The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert: Is It Too Late to Save the World?
Date: May 10, 2019
Host: David Remnick
Guests: Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert

Overview

This episode brings together two of the most influential environmental writers—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, and New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction—to discuss the state of the climate crisis. The conversation is spurred by recent political shifts, youth activism, and a dire UN report forecasting massive biodiversity loss. Host David Remnick explores whether growing urgency and activism can counterbalance deep policy setbacks and ecological inertia.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

A New Political and Social Tipping Point

• Context: Climate change has vaulted to the forefront of political debate, surpassing even the Mueller report for Democrats’ top concern. (00:09)
• Bill McKibben’s Insight:
  • It’s become impossible to ignore climate disasters, such as the Paradise, CA fire, bringing new urgency:
    • “30 years ago, we were offering warnings... Now... you watch as a California city literally called Paradise, literally turns into hell inside half an hour.” (02:09, McKibben)
  • Mass response and activism—in the streets, in Parliament, and especially among youth—has surged.
• Elizabeth Kolbert’s Observation:
  • There’s a “fascinating paradox” of active street activism coexisting with a US administration aggressively rolling back climate efforts:
    • “If we have a future that will look back on this moment, it will be a very interesting moment... the most remarkably retrograde administration in Washington... actively rolling back... whatever modest progress was made under the Obama administration.” (03:35, Kolbert)

The Role of Partisan Politics and Deliberate Obstruction

• Kolbert on Political Polarization:
  • The climate crisis has become a manufactured “belief” issue, shaped by vested interests and deliberate disinformation:
    • “They’ve taken people out of this... denier complex and put them into top offices... And now I think that... the capacity for human delusion and self delusion is limitless.” (05:18, Kolbert)

The Youth-Led Movement and Intergenerational Stakes

• Driving Forces:
  • Young people are compelled to lead because they will inherit the worst consequences:
    • “You and I are going to be dead before climate change hits its absolute worst pitch. But if you’re in high school right now, that absolute worst pitch comes right in the prime of your life.” (06:46, McKibben)
  • Coming actions: Anticipation of larger mobilizations, potentially including adult strikes.
• Media’s Priorities:
  • McKibben laments that climate catastrophe reports barely register in mainstream news compared to trivialities:
    • “It’s in the newspapers, but it’s well below the new Royal Baby and the trade talks with China. And it’s that business as usual that’s literally doing us in.” (07:20, McKibben)

Biodiversity Loss and the Sixth Extinction

• Kolbert on UN Report vs. Her Book:
  • The UN’s million species at risk confirms her reporting from a decade earlier:
    • “You don’t like to see the news bearing out what you said... more documented destruction... the general trend line of biodiversity loss... playing out, you know, sort of according to plan, unfortunately.” (08:28, Kolbert)
  • Economic growth and environmental loss are inextricably linked; even as GDP climbs, nature plummets:
    • “Those two things are very intimately linked. If you only pay attention to the GDP part, you might say, oh, everything’s fine.” (09:25, Kolbert)

The Deeper Roots of the Crisis: Ideology, Inequality, and Modernity

• McKibben on Pope Francis’s Encyclical:
  • The encyclical Laudato si is praised for seeing climate as inseparable from social and moral structures:
    • “It’s... a remarkable critique of modernity...” Markets and inequality are intertwined with rising emissions. (09:55, McKibben)
• Political Economy:
  • McKibben describes the triumph of laissez-faire ideology arriving at the worst possible time for coordinated action:
    • “The idea that government is the problem... came just at the wrong moment... when we actually needed governments to be doing something very strong to deal with climate change.” (11:00, McKibben)
• Running Out of Time:
  • The IPCC’s 2030 deadline is urgent:
    • “[We] are basically out of presidential cycles in order to deal with this problem.” (11:51, McKibben)
    • “If fundamentally transformative work was not well underway by 2030... physics was going to be too far ahead in this race.” (11:52, McKibben)

Hope, Pessimism, and the Reality of “Cumulative” Damage

• Kolbert’s Realism:
  • She warns that climate change is compounded by delay—damage accumulates, not reverses:
    • “There’s a lot of time lag in the system. There’s a lot of inertia in the system. And we are in the system.” (13:37, Kolbert)
    • “Once we decide, ‘Oh, we really don’t like this climate,’ you don’t get the old climate back for many, many, many generations.” (14:09, Kolbert)
• McKibben’s Qualified Hope:
  • He stresses that some tipping points are passed—like Arctic ice and ocean acidity—but mass mobilization could prevent civilization’s collapse:
    • “No one’s got a plan for refreezing the Arctic once it’s melted... We’re not playing for stopping climate change. We’re playing maybe for being able to slow it down to the point where it doesn’t make civilizations impossible.” (15:02, McKibben)
  • Historical precedent: The first Earth Day in 1970 was transformative; perhaps mass action again can shift the political reality.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On irreversible loss:
  • “No one’s got a plan for refreezing the Arctic once it’s melted. And we’ve lost now 70 or 80% of the summer sea ice in the Arctic, so that’s a tipping point, more or less crossed.” —Bill McKibben (15:02)
• On generational stakes:
  • “[If you’re in high school right now] that absolute worst pitch comes right in the prime of your life. And if we’re not able to take hold of this, then those lives will be completely disrupted and they’ve figured that out.” —Bill McKibben (06:49)
• On the false debate:
  • “[Climate change] has nothing to do with your belief. It has to do with geophysics and geophysics that have been established for quite some time now.” —Elizabeth Kolbert (05:16)
• On inertia and hope:
  • “We are fighting a very, very, very uphill battle. And I think the point that Bill has made, and I agree with it, is maybe we can avoid the worst possible future, but I don’t think [we can] avoid a lot, a lot, a lot of damage.” —Elizabeth Kolbert (14:31)
• Historical parallel:
  • “In 1970, 20 million people, 1 in 10 of the then American population, went into the street [for Earth Day]... That outpouring of public energy shifted the zeitgeist. We better do it again, and in spades.” —Bill McKibben (15:28)

Important Timestamps

• 00:09 – Opening context: Political urgency and climate activism
• 02:01 – McKibben on why the moment is different now
• 03:34 – Kolbert on political reversals and atmospheric CO₂ benchmarks
• 06:43 – McKibben on youth leadership, adult strikes
• 08:26 – Kolbert on biodiversity loss, economic growth, and environmental destruction
• 09:55 – McKibben lauds Pope Francis’s critique of modernity and inequality
• 11:00 – McKibben connects ideology, the Reagan era, and missed chances
• 12:30–14:44 – Kolbert and McKibben debate hope versus pessimism; the irreversibility and “tail” of climate damage
• 15:00–16:22 – McKibben on what is still possible and the need for massive social action

Takeaways for Listeners

• The climate crisis is now undeniable, with both political momentum and institutional resistance at new highs.
• Intergenerational divides are sharpening youth activism; however, time is desperately short due to accumulated damage.
• Political ideologies and willful denial have cost critical decades, but history shows public mobilization can achieve rapid legislative action.
• “Hope” lies not in restoring the past, but in averting the very worst future.

This episode offers sobering realism but also charts the potential for meaningful change—with mass mobilization, scientifically grounded urgency, and, perhaps, a shift in the public’s and policymakers’ imaginations.