Q&A: Bill McKibben Talks About the Urgency to Tackle Climate Change

By Perla Trevizo, Houston Chronicle

12 September 19

 

ill McKibben is a renowned environmentalist and author, including a 1989 book “The End of Nature,” which is often touted as the first book on global warming written for a general audience.

McKibben will be in Houston on Sept. 15 to speak at The Progressives Forum, where he will also share the stage with Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner for a brief Q&A on climate change and planning at the local level.

McKibben is also co-founder of 350.org, an international organization that pushes for the end of dependence on fossil fuels and a transition to community-led renewable energy.

The Houston Chronicle spoke with McKibben ahead of his visit.

Q: What will climate change mean for a place such as greater Houston?

A: Climate change for Houstonians I think will mean the ever increased risk of catastrophic events. Being located next to the Gulf of Mexico means that you are in, as every Houstonian knows, in one of the most humid places in the world. But warm air holds more water vapors than cold, so the more we heat planet, the more water vapors that the air can hold and under the right conditions, as Houston found out, the Gulf can produce rain unlike almost anywhere in the world and my guess is that’s the greatest threat in next decade or so to Houston.

Q: Based on what you’ve seen so far, do you feel Harvey has changed minds over climate change?

A: There’s no question that Houstonians began to realize the scale of the crisis that we are facing. I mean 51 inches of water, I can even hardly imagine what that looks like or feels like, and I know everyone who went through it in Houston has now a kind of visceral sense of how the world has begun to change. Now, it’s very hard, of course, for a city that’s at the absolute center of the fossil fuel machine to begin to shift, but it’s really important that the city that is at the center of everything like that begins to shift.

Q: The City of Houston recently unveiled a draft of its Climate Action Plan, from what you can see, what are some of its strengths, some of its weaknesses?

A: I haven’t reviewed it closely … but I think at this point, any acknowledgment of the crisis that we are in and the short time we have to deal with it, is extremely useful. A big part of our problem and this is the reason I get mad at the oil industry, is that we wasted 30 years because of their intrinsic opposition to doing anything when we should have been at work.

What that means is that we now have to move unfortunately much more quickly than is comfortable economically, politically, culturally and anything else. So the challenge now is, a, moving fast enough to catch up with physics and, b, doing it in a way that safeguards the interest of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society.

Q: What has to be key in order for a city’s climate action plan to be deemed successful?

Scientists have given us pretty firm dates now. If we are not dramatically moving off fossil fuels by 2030 and finish the job by 2050, then we do not get to meet any of the targets that we’ve set in places like Paris. So rapid action is now crucial and rapid action towards 100 percent renewable energy.

Texas is lucky. Texas is blessed with great resources in both sun and wind … These things make it possible to imagine a Houston of a not-too-distant future where people, if they are still driving, they are using electric cars powered by wind and by the sun. And it’s not that these things are technologically beyond us at this point, they are not. Prices have plummeted. The question is are they politically beyond us at this point?

Q: What role can cities play, especially in today’s political environment?

A: Cities have become crucial because, obviously, in Washington nothing for the moment is going to happen. The president of the United States operates under the theory that climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese, so don’t look to Washington in the short term to provide leadership. But cities are providing leadership and in many ways. We are seeing lots of cities commit to 100 percent renewable energy, we are seeing lots of cities begin to sue the oil industry for its deceptions and prevarications and we are seeing lots and lots of cities divest their holdings in fossil fuel stock as a way to put some pressure on this industry to finally change.

Q: You have called for an end to fossil fuels if we want to be serious about tackling climate change. In a place like Houston and Texas, how realistic is this goal?

A: Texas is uniquely positioned. It has lots of people who understand energy and it’s got lots of wind and it already produces more windpower I think than any state in the union. It’s an easy industry to ramp up, especially now that we’ve developed much cheaper batteries to store that energy. That’s what Texas should be doing. Instead, its politicians will doubtless try to fear monger about the price of making the switch so on and so forth. Anybody who lived through Harvey has some sense of the cost of not making this switch. Every economic analysis we’ve ever seen has shown that global warming, left unchecked, is endlessly more expensive than dealing with these transition to clean energy.

Q: What are some things that we can be doing to mitigate the impacts of climate change and how has that change over time?

A: Texans can do lots of things in their individual lives — we can be eating a little differently, driving a little differently, powering our homes a little differently, but at this point, the most important thing individuals can do is be a little less individual. Come together in the kind of movements that actually change politics, change the ground rules …This big global climate strike on Sept. 20 is a really good way to begin.