Brian Laird on WNYC in our spring membership drive, trying to reach our goal of 100 donors this hour.

Thank you for being one if you can.

We are now up to 60 donors. Thank you, 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 Lerichol 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 one and a half 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 McKibben. He's the founder of

Third Act and author of many books, most recently The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon,

a graying 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're right 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, and this is the moment to which it's all been building up.

On the one hand, the climate itself is increasingly out of control.

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