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The man who crushed the Keystone XL pipeline

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January 22, 2012|By Barbara Moran

(Page 7 of 9)

McKibben took a leap forward in 2007, when he and recent Middlebury College graduates created an organization called Step It Up to educate people about climate change. McKibben had moved his wife and daughter to Vermont several years earlier and Middlebury, which has the oldest environmental studies major in the United States, offered him a position as a scholar in residence. (He now has an endowed position.)

Working on campus, McKibben became interested in a student environmental organization called the Sunday Night Group. “Bill liked the group because it was ‘radically democratic,’ ” says Elder. People could join any time and propose new actions immediately. With a half dozen Sunday Nighters he formed Step It Up, which within three months had engineered 1,400 protests around the country to demand that Congress enact a strong climate bill. Later, the group morphed into 350.org, named for 350 parts per million, their target limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (that level is now around 390, and rising 2 parts per million every year).

The genius of 350.org is the idea of “dispersed activism.” Instead of trying to get 1,000 people to protest a coal plant in Montana, organizers ask people to participate in a “Day of Action” wherever they live. Participants do something green, hold a sign saying “350,” and take a picture or video. The resulting collage shows a massive worldwide protest. To create a splash, the 350.org team arranges media blitzes around the big days, renting out the Jumbotrons in Times Square, for instance, to show scenes from around the world.

On October 24, 2009, 350.org held its first Day of Action. There were 5,248 rallies in 181 countries, what Foreign Policy magazine called “the largest ever coordinated global rally of any kind” in history. The 2010 campaign broke that record. On October 10, tens of thousands of people participated in more than 7,400 events in 188 countries: Afghani students planted trees outside Kabul, people installed solar panels on the roof of a South African orphanage, and McKibben’s mother and other residents of her Bedford, Massachusetts, retirement village gathered for an excursion to the compost bins.