In this program, environmentalist and author Bill McKibben does not soften the reality of climate change.
“Look, the things that we warned about in the 1980s, they’ve all pretty much happened now. We’ve watched the climate crisis play out more or less as we thought it would, in fact, a little faster and a little harder.”
In conversation with Marco Werman, host of The World, McKibben points to extreme heat, fires, floods, melting ice, and changing ocean currents as evidence of a crisis unfolding in real time. He also links climate action to a broader political challenge, arguing that meaningful progress becomes harder when democratic systems are under strain.
But the conversation is not only about what is going wrong. McKibben points to the rapid rise of clean energy as a major reason for hope. Solar and wind power, once treated as “alternative energy,” have become practical and increasingly affordable ways to power the future. He describes China’s rapid deployment of solar energy, California’s growing use of renewable electricity and batteries, and the spread of solar panels in Pakistan and across Africa.
As part of the Burke Lectureship, McKibben also brings the conversation back to moral and spiritual questions. He discusses the role of faith communities and frames climate work as a question of responsibility to one another and to the planet. He also highlights grassroots organizing, including 350.org, the fossil fuel divestment movement, and Third Act’s effort to organize older Americans around climate and democracy. Clear-eyed but not defeated, McKibben presents climate change as a crisis that demands urgency, imagination, and collective action.