Climate Activism: 350.org

I just read about Bill McKibben, his climate activism movement and his website 350.org, one of the largest activism groups in the world. McKibben had been a climate science writer for decades before turning to activism and protests, citing that pointing at facts is useless in the face of big corporation money. His organization staged some of the largest worldwide protests ever.

While I am excited to see such a huge organized party and their attention-garnering efforts, the objective the group is pushing for, the shutdown of the Keystone XL, seems a moot point. Why is the largest climate activism group uniting its efforts to stop, albeit temporarily, the erection of a pipeline? That seems to be a very specific and insignificant figure in the grand scheme of climate change. Sure, they claim that if these Albertan tar sands are extracted and processed, the carbon footprint would put us over the limit. But what is the “limit”? And wouldn’t many other sources of emission push us over this limit anyway? The Canadians have already declared that they would just sell the petroleum to other eager countries if the pipeline were canceled. 350.org advocates for 350ppm of carbon dioxide, hence its name. We are currently at 392ppm and climbing. I can’t help but think that McKibben’s organization is lost in the past.

The environmental and climate scene has changed much since twenty, even ten years ago. Twenty years ago, the Kyoto Protocol wasn’t even born. What these people don’t seem to understand is that tar sands will be sold, and so will be every last drop of gasoline, as long as someone, anyone, is offering good money for it. No amount of protestation will make people change their minds about profit. If you manage to convince one CEO or prime minister, another more ruthless and unscrupulous leader will take his place.

The solution I envision is to research and improve clean energy sources to outcompete fossil fuels.  I’m not condemning the actions of 350.org. I think it’s great to have this many people committed to a sustainable planet, but the reality of today is that they need to encourage progress instead of preventing unsustainable behavior. People learn most not from criticism, but judicious encouragement. If I were part of this group, I would advocate solar, solarthermal and geothermal development instead of trying to erase our fossil fuel past.

We’ve already moved past 350, McKibben. The only way is forward.

350.org