‘I can’t give up on America’
Environmentalist, author McKibben dives into how the U.S. has evolved in new book
Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben grew up in the idyllic town of Lexington, Mass., the birthplace of the American Revolution. He lived in a modest suburban home with a maple tree on the front lawn, was a member of a religious group that did service projects and sang “Kumbaya” around a campfire, and believed America had unlimited potential for greatness.
“When I was in high school I even had a summer job giving tours on the Battle Green in Lexington, dressed in my tricorn hat and telling the story of the brave minutemen who fought the first big battle against imperialism and here we are some 50 years later and our nation is embroiled by racial and financial inequality and our planet’s future is in peril,” he said.
There were problems in the 1970s when McKibben was growing up with the Watergate scandal and the oil crisis, but he remembers there was a sense the nation could overcome these struggles. “We had many turbulent days in the 1960s, but it seemed like momentum was going in the right direction. The system had worked in Watergate, women were gaining more rights and not having their rights taken away. The first Earth Day had brought about the Clean Air and the Clean Water Act. It would have been hard to visualize the dystopia our country seems to be in now, beset by disasters that we seem unable to respond to.”
In his latest book, “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened” (Henry Holt Co.), McKibben explores the history of our country and his own life to try and understand where we went wrong.
“I think it all begins to shift in the 1970s. That was the decade when America switched from being a society that had worked together to survive the Great Depression and get through the second World War to a nation that elected Ronald Reagan who saw government as the problem. We began to adapt an every-man-forhimself individualistic view of the world. It didn’t seem so catastrophic then, but suddenly we can’t respond when there’s a crisis like climate change or even something as obvious as preventing massacres of our schoolchildren,” McKibben said.
The book is divided into three sections: A look at American history and patriotism; a discussion of the church and how it is no longer such an essential part of American life; and a deep look into suburbia and how America became a society built on the importance of the automobile.
“The hyper privatization of our world has been the story of our last 40 years. When you have this big house with a big backyard and you’re forced to spend lots of money to fix it up, well, the prospect of spending more money to support the public library or the public parks doesn’t seem so important anymore. Investments in the shared things in our world have gone steadily down.”
McKibben — who lives most of the year in Vermont where he teaches at Middlebury College and part of the year in the Warren County area of the Adirondacks — has spent his adult life working to ease the devastating effects of climate change. He founded the global grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has helped stop big gas pipelines and forced banks to change some of their policies. He has given numerous speeches internationally and gone to jail with fellow protesters. He admits there are days when he feels very discouraged.
“I know more about climate science than I should. I also know a lot about political science, and that can make me feel pretty depressed. There are a few things that keep me going. One is the scientists and engineers who have done their part of this job. They’ve driven down the price of solar power and wind power to make it the cheapest power in the world. It’s no longer a financial or technical obstacle to do what needs to be done.”
McKibben is also encouraged to watch and help build some of the worldwide environmental movements. “Fifteen years ago, there was no climate movement. Today, there are many organizations working on improving the climate like Sunrise Movement and Fridays for Future and many have been started by young people in college, high school and middle school. I’ve also been impressed with all the wonderful progressive work done by Black Lives Matter.”
His new project is an organization for people older than 60, called Third Act, to encourage people his age who may have some financial security to get involved politically for progressive change. “I’m a realist. I understand the predicament we’re in, but I believe it’s one we’re capable of solving. I’ve lived much of my life in the Adirondacks. I love it here. It’s a second chance Alaska and the greatest redeemed landscape on Earth. It is only that way because people made that happen and they did it against strong vested interests who wanted to try and make money out of it.”
Sometimes McKibben imagines living in a place like Norway, a place that has problems and a place that deals with ways to solve their issues. “It’s exhausting to live in a country that can’t seem to do that, but still I can’t give up on America. It’s where so much of the leverage lies, where most of the world’s money is. Some part of me still believes in the story of our country, the story I once told to tourists wearing my tricorn hat as a high school kid so many years ago in Lexington.”
McKibben believes the American experiment of democracy is too good to die out.
“Progressives made a mistake in handing over the flag and the Bible to conservatives. Both are rooted in radical ideas. They have made our world work, and I have critiqued our country and church at great length in this book, but I refuse to surrender them.”