Cars, Climate and Cities with Bill McKibben
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From his 1989 book The End of Nature, which was the first to explain global warming to a general audience, to co-founding the climate-change activism group 350.org, there are few people with more experience in taking on powerful interests to create change than Bill McKibben. In this interview, Bill talks to Doug about divestment from fossil fuels, what the worldwide response to COVID-19 can teach us about fighting climate change, and how to build successful movements to make cities work better for people who aren't in cars. Plus, Bill tells the story of a determined Brazilian mayor who took on an angry car lobby using the power of open streets and adorable children.
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SHOW NOTES:
More on Bill McKibben at his official site.
Subscribe to The Climate Crisis Newsletter.
Bill McKibben tells the story of Mayor Jaime Lerner's fight to make streets for people in the city of Curitiba, Brazil. (Mother Jones)
Buy Bill's latest book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
This episode was edited by Ali Lemer.
Find us on Twitter: @TheWarOnCars, Sarah Goodyear @buttermilk1, Aaron Naparstek @Naparstek, Doug Gordon @BrooklynSpoke.
Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: thewaroncars@gmail.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the war on cars. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm Doug Gordon. |
| 0:12.0 | So when we're out there fighting to make our cities safer and more accessible for people |
| 0:19.0 | who aren't in cars, a lot of what we're doing is also making them more sustainable, especially in an age of climate |
| 0:26.8 | change. It's a really important connection that informs all the work that I do and all the |
| 0:32.0 | work that I'm sure a lot of you do. |
| 0:34.4 | With that in mind, I wanted to have a conversation with somebody who could talk about those |
| 0:38.8 | links, so I reached out to one of the most influential climate activists, organizers, and writers in the world. |
| 0:46.1 | I'm not talking about Greta Tunberg, as much as we would love to have her on the podcast. |
| 0:50.6 | I'm talking about Bill McKibbin. |
| 0:53.0 | Sorry, Bill, I know you're listening. |
| 0:55.0 | Bill is just an awesome guy, |
| 0:58.0 | and I was so lucky to connect with him over Twitter and then over email. |
| 1:02.0 | I read his 1989 book, The End of Nature when I was in college. |
| 1:06.7 | And it was the first that I read, and really I think the first that anybody read, that laid out |
| 1:11.6 | the issue of global warming in language that regular people |
| 1:15.0 | could understand and really grapple with and it stuck with me ever since. |
| 1:20.0 | Bill is also a co-founder of 350.org the Worldwide Climate Change Activism Group. |
| 1:26.0 | You're probably familiar with a lot of the stuff that they've done including organizing against the Keystone pipeline. They're also big leaders of the Keystone pipeline. |
| 1:33.0 | They're also big leaders of the divestment campaign |
| 1:36.0 | that is taking hold in so many cities and college campuses |
| 1:39.1 | around the world. |
... |
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