Bill McKibben Talks Climate Action as Heat Wave Arrives in Portland - Willamette Week

Bill McKibben Talks Climate Action as Heat Wave Arrives in Portland

Bill McKibben sure has a sense of timing.

As Portland entered a five-day heat wave, Bill McKibben, the celebrated climate activist and author, arrived Friday evening at the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland—a building, like many in this city, that lacks air conditioning.

“It’s not our job to stop global warming. It’s too late for that,” McKibben said to the sweating crowd. “It’s our job to stop it getting to the point where it cuts civilization off at the knees.”

Before getting started, McKibben asked attendees to let someone know if they were feeling unwell or faint because of the heat.

McKibben spoke to a crowd of 300, reciting a list of recent climate disasters before getting to his main talking point: the ways that older Americans can take political action on climate change. (The event was organized by Third Act Oregon, a group he founded to organize Americans over 60.

The event seemed to double as a mobilization of voters against former President Donald Trump, whose indifference to climate issues McKibben painted as a threat to the planet. “I want to energize a lot of people to join in,” said McKibben.

McKibben, one of the nation’s principal figures in climate action, teaches classes on environmental journalism and climate change at Middlebury College in Vermont. After his presentation, three young activists from around Oregon joined McKibben on stage for a public conversation about tactics.

The temperature in Portland topped out at 99 degrees Friday, in the first of what’s expected to be five days of temperatures near or over 100 degrees, with little relief in the evenings.

Multnomah County is operating cooling shelters in three locations today:

- Cook Plaza, 19421 SE Stark St., Gresham
- Portland Covenant Church, 4046 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Portland
- Congregation Beth Israel, 1972 NW Flanders St., Portland