Have the Suburbs Ruined Everything? (w/ Bill McKibben)

Current Affairs

Bill McKibben is a legendary activist and writer whose 1989 book The End of Nature introduced the problem of global warming to a general audience. Since then, he has been one of the world's leading environmental activists, taking major roles in the fossil fuel divestment movement and the campaign against the Keystone pipeline. In his latest book, The Flag, The Cross, and The Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened, McKibben looks at the Middle America he grew up in and how, beneath its image of cheery prosperity, it was accumulating moral debts that have yet to be paid. McKibben grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, where he proudly told tales of the American Revolution as a tour guide on the town common. But he came to understand that Lexington was a far more complicated place than its mythology told him. While the town is a bastion of liberalism, and in his youth the residents came out to support Vietnam war protesters, at the same time it was deliberately keeping out affordable housing and making sure only the existing white residents saw the benefit of its skyrocketing property values. McKibben's book retells the history of his suburb and wrestles with its role in creating present crises.

Today Bill McKibben joins us to discuss:

• The peaceful suburb of his childhood and how he came to discover its dark side
• The morally complicated role of the church in American history
• The debts that U.S. suburbanites have accrued through destructive carbon emissions
• The very disturbing sight on Paul Revere's famous "midnight ride" that is never mentioned
• Why Jimmy Carter is underrated and the terrible path that America set itself on by electing Ronald Reagan in 1980
• Why Baby Boomers aren't all terrible and why we should involve older people in political activism

Nathan's article discussing Sam Walton's memoir is here. Carter's "Crisis of Confidence" speech is here. More on "where Mark hung in chains" can be read here.

Find more about Third Act, McKibben's organization for older Americans looking to get involved in activism, here.