Environmental campaigner and founder of 350.org says the financial sector has picked up on the future of energy much quicker than politicians • Sign up to receive the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning

After almost three decades of environmental activism, Bill McKibben has become the Earth’s investment broker.

“There’s no way at this point to solve [climate change] one person at a time,” McKibben told Guardian Australia.

The author and founder of 350.org is at the start of an Australian tour, speaking with councils and unions, banks and superannuation funds – anyone with serious cash to invest – about backing an aggressive shift to renewable power sources.

What started as a campaign for ethical investment, a push for divestment from fossil fuels, has now become in part a pitch to capitalists that there is money to be made from backing renewables.



“When we started the divestment stuff six years ago, I was operating entirely on moral grounds,” McKibben said. “But it quickly became apparent that it was a much more financially savvy idea than we’d given ourselves credit for. Anyone who five years ago did it made out like bandits.”

On Tuesday, McKibben will launch a report by 350.org, the University of Technology, Sydney, and Future Super, showing 7.7% of Australia’s superannuation savings could fund a full transition to renewables by 2030.

McKibben said this was not just an activist’s pipe dream. In New York, the city and state pension funds divested from fossil fuels. Dozens of Australian councils have followed suit.

Great Barrier Reef: 30% of coral died in 'catastrophic' 2016 heatwave Read more

“I’ve been interested to watch the fact that financial types are picking up more quickly what’s happening than political types,” he said.

“The solar guys haven’t made their money yet, so they can’t [buy political influence]. But if you’re running a pension fund or you’re running a big investment company, you can’t make any more money out of coal. Its day is done. But there’s clearly money to be made from sun and wind, so that’s where they’re headed.”

McKibben has wasted no time in Australia, heading to the country’s two most prominent beachheads. In Newcastle, the world’s largest coal export port, he stood in the shadow of piles and piles of black coal, and met local community groups.

“There is a one-to-one relationship between those huge mountains of coal behind us and the fact there are countries that are not going to exist by the end of the century,” he told them. “One is directly related to the other one.”

At the weekend he visited the Great Barrier Reef. There he saw two versions of a future he warned about almost three decades ago.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill McKibben, right, on the reef. Photograph: Samantha Hawker

The first was a “horrifying” vision of, as he titled his first book, the end of nature – a reef at the northern end that had been effectively “cooked”, as leading reef scientist Terry Hughes described it, during the 2016 marine heatwave.

“It was a spot with close to 100% coral mortality, and it was depressing, grey monochrome, drab expanse of, well, of dead life,” McKibben said.

“A kilometre away we stopped again. It was only about half dead. And it was a reminder of what a remarkable corner of God’s brain the coral reef is. It was filled with colour and vibrant life.

“One doesn’t know whether to be happy whether it remains as alive as it is, or sad that so much of it has already been destroyed.”



While McKibben was heading to the reef, news broke that the federal government would fund a $500m “rescue package” for the reef. To those who know the science – that the bleaching and death of corals is demonstrably due to climate change – the commitment was laughable.

The Great Barrier Reef from the sky – in pictures Read more

“To simultaneously promote the world’s biggest coalmine while pretending to care about the world’s largest reef is an acrobatic feat only a cynical politician would attempt,” McKibben said.

Back on land at Port Douglas, his reaction to seeing the reef was: “We need to accelerate.

“The point is all about pace. We need to push everybody to put up renewables at the pace that’s now possible. Elon Musk demonstrated the pace that’s now possible [with the South Australian Tesla battery project]. Everybody should be trying to operate at that pace.

“Everyone knows that 70 years from now we’re going to run this planet on sun and wind, the question is whether we’re going to be running a broken planet. The reef is one of the clearest signs of that breakage. It’s a demonstration of the foolishness of what we’re doing. It’s not like this is some obscure mystery.

“It’s important to understand that the reef is not a dead ecosystem. Human beings do not have the right to write it off as an ecosystem, and it remains a miraculous place even if that miracle is now hanging by a thread. It should serve as a reminder for us all that we need to double down on aggressive, aggressive action.

“Really the dominant emotion is one of fear that the world won’t rise to the occasion.”

