He said older people should not think of it as a problem for their children, grandchildren or some future generation to solve; that’s up to all of us right now.

The Rev. Phil Richards, the church’s pastor, said that pre-Christmas Advent group discussion at the church raised concerns about the environment and climate. The debate led him to reach out to McKibben, who with his wife, Sue Halpern, moved to the Warren County town of Johnsburg in the southern Adirondacks in the late 1980s.

McKibben, a former writer for the New Yorker, is now the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College currently residing in Vermont. His 1988 commentary in the New York Review of Books, “Is the World Getting Hotter,” followed by his first book, “The End of Nature,” help launched a public discussion of climate change, then referred to as the greenhouse effect.

In his opening remarks, McKibben said that in the 1980s he sought to stimulate discussion and action, in particular, political change, through writing. He then assumed that if facts about climate change were well known and understood, society would respond. As that didn’t happen, he realized that he needed to become more of a hands-on activist.

In 2007, with the assistance of seven Middlebury students, McKibben launched Step It Up, which organized 1,400 climate change demonstrations throughout the United States. The next year, they expanded their efforts globally under the banner 350.org, named after 350 parts per million, the safe concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since then, in collaboration with others, they’ve organized demonstrations in every country in the world except North Korea.

As many in the North Country are aware, McKibben is not one to soft-sell his concerns about the environment. In light of the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Accord, many attending were concerned as to what his message would be. “More than anything else, I want to hear where Bill is on the optimistic-pessimistic scale spectrum,” said Stephen Engelhart. “When I told a friend that I was coming here tonight, she said, ‘Is it going to be depressing?'”

McKibben began his presentation with a short video that illustrated the dramatic increase in the melting of Greenland’s glaciers and a slide show that demonstrated the worldwide effort to confront and stop the carbon-based economy. The images underscored that the majority of people impacted were those who have contributed least to the problem.

“The results of global warming are being felt everywhere and by everyone beginning, of course, with the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet,” said McKibben. “The iron law of climate change is the less you did to cause the problem, the more you suffer from it. The commandment Christians have to love one’s neighbor is a dead letter in a world where we are starving and drowning our neighbors. When I say us, I mean our country. America has produced far more of the carbon in the atmosphere as compared with any other country on Earth or in history. And we now have the distinction of being the only country that has withdrawn from the Paris Climate accord.”

McKibben then listed a litany of horrific environmental disasters caused by climate change and their consequences on human life. He stated that we have the technology to solve this problem, but what’s lacking is the desire or will. He is encouraged by the number of newly elected members of Congress discussing the importance of getting the U.S. off a fossil-fuel based economy by 2030. However, their actions raise to him the question, “Why haven’t we done this so far?”

“There is no dispute left in the scientific community about what’s going on,” said McKibben. “They understand it perfectly well. Having won the argument, we are losing the fight because it isn’t about data or reason and so on. The fight, as fights always are, is about money and power. On the other side of the fight is the richest industry in human history. An industry that is perfectly willing to preserve its business model for another decade or two even at the cost of breaking the planet.”

He said the oil industry, as a result of its research, knew full well back in the early 1980s that the carbon pollution would warm the planet, lead to rising seas and expand deserts. But instead of telling the public the truth, it launched a major cover-up and disinformation campaign to enable it to increase drilling, mine more coal and make more money.

While McKibben is all for individual efforts to recycle, consume less, and drive electric cars, he feels that the critical action has to be to force Congress to act and to make it increasingly expensive for the carbon-based economy to expand through such efforts as stopping the Keystone pipeline. He urged people to advocate for a carbon tax, noting 30 years ago a 2 to 3 percent tax was all that was needed, but now the percent would have to be far higher to motivate industry to shift its focus to renewable energy sources.

“It’s going to take an all-out effort,” said McKibben. “If we do not win soon, we will not win at all. We have to figure what we can do to accelerate this process. We’ve got to break the power of the fossil-fuel industry. We need to understand that business as usual will not solve it. We have to step up. We have to operate outside our comfort zone. This is the challenge of our time.”

“Bill underlined the severity of the problem,” said Col. Mike Derrick (retired). “His pictures, words and 30 years of effort put it in context. I think the mass migrations brought on by climate change will re-write the world’s political boundaries. It will re-write the political boundaries in North America perhaps later than elsewhere. We are seeing boundaries re-written right now because of climate change. It’s only going to continue. Look at the impact of the Dust Bowl in the mid-1930s. Think of the mass migration that caused in this country. The upcoming climate change-driven migrations will make that pale by comparison.”

“McKibben is articulate, doesn’t mince words, and is telling us what we all need to know and hear,” said Sue Reaser of Westport. “We in rural areas have to think hard about this because we are oil-dependent at this point. We need electric cars with a wider range.”

“McKibben’s talk inspired me,” said Tom Duca. “We are going to start a Grange 350 in Essex.”