William Ernest McKibben (born December 8, 1960) is an American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written many books about the effects of global warming. He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and leads the climate campaign groups 350.org and the Third Act Movement. He has written 12 books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature (1989), which discusses climate change, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (2019), and Here Comes the Sun (2025), which describes the environmental challenges facing humanity and future possibilities.

In 2009, he organized 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries at the same time. In 2010, McKibben and 350.org helped create the 10/10/10 Global Work Party, which had over 7,000 events in 188 countries. In December 2010, 350.org coordinated a large art project with 20 pieces that can be seen from space. In 2011 and 2012, he led a campaign against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project and spent three days in jail in Washington, D.C. Two weeks later, he was added to the literature section of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2013, he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Award. In 2009, Foreign Policy magazine listed him as one of the 100 most important global thinkers. In 2009, MSN named him one of the 12 most influential men. In 2010, The Boston Globe called him "probably the nation's leading environmentalist," and Time magazine book reviewer Bryan Walsh described him as "the world's best green journalist." In 2014, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for helping increase public support in the United States and around the world for strong action to address global climate change. He has been mentioned as a possible future Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of Energy if a progressive president is elected.

Early life

Bill McKibben was born in Palo Alto, California. His family later moved to Lexington, Massachusetts, where he attended high school. His father, who was arrested in 1971 during a protest supporting Vietnam veterans against the war, worked as a writer for Business Week before becoming the business editor at The Boston Globe in 1980. As a high school student, McKibben wrote for the local newspaper and took part in statewide debate competitions. He entered Harvard College in 1978, became an editor of The Harvard Crimson, and was chosen as president of the paper for the calendar year 1981.

In 1980, after the election of Ronald Reagan, McKibben decided to dedicate his life to environmental causes. He graduated from Harvard in 1982 and worked for five years as a staff writer at The New Yorker, writing most of the Talk of the Town column from 1982 to early 1987. Inspired by the Gospel of Matthew, he became an advocate for nonviolent resistance. While working on a story about the homeless, he lived on the streets, where he met his wife, Sue Halpern, who was also a homeless advocate. In 1987, McKibben left The New Yorker after longtime editor William Shawn was forced to leave his job. Soon after, he and his family moved to a remote area in the Southeastern Adirondacks of upstate New York, where he began working as a freelance writer.

Writing

Bill McKibben started his career as a freelance writer around the same time climate change became a topic of public discussion. This happened after a very hot summer and wildfires in 1988, and after James Hansen gave a speech to the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in June of that year. His first work on climate change was a short list of books and an article published in December 1988 in The New York Review of Books, along with the question, "Is the World Getting Hotter?"

He has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper's, Orion, Mother Jones, The American Prospect, The New York Review of Books, Granta, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Adbusters, and Outside. He also serves on the board of Grist and contributes to it.

His first book, The End of Nature, was published in 1989 by Random House. It was first published in The New Yorker as a series of articles. Ray Murphy of the Boston Globe called the book a "righteous jeremiad," meaning a strongly worded critique. The book sparked a lot of discussion, both positive and negative, and introduced many people to the topic of climate change. It has been translated into more than 20 languages, and several editions have been published in the United States, including an updated version in 2006.

In 1992, he published The Age of Missing Information. This book describes an experiment where McKibben recorded everything shown on 100 cable TV channels in Fairfax, Virginia, for one day. He watched 2,400 hours of programming over a year and compared it to a day spent on a mountain near his home. The book is widely used in schools and was reissued in a new edition in 2006.

Other books include Hope, Human and Wild, which discusses cities in Brazil and India where people live with less impact on the environment; The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation, which connects the story of Job from the Bible to environmental issues; Maybe One, about human population; Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously, which describes training for endurance events; and Enough, which discusses risks from genetic engineering and nanotechnology. At a speaking event, McKibben mentioned the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and the idea of "flow" to describe his experiences during training.

Wandering Home describes a long solo hike from his home in Vermont back to his neighborhood in the Adirondacks. His book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, published in 2007, became a national bestseller. It discusses problems with the current economic system and suggests a shift to more local businesses.

In fall 2007, he co-authored Fight Global Warming Now, a guide for activists. In 2008, he published The Bill McKibben Reader, a collection of his essays, and edited American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau for the Library of America. In 2010, he released Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, which describes the fast pace of climate change. It was featured in Scientific American.

In 2019, he published Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, which discusses growing concerns about climate change, the role of the Koch Brothers in increasing carbon emissions, and his views on libertarianism and the Nordic model. In 2022, he published two books: We Are Better Together, a children’s picture book about cooperation, and The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon, a personal memoir that reflects on America’s history and environmental challenges.

An article he wrote for Rolling Stone in 2012 received over 125,000 likes on Facebook, 14,000 tweets, and 5,000 comments. In 2024, he was the guest editor of The Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology.

Environmental campaigns

Step It Up 2007 was a national environmental campaign organized by Bill McKibben to urge the U.S. Congress to take action on global warming. In late summer 2006, McKibben helped lead a five-day walk across Vermont to call for action on global warming. In January 2007, he started Step It Up 2007, which planned rallies in hundreds of American cities and towns on April 14, 2007. These rallies asked Congress to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. The campaign gained support from many environmental, student, and religious groups.

In August 2007, McKibben announced Step It Up 2, which took place on November 3, 2007. This campaign included the same 80% by 2050 goal as the first campaign, plus new demands: a 10% reduction in emissions within three years, a ban on new coal-fired power plants, and a Green Jobs Corps to help homes and businesses meet emission targets.

After Step It Up’s success, the same team launched a new campaign in March 2008 called 350.org. This global effort was named after a statement by climate scientist James E. Hansen, who said that keeping carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels below 350 parts per million (ppm) is necessary to protect Earth’s climate. At the time, CO₂ levels were 385 ppm.

350.org, which has offices in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America, promoted the 350 ppm goal before international climate meetings in Copenhagen in December 2009. On October 24, 2009, the group organized over 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries. Media outlets praised the campaign for using internet tools creatively.

In 2010, 350.org held the Global Work Party on October 10. As of 2022, Bill McKibben is a senior advisor to 350.org, and May Boeve is its executive director.

McKibben opposes the proposed Canadian-U.S. Keystone XL pipeline project. In 2014, he wrote an article titled “A Call to Arms” for Rolling Stone magazine, encouraging people to join a major climate march in New York City in September 2014. He called climate change “the biggest crisis our civilization has ever faced.”

In 2015, McKibben led a similar climate march in Toronto, Ontario, with support from celebrities. In 2021, he started Third Act, a campaign for climate activists aged 60 or older, to use their time and resources to influence government action. Supporters like Bernie Sanders and Jane Fonda helped promote the group.

During the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, McKibben supported Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders appointed him to a committee that wrote the Democratic Party’s platform for 2016. After Sanders lost the nomination, McKibben supported Hillary Clinton and spoke at their first joint event.

In 2020, McKibben gave a keynote speech at 2020 Vision: Finding Hope in Climate Action. In 2024, he worked with Climate Words, a nonprofit focused on improving climate communication, to explain the significance of the term “3.5%.” This term refers to research by Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who found that if about 3.5% of the global population (around 280 million people) peacefully protest, they are likely to create meaningful change.

Views

In 2016, McKibben wrote in The New York Times that he is "under surveillance" by "right-wing stalkers" who take photos, follow him, and ask questions about him and his family. These people are looking for alleged examples of environmental hypocrisy. "I'm being watched," he said. Two years later, he wrote in The Times that he had been receiving death threats since the 1990s.

In December 2019, McKibben joined 42 other well-known cultural figures in signing a letter that supported the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership during the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election plan under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership focuses on helping people and the environment instead of private profit and the interests of a few."

Personal life

Bill McKibben lives in Ripton, Vermont, with his wife, Sue Halpern, who is a writer. Their only child, a daughter, was born in 1993 in Glens Falls, New York. He is a Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, where he also leads the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism. McKibben is also a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. He has been a member of the Methodist Church for many years. Since 2013, McKibben has served on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education.

Awards

• McKibben received both a Guggenheim Fellowship (1993) and a Lyndhurst Fellowship.
• He received a Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction writing in 2000.
• In 2010, Utne Reader magazine named McKibben one of the "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World."
• He has received honorary degrees from Whittier College (2010), Marlboro College, Colgate University, the State University of New York, Sterling College, Green Mountain College, Unity College, and Lebanon Valley College.
• He received the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship in 2010 for his work with 350.org.
• McKibben was awarded the John Muir Award, the highest honor given by the Sierra Club, in 2011.
• In 2012, he received the Sam Rose and Julie Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism at Dickinson College. When accepting the prize, he told graduating students that global climate change is not only the greatest problem they will face but also the greatest challenge ever faced by humans.
• In 2013, he received the international environment and development prize, the Sophie Prize.
• McKibben and 350.org were awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2014 for helping to build public support in the United States and around the world for strong action to address global climate change.
• In 2018, McKibben received the John Steinbeck Award at San Jose State University.

Filmography

• McKibben, Bill (June 18, 2010). "Point of Inquiry – Our Strange New Eaarth." Point of Inquiry. Accessed January 15, 2017.
• McKibben, Bill (March 24, 2012). "The rise of public radio in the US." Saturday Extra. Australia's ABC Radio National. Accessed July 14, 2012.
• "Democracy Now! Special 3-Hour Broadcast of the People's Climate March." Democracy Now! September 21, 2014.

• Do The Math (2013), a 42-minute documentary written and directed by Kelly Nyks and Jared Scott about ending the use of fossil fuels and removing investments from fossil fuel industries, featuring him.