For more than two decades, Bill McKibben has been at the forefront of the fight against global warming as an author, educator, activist and grassroots organizer. His award-winning books include The End of Nature, Wandering Home and last year's best-seller, Deep Economy. He founded Step It Up 2007, which organized hundreds of rallies in support of curbs on carbon emissions. His latest project is the 350 Campaign, an international undertaking aimed at further raising awareness about global warming.

Bill was nice enough to answer a few of our questions about the new campaign, environmental policy and the ongoing presidential campaign:

EW: Given how much we've heard about the 350 campaign, it surprised us to see that the site has yet to officially launch. Why the soft opening? What are some of your short-term goals once the full campaign launches?

BM: It's kind of a large job, trying to build a global grassroots campaign. First task is to get the website really right, and scalable/translatable. June 9 or thereabouts looks like the day. In the meantime, we have an interim site, and despite ourselves momentum has begun to build, with cool actions starting here and around the world--bicyclists in Salt Lake City, surfers in Maui, quilters in Kentucky--and organizers in Rwanda, in Sweden, in Mongolia, in a hundred other places. We're also busy building the human infrastructure--a team of people, mostly young, all over the world.

EW: Specifically, what will the campaign be doing over the next 18 months in the lead-up to Copenhagen and a post-Kyoto agreement?

BM: It will be trying to spread that number--350, as in ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, as in what the scientists are now telling us is the max. safe concentration. We want every human being to know that number--and we'd settle for half of them. If they know nothing else about climate, they need to know that 350 symbolizes a kind of safety. If we can do anything like that, it will nudge those international negotiations in the direction of the science.

EW: What is the best-case (but realistic) scenario that you see coming out of Copenhagen in December 2009?

BM: An agreement that realizes the need to quickly phase out coal in order the preserve the possibility of returning to 350--and to quickly ramp up a Marshall Plan for carbon that will allow us to help developing countries develop while leaving the coal in the ground

EW: You can't see, touch or smell CO2, so how do you explain the importance of 350 parts per million of it in the atmosphere? Math may be universal, but understanding climate change science is not. How do you approach this dilemma?

BM: We don't find people thinking it's too complicated. The analogies are actually pretty easy. It's like going to the doctor and the doctor says your cholesterol is too high--you have to stop eating cheese. People get that even though they haven't gone to medical school; they get this. In fact, there's something liberating for people about talking about climate in real terms, not complete abstractions.

EW: You suggested that one way people can help is to donate $350 of their tax rebate to the campaign. Any luck with this so far?

BM: Some. I think we'll have the money we need, eventually. We're pretty good at working lean--we organized 2,000 demonstrations across the U.S. last year on about $200,000. This will take more, but not by orders of magnitude. The web is a leveler--for $100,000 we can build a better website than Exxon can build with $10 million

EW:Scientists are predicting record levels of melting in Arctic Ocean this summer, and it appears likely that within the next decade, a summer passage of open water may create a new temporary route between North America and Europe. Is it possible that an event like this would actually help the cause by providing a frightening and highly visible example of climate change?

BM: Heck, the Northwest Passage was wide open last summer. And it did help change the politics--on the other hand, it also helped change the planet, all that blue water absorbing incoming solar radiation. I hope we don't need too many more scares.

EW: Here in the U.S., why have climate change and energy policy not become larger campaign issues? Do you blame the media for not asking the important environmental questions, or do you blame the candidates for sticking to the usual rhetoric and scripted answers?

BM: On any given day climate change is never going to be the number one issue on the campaign trail--it moves a tad too slowly. But on any given day it's the most important thing happening in the world. We'll need leaders wise enough to see that and know how to help move us in the necessary direction--I'm reasonably hopeful Obama is up to the task

EW: Over the past few weeks we've seen one of the first major policy splits between Obama and Clinton over the gas tax holiday proposal, which in turn has provided more campaign coverage of energy issues than the last year combined. Do you see this more as political pandering, or as the beginning of a serious discussion of energy policy that may carry through November?

BM: It's political pandering--and it was good to see that it didn't work in NC and Indiana. Let's hope it becomes the springboard for helping people understand why we need higher energy prices, and how we might make that possible, even beneficial, for working Americans. (See, for instance, Peter Barnes' Skytrust proposal)

EW: On that note, are you a supporting a candidate? Who and why?

BM: Obama. He's smart, which is good; he's educable--changed his position on coal pretty dramatically; and he's going to make America part of the international game again, just in time for Copenhagen. The people around the world who despise us at the moment will be forced to take another look at America when Obama is elected in November

EW: The Lieberman-Warner bill is likely to hit the Senate floor next month. The legislation has polarized environmental groups: some are pleased that a major climate change bill finally has a realistic chance to pass, while other groups have called for "fixing or ditching" the bill unless more stringent targets are adopted? What are your thoughts?

BM: It's got to be stronger, and I think the green community will work hard to make that happen. The biggest key may be the technical issue of auctioning the permits. We shouldn't lock ourselves into a corporate giveaway

EW: If you were advising the new president next January, what would be your first recommendation?

BM: Take a short vacation before inauguration and visit western Europe. Ask yourself: how are these people producing a high quality life on half the energy use per capita of Americans? An important question right now.