Radical Bill McKibben - America’s Leading Environmentalist
by Liberato.US
September 2017

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Part 1:  Reach and Influence
Part 2:  Radical Connections
Part 3:  Radical Beliefs
Part 4:  Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man?

McKibben in the News
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Part 1:
Reach and Influence

From Wikipedia -  
Part 2:
Radical Connections

McKibben 350.org (led by McKibben)  
Part 3:
Radical Beliefs

From Discover the Networks:
  • Believes that American “hyper-individualism” and consumerism corrupt both the environment and humanity
  • Promotes the notion that anthropogenic global warming will result in environmental catastrophe
  • numerous books predicated on global-warming alarmism
  • embraced radical Biblical interpretations which construe environmentalism as a Christian mandate.
  • McKibben: “My leftism grew more righteous in college, but still there was something pro forma about it. Being white, male, straight, and of impeccably middle-class background, I could not realistically claim to be a victim of anything. Not for lack of trying—in one short but loony phase, I convinced myself that I was Irish-American and wore black armbands when Bobby Sands and his IRA companions starved themselves to death [in a hunger strike].”
  • First book The End of Nature (1989) - Emphasizing the threat of an imminent global-warming catastrophe, the book suggested that the earth was headed for environmental destruction as a result of human industrial activity. The only hope for preventing such a calamity, said the book, would be to implement far-reaching intergovernmental regulations and to dramatically alter the polluting lifestyles of Western cultures.
  • 1999 book Maybe One: A Case for Smaller Families, in which he argued that one-child families were ethically superior to their larger counterparts because the existing rate of human population growth was detrimental to the environment.
  • Much of McKibben’s writing extols the virtues of “de-development.” In the author's view, mankind's ever-increasing technological and industrial progress corrupts both human nature and the natural environment. For instance, in his 2003 book Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, McKibben wrote: “They’ll lead us ... toward the revolutionary idea that we’ve grown about as powerful as it’s wise to grow; that the rush of technological innovation that’s marked the last five hundred years can finally slow ..
  • McKibben's 2007 book Deep Economy, and his 2010 book Eaarth: A Guide to Living on a Fundamentally Altered Planet, both delivered the author's characteristically anti-economic growth, anti-technology message advocating the “controlled decline” of modern industry.
  • [As distilled by Stanley Kurtz] – McKibben advocates “a large-scale return to the land. Labor-intensive (rather than carbon-intensive) agriculture would form the nucleus of a new, quasi-peasant society. Relatively self-sufficient local farming communities would be protected not only from global warming, but from capitalism’s cycles of boom and bust.... Americans would consume pretty much only locally grown food.... Food would cost more, choice would be drastically reduced, and putting meals together would take a great deal more effort than it does today.”
  • Identifying the United States as the world's chief polluter, McKibben attributes that vice to a combination of American “materialism” and “hyperindividualism”—i.e., people's desire to live in large houses situated far from densely populated areas. In McKibben's view, European-style collectivization is not only more environmentally friendly than capitalism, but is also more conducive to human happiness.
  • July 2012 article in Rolling Stone, titled “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” - McKibben stated that the earth's environment could only be saved if average temperatures worldwide could be limited to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above where they had stood at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. And this goal, said McKibben, would require mankind to leave at least 80% of the planet's known oil, coal, and gas reserves permanently buried and untapped.
  • Advocates steeply escalating carbon taxes. Emphasizing that the implementation of such measures is a matter of great urgency, McKibben warns that “our whole civilization stands on the edge of collapse.”

From elsewhere:
  • “We are currently losing the battle for a livable planet.”
    https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/fighting-battle-livable-planet/
  • People should only have one child to ensure a healthy planet. 
    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238641.Maybe_One
  • In his 2011 book Eaarth, McKibben advocates cutting fossil fuel use 95%, according to energy commentator Alex Epstein. In a 2012 debate with McKibben, Epstein said: Making fossil fuels essentially illegal would be a massive incursion on liberty and ruin billions of lives around the world. It would be suicidal. McKibben is not being upfront on what this would do to your life: your food costs, the factories that opened on cheap natural gas, etc.  What would government policies curtailing all these things back 95% actually look like, Epstein asks.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_a9RP0J7PA   
  • Editor’s Note: McKibben’s book Deep Economy (2008) sets forth in more detail his not-very-original critique of modernity and the consumer economy.  “[G]rowth no longer makes us happier,” McKibben wrote in a 2007 Mother Jones piece, “Our houses are bigger than ever and stuffed to the rafters with belongings…”  We have all the modern conveniences, but “none of it appears to have made us happier”.  He attacks individualism along the way: “We left behind hundreds of thousands of years of human community….” “If we’re so rich, how come we’re so damn miserable?,” he asks.  Speak for yourself, McKibben.  A rising standard of living was never meant to provide all of human happiness and the entire meaning of one’s life.  That comes from family, friends, personal associations, religion, and other non-material factors.  The real problem with McKibben’s anti-consumerism sentiments is that they are now articles of faith among the greenarati.  This writer attended a left-wing Congressman’s town hall on global warming some years ago (Car Dealer Congressman…) .  The audience members were congregants in the High Church of Climatology, a church McKibben helped to build.  One lamented during the Q&A that it was a nice presentation, but everybody would just climb back into their cars and go back to their oversized houses afterwards.  Guilt is a wonderful thing, environmentalist leaders must be thinking, a powerful motivator to keep the faithful in the fold.  McKibben’s answer to all this modern misery and existential ennui, as laid out in Deep Economy – localized economies “with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment.”  A return to cottage industry and small-town life.  America has seen a long parade of social critics pleading for just such a retreat from modernity.  Henry Ford, call your office.
 
Part 4:
Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man?

 
More on 350.org (led by McKibben)

Funding Tax Form 990 for 2015
  • 39 employees, 5,000 volunteers, paid $2,961,750 in salaries
  • $5,137,543.00  in total assets
  • received $11,233,864 in contributions and grants
  • investment losses of  $6,540 [Editor’s Query – Does 350.org have any investments in fossil fuel companies (making them hypocrites) or green energy (this would pose a conflict of interest)?
  • engages in lobbying. Schedule C p2 reports total lobbying expenditures of $18,598
  • reports a ‘Strategy’ expense of $818,698.  [Editor’s Note – I’ve looked at a lot of 990s and have never seen this before.  It’s peculiar.  What are they hiding?]
  • Schedule D, p3 – holds financial derivatives and closely held equity interests, but no amounts provided
  • Schedule M – received 38 contributions of publicly traded securities
  • http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/261/261150699/261150699_201509_990.pdf
 
McKibben In the News