Bill McKibben

Biden’s Most Daunting Adversary

130 Degrees

This is going to be a century of crises, many of them more dangerous than what we’re living through now.

Big Oil Runs Out of Gas

People used to worry that the fossil-fuel industry would hit “peak oil” and we’d run out of crude. It now seems far more likely that it’s going to run out of money instead.

A Very Hot Year

The warmth we’ve added to the atmosphere—the heat equivalent, each day, of 400,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs—is already producing truly dire effects, decades or even centuries ahead of schedule.

My Land, Your Land

The Pentagon’s Outsized Part in the Climate Fight

The Pentagon can play an outsized part in the climate fight—but only in part by cutting the amount of energy it uses. 

A Future Without Fossil Fuels?

At what point does a new technology cause an existing industry to start losing significant value?

The Nuclear Option

A Very Grim Forecast

On climate change, we’re running out of options, and we’re running out of decades.

Seeing Red? Think Blue

It’s both unfair and unwise to elect people, even very good ones, and then consider our part of the job done. If you think about it this way, it’s a little easier to swallow your hurt and disappointment when the DNC does stupid stuff. Elections are about electing people whom you can then push effectively to do more.

Where Are the Smartphones?

The Americans We Need

America is not just doing refugees a favor by letting them in. They’re doing America a favor by coming here—revitalizing our economy, sure, bringing new talent and energy and enterprise to every part of our society, but also helping shore up our culture at its weakest spots.

Pause! We Can Go Back!

David Sax’s ‘The Revenge of Analog’

The Koch Brothers’ New Brand

Jane Mayer’s ‘Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right’

Climate Change: A Warning from Islam

The real effect of documents like the recent Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, or Pope Francis’s encyclical, is less immediate policy shifts than a change in the emotional climate.

The Pope and the Planet

A sweeping, radical, and highly persuasive critique of how we inhabit this planet

The Cry of the Earth

Pope Francis may lack legions, but he has 6.3 million followers on Twitter, and for a week now the world has been following leaks of his new encyclical on climate change and the environment.

Climate: Will We Lose the Endgame?

The natural world is making it clear that the clock ticks down faster than we feared

What Would Thoreau Do?;

Collapse and Crash

Henry Petroski’s ‘To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure’