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Environmental Speaker Promotes Localized ActionBy Jen Thomas - November 09, 2007
 | | Writer Bill McKibben addressed several hundred students and community members on Thursday night at MCLA. |
NORTH ADAMS - Environmentalist writer and former journalist Bill McKibben wants to help you change the world - right from your own back yard.
"We need to have an impact as strong and as deep as the civil rights movement," said McKibben on Thursday night in the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' Church Street Center.
In a talk based on his most recent book, "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future," published last March, McKibben challenged hundreds of students and community members to take action in facing what he called "the biggest thing humans have ever done by far."
The nation must reduce carbon-dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2050, no questions asked, said McKibben. And, the only way to hit that target successfully is to bring together communities to facilitate localized change.
"I want to question whether the default opinion of modern American life - that growth is always good - is true or not," said McKibben, noting that the Western way of life had gone from the little house on the prairie to the "oversized house on the cul-de-sac."
"The level of our wants is causing us a great deal of trouble," he added.
With an increasing loss of community in American culture, coupled with a sense of detachment from our surrounding environment, many people are beginning to question whether affluence truly can buy happiness. Citing statistics from economist and Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman, McKibben stated that the number of Americans who say they are "very happy" with their lives barely reaches the 25 percent mark, even though the nation's wealth has been steadily increasing.
"It's all so grim and melancholy," he said.
The key to reversing a trend of isolation and environmental negligence, according to McKibben, is banding together in communities to effect change or place political pressure on lawmakers.
In January, McKibben and six Middlebury (Vt.) College students launched www.stepitup2007.org, a Web site designed to help others around the country organize rallies in their municipalities, urging Congress to enact legislation to cut emissions. More than 1,400 communities, including Williamstown and Lenox, participated in the demonstrations, paving the way for the Step It Up organizers to develop another round of rallies on Nov. 3, this time aimed at gaining political backing.
Approximately a sixth of Congress spoke at the nationwide rallies last weekend, proving that thinking globally and acting locally can make a difference, said McKibben.
"That's powerful and it would have been radical a year ago," he said. "There's no substitute for taking political action."
As fears about rising sea levels and other detrimental effects of climate change come to the public forefront, McKibben said it's important for everyone to get involved in saving the planet.
"Sometimes, hippies like me start things but evangelical churches and chambers of commerce and editorial boards of newspapers and college sororities finish things," he said.
McKibben also said building connections - doing something as simple as going to a farmers' market instead of the supermarket - would greatly impact the quality of life in this country.
"We need a whole different social experience. This issue is becoming the lens through which we'll examine the world in the future and I'm not 100 percent sure it'll come out OK. It's going to be a very interesting, very compelling and very urgent next decade as we grapple with this."
And college students are a crucial element in facilitating a new future, said McKibben.
"Colleges and universities are where this work needs to begin. It's where there is the most access to recent and compelling data," he said. "There's a challenge ahead of us and it could all go very badly but it's a challenge we are capable of undertaking."
Part of the college's Hardman Lecture Series, McKibben's talk was the culmination of weeklong events at MCLA to raise awareness about new green initiatives in place on the campus. President Mary K. Grant, who signed onto a resolution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at MCLA this summer, said she could relate to the emphasis on community that McKibben promoted.
"We just can't sit back and let this happen," she said.
For student Maarten Pellegrini, McKibben's speech reaffirmed his commitment to environmental sustainability.
"He was right to say we need to get together to make change and create political will. Everything he said was totally valuable," he said.
Pellegrini, who is working on developing his own closed system of recycling and reusing biofuels, said real change must begin at home.
"It's important to look in your own back yard and say 'What can I do?'" he said.
The Hardman Lecture Series will welcome Mariane Pearl, widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, on March 5. |
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