Bill McKibben – Back to the Wall, Face to the Sun
Bioneers | Published: May 6, 2025 Eco-NomicsEcological Design Video
We’re at a dire point in the human story, with temperatures higher than they’ve been in 125,000 years, but we have one secret weapon: the sudden and rapid drop in the price of energy from the sun. Bill McKibben, one of the earliest to warn of the risks of climate change decades ago and in our view the most impactful climate activist of our era, explains that we have a fleeting chance for a truly transformative reorientation of the way our world works…but we will need everyone to make it happen.
This talk was delivered at the 2025 Bioneers Conference.
Bill McKibben, a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a co-founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice, founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament and also won the Gandhi Peace Award as well as receiving honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written 12+ books about the environment, including his first, one of the most prescient and important books of the last 100 years, 1989’s The End of Nature. His latest book is: The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.
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