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Bill McKibben warned about global warming in 1989. In January he started www.stepitup07.org, a movement to organize rallies in hundreds of American towns and cities to take place April 14. (Globe Staff Photo / Michele McDonald)

Early critic of warming steps up activist role

By John Donnelly, Globe Staff  |  March 19, 2007

HANOVER, N.H. -- The Dartmouth College crowd filled one auditorium on a cold afternoon this month, and spilled into a second with a big screen. The draw was Bill McKibben, one of the country's leading environmental writers and activists, who was talking about the perils of global warming.

But after the audience applauded his call to build a climate-change movement, one supporter challenged him.

"We're preaching to the converted here," said Kevin Peterson , 46, a program officer at the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. "How do you get to the other 95 percent of the folks who drive SUVs and couldn't care less?"

The question framed one of the most difficult issues for McKibben and other environmentalists now rallying to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are gradually warming the earth. Global warming remains an orphan cause, not yet attracting the swell of protesters who have gathered to protest wars in the past.

"Only if the choir sings five times louder is there any chance we'll get" federal legislation to help stop global warming, McKibben told the Dartmouth audience. "It's important now to get everyone in the choir to sing at the top of their lungs."

His timing may be right: Congress is considering more than a dozen global warming bills, Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" just won an Oscar, two global oil companies are investing in wind energy, and several corporations are backing legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

A youthful-looking 46, McKibben was among the first to sound the alarm about global warming in 1989 with "The End of Nature." But after that book and nine others, he no longer seems content with just issuing warnings. He wants to lead people into action.

McKibben, along with five Middlebury College graduates and a current Middlebury student, are organizing a one-day extravaganza on April 14 , Earth Day, called Step It Up. Their goal is to stage more than 1,000 global warming-related events in the 50 states; by late last week, the Internet-powered movement had counted 937 events around the country.

"We've got to have more people working on this issue," McKibben said before the speech at Dartmouth. "We've heard the science, the economics, even the policy proposals. The only part of the movement we haven't had is the movement itself. We've wasted 20 years."

No global warming event on the scale of Step It Up has ever occurred. The closest example, according to McKibben, is a five-day walk he helped organize last summer from outside Middlebury, Vt., to Burlington, which by its last day had gathered 1,000 participants.

The Step it Up activities will highlight the dangers of a rapidly warming earth, including ski mountaineers in Wyoming descending the shrinking Dinwoody Glacier ; demonstrators painting a blue line through downtown Seattle to illustrate how far the rising seas could penetrate; and Vermonters hauling sap from a maple sugar bush that is producing much earlier than usual.

Similar events are underway: an Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue began Friday in a snowstorm in Northampton, Mass. McKibben spoke at the beginning of the walk, which will end in Boston on March 24.

Organizers hope at least 1,000 people will gather for a rally at Copley Square in Boston. On April 9, musician Sheryl Crow and Laurie David , the Hollywood producer of "An Inconvenient Truth," will begin a 12-city campus tour.

McKibben's lifework can be traced back to high school in Lexington. His late father, Gordon , was a journalist for The Boston Globe , and McKibben also took up the profession, writing sports stories for the Lexington Minuteman. He later joined his school's debate team and became a state champion.

Studying at Harvard, he became editor of the Harvard Crimson, and landed a plum journalism job, writing "Talk of the Town" items for The New Yorker, after graduation.

McKibben has been writing magazine articles and books ever since, including the just-published "Deep Economy," a hopeful manifesto that encourages communities and regions to produce their food and energy. Many of his books are organized around arguing a central point or theme, a skilled debater's tactic.

Speaking to the Dartmouth gathering, McKibben acknowledged that his skill with words doesn't necessarily help him lead an environmental movement. "I'm a writer," he told the audience. "I like to spend time in my room writing."

These days, McKibben is flying around the country, rallying people. This week, he will visit Berkeley, Calif.; San Francisco; Seattle; and Hamilton, Mont. Next week, it's Madison, Wis.; Milwaukee; Minneapolis; and Pasadena, Calif.

"He has gone from sitting in his room writing to standing in front of a crowd, trying to use his abilities and knowledge to bring people along with him in an almost physical way," said his wife, writer Sue Halpern. "The sense of urgency he feels now about climate in particular makes him feel he needs to go out and shout from the mountaintop and street corner, and see that it has an impact."

McKibben's lifestyle and his home, which is situated on land once owned by Robert Frost, is a testament to his commitment. The house is powered in part by solar panels, he drives a hybrid car, and the family once committed to eating only locally produced foods -- which activists say is a way to avoid commercial agriculture businesses, which use environmentally damaging chemicals and techniques.

This month, on a rare day off, he indulged his love of Nordic skiing and participated in a 50-kilometer ski race around the northern half of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. "It was wonderful," McKibben said.

"If he didn't particularly love winter, the specter of global warming might not have cut him as deeply to the core as it has," Halpern said. "If you say the word ski to our dog, he does 360 [spins] in anticipation. The same thing practically happens with Bill. The idea that winter is disappearing is so fundamentally disturbing to him."

At the end of his talk at Dartmouth, McKibben met with a group of 15 people who were planning a local Step it Up activity around Hanover.

Bethany Fleishman , 26, who works at Dartmouth Medical School's toxic metals research program , told him she was "worried that the whole thing would be a series of photo ops." Others said they wanted the effort to lead to something lasting.

McKibben told them to make sure they had "good press locally" and to invite all local legislators. "Besiege their offices with invitations," he said.

He described how each event around the country would send in photos, which would be posted online at stepitup2007.org . Then he laughed. He was sounding quite organized.

"Things are slightly out of control," he said. "In a nice way."

John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com.