Reflecting on Q Conference – Session 2 – Post 3

Environmentalist, Bill McKibben – “More vs. Better”

He wrote the book The End of Nature which is considered an important contribution in this discussion and now considered ahead of its time. He has a new book Deep Economy is out now – took time and lived off the fruit of local farm.

His first argument was from science:

– “How can we have grown large enough as a species to affect the planet?”

– “Science went to work on that issue.”

– We dramatically underestimated the pace of our growth

– The earth is more finely balanced then we thought …

– There were 275 parts/million of CO2 in atmosphere before the Industrial Revolution.

– We now have 385 parts/million of CO2 in atmosphere after the IR.  And we need to get it down to 350 parts/million of CO2 immediately. He said James Hansen, “greatest climatologist in the world”, endorsed this.

In his second point entitled, “Argument from Hebrew Bible”, he said:

 “4% of world population (us) produces 25% of CO2 …

– “We are not the good samaritan, we’re not even the levite.  We’re the suv driver that backs up to run over the pediastrian.”

            – “We are not loving our neighbors, we are drowning our neighbors” – (what a line).

He endorsed the Evangelical Climate Document and urged everyone to check out www.350.org which is an effort to build first global grassroots, open sourced plan to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.  It’s a great site, they talk about the Q Conference and there’s a ton of stats and other necessary info. Also, 350 calls for a rise of artists, all types of speakers, and peaceful protests.

When I say he “pleaded”, I don’t want to make him out to sound whiney.  He wasn’t at all.  I would tell you he was more angry.  I was happy to see Q have him.

This is something I need to work on.  I have been and have been making some progress but I survey my lifestyle and am convicted.  I’ll probably blog more about this later but I wanted to post something today and wanted to get these names and sites out.