Bill McKibben’s curiously titled forthcoming book is a memoir, in part, of the life of the Middlebury College author and longtime climate activist. And it is partly a “cry of the heart.”
“What the hell happened?” he calls out in the subtitle of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon. As many readers of this newspaper already know, McKibben pioneered the cause of climate restoration in 1989, in his book The End of Nature. He has followed that with 17 titles pleading the cause of planet Earth. He insisted to the readers in his 2019 book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, that “I want those who pick up this volume to know that its author lives in a state of engagement, not despair. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered to write what follows.” That same dogged spirit is evident in this forthcoming title, as is the same incisive, thoroughly researched call to action — delivered as if he were sharing it over beers on his porch, not far away in Vermont’s Green Mountains. This book will speak to you if you’re puzzled about America’s lack of collective will and concerted action in the face of climate degradation, or if you wonder who might step forward as game changers.
The heart of McKibben’s message is that Americans’ growing hyper-individualism over the last 50 years is the core reason we have not met the climate challenge — not in our politics, not in our faith communities and not in our naively comfortable suburban lifestyles. (Some readers will note that this urgent message about hyper-individualism is similar to that of Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Garrett’s in their recent book, The Upswing.)
The “Flag” (i.e., politics) section of the book is about excessive individualism, not of politicians (although there is plenty of that), but of the American citizenry. To illustrate, McKibben offers a story about the politics of affordable housing in his boyhood hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts: “In 1962, 1,400 Lexingtonians signed a ‘good neighbor’ pledge, stating ‘I will accept families and individuals into my neighborhood without discrimination because of religion, color, or national origin.’ The local newspaper boasted that Lexington citizens, like their forebears, ‘still believe in liberty and justice for all and are ready to support the practice, as well as the principles, of fair housing.’” Sounds impressive. But soon after signing that pledge, in the privacy of their voting booths, the Lexingtonians registered a landslide vote of nearly 2 to 1 against rezoning their town to allow for proposed affordable housing for “needy families.”
The “Cross” portion of McKibben’s book starts with an acknowledgement of “the loss of mainstream Christianity’s power and authority in American life … from a place where it was central to our [national] identity to a place where, especially in suburban and liberal circles, it’s marginal — if not disparaged or disregarded.” Personally, he’s clear about his affection for his own religious upbringing and is not shy about being a practicing Methodist. Unlike those who have sneered at the very mention of “Kumbaya” as “not what America is all about,” he’s perfectly willing to hold hands around a campfire singing “someone’s crying, Lord, Kumbaya.”
He’s unsparingly critical of the masses of his fellow citizens who belong to — perhaps even attend — a church, but don’t “walk the talk.” He laments the ways faith has become individualistic, often focusing on Jesus as a personal savior, rather than as one who calls his followers to be their brothers’ keepers, and to love their neighbors (and not just the ones next door). Racism is a recurring theme in this critique, and he reminds us of Dr. King pointing again and again to the 11 o’clock hour on Sundays as the most segregated hour in America. He decries the evangelicals who helped elect a “philandering philistine” to the presidency. And he questions those evangelicals during the pandemic who have treated public health measures as affronts to their personal rights, not as ways to “love one another.”
On the positive side for faith community people and institutions, McKibben harkens back to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s — to what he calls a “justice moment.” The Black church was in the vanguard of the movement Dr. King led, but many white faith community supporters, led by clergy, joined him in Selma and elsewhere across the South. It was a clear case of religion moving away from the country’s cultural center to reveal itself as a counterculture, the role in which McKibben believes the faith communities are true to their calling.
In turning to his analysis of suburbia, symbolized by the “Station Wagon,” McKibben begins by disabusing his readers (this reviewer included) of the idea that suburbs don’t produce anything in our economy, like manufacturing areas do.
“The American suburb” he asserts, “is perhaps the greatest economic engine yet devised.” This is because a suburb is essentially “bigger houses spaced farther apart” — a situation requiring lots of cars and trucks to get to and from these houses, lots of heating and cooling to keep their inhabitants comfortable, and, given how our capitalist consumer society works, lots of stuff to fill those houses up. And there has to be the real estate market as the basis of all this. The details of what all this has meant for climate degradation and for social injustice are very much worth a read, though beyond the scope of this review.
As I noted above, McKibben insists he’s writing not from despair but from “a state of engagement.”
But, after four decades of that engagement failing to succeed in mobilizing his fellow Americans to actions equal to the gigantic ravages of climate degradation, where is there for him — for us — to turn?
His answer? It’s time now to turn to “people of a certain age.” We seniors — in our 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s — have resources to bring to this struggle that is increasingly being led by the young. Many of us have deep wells of experience, sophisticated skills and more than our share of resources and connections to contribute.
We have grandchildren to evoke our love of nature and our moral responsibilities to future generations. And, whatever our physical maladies, many of us are suffering, too, from emotional heartbreak. Thus, we can, if we choose, help to “open new chapters in the human story, ones that have some hope of redeeming what came before.”
This is already happening in the Upper Valley. One example of seniors “opening new chapters” is a group at Kendal at Hanover called Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment (ssafe.org) whose tagline is “We’re green and gray, and not going away!” Seniors also volunteer with local energy and conservation committees, as well as with advocacy groups such as the Sierra Club, 350.org, and the Citizens’ Climate Lobby.
Bob Schultz, of Lebanon, is a retired philosophy professor who taught environmental ethics for 30 years at Lycoming College, the University of Denver and the University of Washington. He is active with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker peace, justice and earth care lobby in Washington, D.C.