Bill McKibben visits Portland's Natural Capital Center.

Prolific writer and social critic Bill McKibben visited Portland recently as part of the Illahee  lecture series. He caught up later with SIJ by e-mail to answer a few questions about his work.

SIJ: You live 12 miles from the nearest town, according to your bio, and you seem to travel quite a bit for your work. As someone deeply concerned about climate change, how do you minimize the impacts of your travel? 

McKibben: Good question, and a constant concern. I travel as little as possible consistent with spreading the news about carbon; i.e., I try to assess whether I'll talk to enough people with a persuasive enough message to make the whole trip a net carbon-reducer. But who knows? I also purchase carbon offsets for my travel, easy to do over the Web. See, for instance, the Better World Club.  

SIJ: What are your thoughts on carbon offsets? Do you think they do or will make a difference?

McKibben: I think they're a start. I think we'd do better to reduce unnecessary travel, something made easier by the advent of new technologies. I also think that a very good place to vacation is near your home — see my new book, "Wandering Home," which is about a three-week backpack across the dirt roads that lead from my back door.  

SIJ: You've written a lot about the media and advertising and use of nature in the media. What are your thoughts about ways companies can responsibly promote their 'green' side, given your criticism of ad campaigns and consumerism?  

McKibben: Not a subject I've given an enormous amount of thought too. Chevron and so forth have really made this difficult by polluting the field of green advertising, as it were — you would read their ads and think they were basically seal protection agencies that happened to drill a bit of oil on the side. I think if companies are really green, then they can tell the story in enough detail to make it clear that they're not like their competitors. 

SIJ:  Do you think there is a place for green advertising and the like in ... addressing climate change? 

McKibben: I may not be the right person to ask. I really dislike advertising and the whole creation of false needs. But if people can explain why what they are doing is different and helpful, that strikes me as fine. If you mean, like, public service ads for fighting global warming, I suppose it can't hurt. I still remember the tearful Indian.

SIJ: Has it been your work in climate change that has led you to advocate for local food/economic systems? Additionally, if you see local systems and community growth as being the key step towards a more livable future, how do we get there? 

McKibben: They're some of the key steps — no silver bullets in this game. It was my work with climate that made me first suspect scale was the deep problem, and I've become more convinced over the years. This is one area where consumer demand can help. So could government policy — real carbon taxes, subsidies for rebuilding local infrastructure, etc.  But as long as our government is a subsidiary of Archer Daniels Midland, don't hold your breath. Much of this work will have to be done on the ground — and is being done. Check out the impressive numbers on farmers market growth, etc.  

SIJ: What are some of the other steps we need to see taken?

McKibben: Well, that's what I'm writing a good deal about at the moment: energy, fiber, timber, culture (like, say, broadcasting), housing (say, co-housing versus endless suburbia). 

SIJ: What’s the framework for the project? 

McKibben: It’s a book about what comes after globalization. I think we've spent the last 100 years extending supply lines, and we'll spend the next 100 pulling them back in.  

SIJ: In a similar vein, you’re one of the champions of the idea that we as a species have got to start doing and using less — localness and community is part of that — and you seem to be largely skeptical that business can be part of that. Why?

McKibben: It seems to me that we'll need an army of creative entrepreneurs and small businesses to revive local places. Can't we focus on creating a culture shift in business? Sure. I'm a big fan of just this sort of work. Check out, for instance, the piece I did on the Farmers Diner in Barre, Vt., a couple of yeas ago for Harpers. I'm skeptical that big corporations will play a major role, and I'm also skeptical that people demanding a 15 percent ROI [return on investment] will help very much. My sense is that most of those kind of gains come from some form of exploitation, either of the human or natural world, especially the use of cheap fossil energy.    

SIJ: What makes you skeptical that big corporations will play a major role? Don't they already play a major role in our environmental impact ...?

McKibben: I think they’re likely to be followers rather than leaders on these issues, because their instincts, and especially capital investment, are more thoroughly tied to the status quo. Happy to be proven wrong.  

SIJ: It seems that, in the United States, leadership on global warming is coming from the business community rather than leaders in government — pension fund investors demanding reporting of climate change/carbon risk management plans, voluntary offsets and organizations like the Climate Neutral Network, green tags and the growing carbon trading market. What are your thoughts on this?  

McKibben: I think there's something to it. See in particular the work of Ceres and Bob Massie in Boston. It's mostly reactive, but that's a lot better than nothing.  

SIJ: Can you talk more about this? What do you see as its limitations?

McKibben: Only that so far they're responding to outside pressure about a crisis, not sensing the real potential for new ways of doing things. But that's hard, because the best of those new ways are different in scale and more decentralized, both of which are challenging to the corporate model and especially its insistence on infinite growth.

SIJ: I'm also interested to hear your thoughts on events, like the one where we met, where people seem to feel pretty hopeless about connecting with people "outside the choir," so to speak. What has been your experience with your audiences and the environmental community?

McKibben: Choirs can grow.  

SIJ: How?  

McKiben: Books, talks, articles, political campaigns, demonstration projects.  

SIJ:  So what are some of the solutions you're talking about with people in the next month?

McKibben: Right now I'm deeply interested in these questions of local economies. So that's what I'm working on in my home place and in a larger sense as well.