The climate activist who helped elevate the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline to a national level and spurred a movement urging institutions to divest from fossil fuels is stepping down from the environmental group he started.
Bill McKibben will reduce his involvement at 350.org, the climate advocacy group he founded in 2007 that has been at the forefront of grassroots climate activism in the United States. He will become “senior adviser” after having served as chairman.
“If this sounds dramatic, it’s not. I will stay on as an active member of the board, and 90 percent of my daily work will stay the same, since it’s always involved the external work of campaigning, not the internal work of budgets and flow charts. I’m not standing down from that work, or stepping back, or walking away. Just the opposite,” McKibben wrote on 350.org’s website.
“I’m ready for a bit more order in my life. Don’t worry — I’ll still be there when the time comes to go to jail, or to march in the streets, or to celebrate the next big win on divestment. But I’d like to see more of my wife,” McKibben said.
McKibben helped organize two weeks of demonstrations in August 2011 in Washington against the Keystone XL pipeline, a protest that brought the Canada-to-Texas project into the national conscience. More than 1,000 people were arrested during the protests.
That effort is credited with getting President Obama to punt on a decision regarding a cross-border permit needed to build the pipeline in November 2011, as he didn’t want to anger his environmental base or labor groups who backed Keystone XL ahead of his re-election fight.
Lately, McKibben has shifted his attention to divestment of fossil fuels, a movement that has caught on at some universities, churches, municipalities and foundations. The push argues that climate policies that nations could undertake to reduce carbon emissions will make coal, oil and natural gas assets unprofitable.
The effort stemmed from a 2012 Rolling Stone essay McKibben penned that suggested 80 percent of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground to avoid cementing the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist, said that treatise inspired him to leave the California hedge fund he was managing to devote his time and money to promoting climate policies and candidates who support curbing global warming.
K.C. Golden, a Seattle-based policy director with Climate Solutions, will take over for McKibben on an interim basis.
