I've put together below some brief excerpts from Bill McKibben's current work, the first from his book Deep Economy (2008), a critique of the concept of economic growth and persuasive case for a new economic model based upon sustainable local economies. The second - in a sense the expression of need to which Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest offers at least an interim response - is drawn from an essay McKibben contributed to the current issue of Yes Magazine. Bill McKibben teaches at Middlebury College and is a much admired journalist whose writing focuses primarily upon environmental issues. One of his current movement-building projects, attentive particularly to global warming, is described at 1sky.org. He has also suggested need for a vision of generosity bearing similarity to the Marshall Plan concept of Michael Lerner and the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and intriguingly, to the Christopher Reynolds Foundation's early focus on the US and China.
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"The old realism—an endless More—is morphing into a dangerous fantasy…In the face of energy shortage, of global warming, and of the vague but growing sense that we are not as alive and connected as we want to be, I think we’ve started to grope for what might come next. And just in time… [T]he new, deeper economy will be built, in pieces and from below. It’s a quiet revolution begun by ordinary people with the stuff of our daily lives.”
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"We need a movement. We need a political swell larger than the civil rights movement—as passionate and as willing to sacrifice. Without it, we’re not going to best the fossil fuel companies and the automakers and the rest of the vested interests that are keeping us from change."
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"The kind of extreme independence that derived from cheap fossil fuel—the fact that we need our neighbors for nothing at all—can’t last. Either we build real community, of the kind that lets us embrace mass transit and local food and co-housing and you name it, or we will go down clinging to the wreckage of our privatized society.
"Which leaves us with the one piece of undeniably good news: we were built for community. Everything we know about human beings, from the state of our immune systems to the state of our psyches, testifies to our desire for real connection of just the kind that an advanced consumer society makes so difficult. We need that kind of community to slow down the environmental changes coming at us, and we need that kind of community to survive the changes we can’t prevent. And we need that kind of community because it’s what makes us fully human.
"This is our final exam, and so far we’re failing. But we don’t have to put our pencils down quite yet. We’ll see."
