‘The level of just complete corruption from the fossil fuel industry that marks this administration is like nothing we have ever seen,’ environmentalist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben said last month on the American talk show Real Time With Bill Maher. There is, however, a silver lining to the demolition of the American environmental policies by the Trump administration, McKibben said: people stand up against it.
On the day that the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed massive budgetary cuts, Bill McKibben, who we will hear at WDCD Live Amsterdam (23&24 May) too, attended the show of comedian and talk show host Bill Maher. While sketching a desperately grim picture of the situation, stressing the ignorance and the ties with the oil industry of the Trump administration, McKibben is asked whether he sees a silver lining to it all.
‘The silver lining is of course that people are fighting back,’ McKibben answers. ‘The women’s march in Washington was great, but the picture that blew my mind was LA. Three quarters of a million Angelinos out of their cars and walking, I mean that’s literally unheard of. The same thing is going to happen on April 22nd, there is the scientists march and that leads into a huge march the next weekend, April 29th, this huge climate march on DC. People are really angry about this.’
‘We are watching’
Massive public resistance is the only possible answer, McKibben wrote earlier in Rolling Stone: ‘Politicians need to be reminded, even as they do the bidding of the industry, that the rest of us are watching. That march [on April 29th] will mark 100 days of the Trump administration; his early surge can’t be avoided, but it can be slowed.’
Less than a month later McKibben will address the WDCD audience in Amsterdam. For sure he will encourage all attendants to join this battle and make clear why every single effort to keep global warming under 2 degrees’ Celsius counts.
Don’t miss it. Get your seats now at www.whatdesigncando.com.