ABSTRACT
William (Bill) Ernest McKibben began his career as a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine where, from 1982 to 1987, he wrote "Talk of the Town", a listing of cultural and entertainment events in New York until he left in 1987. The internal politics of the magazine's new ownership led him to recognize that a withdrawal from that type of work was in order. McKibben's main argument is that humanity in general, and America in particular, has created a model of growth which is entirely unsustainable and totally absurd. Although Bill McKibben has been enormously successful at motivating people to act and at organizing activities to protest the current situation, there is one area that is more likely than any other to have an effect on the fossil fuel industry. McKibben has been criticized on a number of fronts and arguably not without justification.
