Brian Lear on WNYC in our Spring Membership Drive trying to reach our goal of a hundred donors this hour. Thank you for being one if you can. We are now up to 60 donors. Thank you. Thank you, 40 to go. Not going to continue talking about it, just giving you the score and saying 40 more of you and we have done our part for this hour to keep the whole station going.

Thank you, Brian Learshow listeners.

And now our climate story of the week.

Whoever wins the presidential election this year

will be in office until 2029.

Scientists believe that these next few years are the most crucial years to act

in order to prevent some of the worst impacts of climate change

and to keep global warming to no more than 1.5

degrees Celsius as called for in the Paris Agreement.

Here to break down what's at stake for the climate during this presidential election is environmental

activist Bill McKibbin he's the founder of third act and author of many books most

recently the flag the cross and the station wagon a gr American, looks back at his suburban boyhood and

wonders what the hell happened.

Yes, that's actually the title of the book.

His recent piece in the New Yorker is called, it's a climate election now.

Hey Bill, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Indeed, indeed, Brian, what a pleasure to be with you.

And you write that this election arrives at the most critical possible moment in the climate fight.

We'll dig into each of the candidate's stances a little bit.

But what do you see as at stake right now that people may not already know who follow climate news.

Well, I mean this really is the crux.

I wrote the first book about all this now 35 years ago,

...