Rev. Candace McKibben

Guest columnist

McKibben is not a common name in my experience, but it is at times an influential name. On more than one occasion at a Marriot Hotel, we were treated like royalty when announcing our name while checking in. Some Marriot properties are managed by McKibbon Hospitality, that had its beginnings in 1926 by the McKibbon brothers in Gainesville, Georgia, with a small Piggly Wiggly franchise.

I’ve seen portraits of Jack McKibbon adorning the registration desk area of a few hotels and even when we have protested that our name is spelled differently, insisting that we are not related, we were treated as if we were. Which in all fairness, is a goal of the McKibbon Hospitality management team.

When we visited Walden Pond, just after we were coming out of the pandemic lockdown, we were invited by the ranger to watch a brief film, “Henry David Thoreau, Surveyor of the Soul,” before heading down to the pond. She was cautious, as she should have been, about shaking Bruce’s outheld hand, keeping her own hands firmly tucked in.

The beautiful film closed with remarks from Bill McKibben, known as the first environmentalist to sound the alarm about global warming with his groundbreaking book, “The End of Nature,” published in 1989. As we exited the theater, Bruce told the ranger that we were in town for the McKibben Family reunion and she eagerly grabbed his hand that she had shunned earlier, in awe that we were McKibbens.

I would love to be related to Bill McKibben. Educated at Harvard University, he is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 2013 winner of the Gandhi Prize and the same year the Thomas Merton Prize, and holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities.

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In addition to writing 21 significant books on climate and justice, “he is a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized twenty thousand rallies around the world in every country save North Korea, spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.”

Turning point with climate

He also is a co-founder of Third Act, which mobilizes people over age 60 for action on climate and justice, including Third Act Florida in our state: thirdact.org.

On Aug. 19, 2025, Bill McKibben launched his most recent book, “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.” What is most remarkable to many, including Bill McKibben himself, is that just when it seems the news could not be worse about the condition of the planet, renewable energy has crossed a crucial threshold of being both affordable and accessible.

“Sometime in the course of this decade, we passed some invisible line where it became cheaper to produce energy from the sun and the wind than from burning coal and gas and oil,” McKibben writes. He believes that if we act now, we will be able to put the brakes on climate devastation and solve problems related to our earth and our humanity that desperately need addressing.

As someone who has for most of his career been the bearer of bad news regarding climate, the “doomsday prophet” as he has been called and calls himself, what a delight to him and to us to realize that there is legitimate hope for our planet if we act now.

Another 'Sun Day' on Sept. 21

On the first “Sun Day,” on May 3, 1978, President Jimmy Carter visited the Solar Energy Research Institute that his administration had founded in 1977, three years after Congress and the Nixon White House had taken steps to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Carter said, “We must begin the long, slow job of winning back our economic independence. Nobody can embargo sunlight. No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air; it will not poison our waters. It's free from stench and smog. The sun's power needs only to be collected, stored, and used.”

McKibben laments that we did not find the will to move on this opportunity 48 years ago, but is so thrilled that we have another chance today if we only take it.

This year’s Sun Day is scheduled for Sept. 21, and the hope is to organize a powerful climate movement to take advantage of this remarkable opportunity affordable solar power is presenting to us. The Sun Day website found at sunday.earth is easy to use and offers helpful ideas about how to plan and register an event, whether large or small, to take action, how to find an event to join, and how to celebrate the power of clean energy.

Harnessing solar

There is a playlist on Spotify of sun songs, a sun drawing collection from people around the world who have drawn the Sun Day logo, to which you can add your own drawing, and suggested postcards you create to send to lawmakers. And above all, we can read and share McKibben’s remarkable book, with astonishing information about the ways in which we are on the road to restoring some of what we have lost.

Solar is no longer alternative energy, as it is growing faster than any energy source in history. And the key now, he says, is to propel the rising solar power movement forward despite massive resistance from the fossil-fuel industry and its political enablers.

A theologian I admire, Diana Butler Bass, praises his book not only for the remarkable information contained within it, but “the sheer beauty of its prose.” It has important dimensions of scientific information and moral imperative that invite the reader to hope and to action.

McKibben is not a preacher, though he has taught Sunday School and led worship at his small Vermont Methodist Church.

He does say in gratitude, “The good Lord was kind enough to hang this big ball of burning gas 93 million miles up in the sky. And he's given us the wit to learn how to make full use of it. It's a shame that we let it go to waste day after day after day after day. The sun already gives us light; it already gives us warmth. It already allows us to have photosynthesis, and now it's willing to give us all the power we could ever want. I think we should thank God for that.”

It is my prayer that we will thank God and find the will to take advantage of this remarkable gift that is ours if we act now. Would you join thousands of others across the globe who see this as a decisive moment?

Sept. 7 is Grandparents Day. Perhaps those of us who are grandparents will get involved for the sake of those children we adore. Or the one death in five globally that could be saved annually without breathing combustion byproducts of fossil fuel. Or to seize the single greatest possibility for rapid development and poverty alleviation that we've ever seen in renewable energy. Together we can do this. How exciting!

The Rev. Candace McKibben is an ordained minister and pastor of Tallahassee Fellowship.