The author Bill McKibben, who founded a new generation of environmental activism in the Keystone XL pipeline and divestment campaigns, is stepping down from the daily leadership of his 350.org organisation.



McKibben’s departure, announced in a post on 350.org, caps an extraordinary seven -year run for the organisation.



“I’m stepping down as chair of the board at 350.org to become what we’re calling a ‘senior sdvisor’,” McKibben wrote. “I will stay on as an active member of the board, and 90% of my daily work will stay the same, since it’s always involved the external work of campaigning, not the internal work of budgets and flow charts. I’m not standing down from that work, or stepping back, or walking away.”



In an email to The Guardian, McKibben added: “I’ve had enough years of reviewing budgets etc, which is really not my forte, and I’d rather be causing more trouble more directly, as well as doing some writing. So 350 is still my home, just in an easier chair.”

KC Golden, a climate activist from the Northwest who helps lead Climate Solutions, will take over as interim chair, Jamie Henn, a spokesman for 350.org said.

McKibben founded 350.org at a time when the mainstream environmental groups in the US – known collectively as Big Green – were convinced that the route to getting governments and businesses to act on climate change was through corporate boardrooms and professional lobbying campaigns.

McKibben believed those leaders would not act unless they were pushed by a grassroots movement. The group takes its names for the upper limits for the safe levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – 350 parts per million. It started with just seven paid staff. The group now operates in 14 countries, Henn said.



Under McKibben, 350.org turned the Keystone XL pipeline project, seen by the industry as a sure thing, into a potent symbol of the climate threats of unlocking tar sands fuel.



350.org activists demonstrated at the White House, joining hands over a giant inflatable pipeline, or risking arrest to protest the project – in the process turning Keystone into one of the most difficult decisions of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The group was instrumental in pushing universities to divest from fossil fuels – in America and increasingly around the world.

350.org was also a main organiser of September’s climate march, which brought around 400,000 people into the streets of New York City.

But with 350.org increasingly a global organisation – and McKibben honoured this week with an alternative Nobel in Sweden – the author said it was time to get on with the rest of his life.



“No one should run a board forever, and so I think it’s time someone else should be engaged in that particular task, leaving me more energy and opportunity for figuring out strategies and organizing campaigns,” he wrote. “The constant travel of the last seven years has helped a little, I hope, to build this movement, but I’m ready for a bit more order in my life. Don’t worry—I’ll still be there when the time comes to go to jail, or to march in the streets, or to celebrate the next big win on divestment. But I’d like to see more of my wife.”

