Bill McKibben’s Math: Climate Change Hits Home (in a 22-City Tour)

from YES! Magazine:



Bill McKibben’s Math: Climate Change Hits Home (in a 22-City Tour)
It shouldn't take a hurricane to blow open the debate about climate change. But Sandy might help 350.org prove what's at stake in a nationwide campaign to divest university endowments from the fossil fuel industry.

by Phil Aroneanu
posted Nov 05, 2012


For two hours last Monday night, New York City got pummeled by Hurricane Sandy, along with much of the New Jersey and Connecticut coast. The windows started bowing and rattling with every gust, and rain pelted the glass sideways. Nobody was on the streets.

Sitting in our third-floor apartment in Brooklyn, my wife and I pretended to read our books and traded nervous looks each time a gust shook the hatch that leads up to our roof. I'd been following the reports closely, so I knew we weren't in danger of getting flooded. But like many people around the world, I was glued to the white glow of my smartphone as my Twitter feed flooded with images of rising waters on the Jersey shore and in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

That night, I finally understood what many of my friends in Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and countless other places on the planet must feel each time a massive typhoon or record flooding hits. Climate change finally hit home for me: I was experiencing it in my own house and on my own skin.

For the first time since 2009, when the United States Senate voted down an ill-fated climate bill, politicians seem to be connecting the dots between extreme weather and climate change. New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo broke the election-year silence around the issue in a press conference just 36 hours after the storm passed, and Mayor Bloomberg trumpeted President Obama’s climate credentials in an endorsement the next day. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/bill-mckibbens-math-climate-change-hits-home