to leverage our joint power.
MCP: A personal question: You’ve been writing and speaking about the climate crisis for more than three decades. How do you maintain hope? How do you not succumb to a kind of climate despair?
BM: I get out in the woods every day and remind myself it’s still a beautiful planet despite all we’ve done to it!
