"I’m Here to Say We Need to Act"

Bill McKibben — who has as good a grasp of the future of the planet as anybody on the planet — suggests in a new article that President Obama’s speech on climate change at Georgetown in June was the high point of the Obama presidency when it comes to climate issues.

The president spoke in a sun-soaked Dahlgren Quadrangle at the center of campus. “The question is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late,” he said, addressing a student audience. “And how we will answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren.

"As a president, as a father and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act.”

The problem, McKibben spells out, is that President Obama’s speech was itself the high point, rather than a statement of purpose for a broad, serious, sustained effort to address climate change.

He gives the lay of the land – chances taken, chances missed, chances turned away – in an article in the journalism-packed new Rolling Stone. He has high hopes for a campaign urging institutions – such as universities, Georgetown among them – to divest from fossil-fuel companies.

Every story published around Nelson Mandela’s death — not just this one from FaithStreet — was a reminder that divestment works.

• 26 December 2013