Bill McKibben receives the Sophie Prize 2013

The Sophie Prize jury finds that Bill McKibben in only a few years has demonstrated a remarkable mobilizing forve, building a global, social movement, fighting to preserve a sustainable planet.

”This planet desperately needs a global mobilizer for change. Fighting immensely powerful interests McKibben has shown that mobilizing for change is possible. This brings hope”, the Sophie Prize jury writes in the jury statement.

In the past few years McKibben has been animating and mobilizing a global movement based on the conviction that if we are to stay below 2°C of warming, we can emit less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide. Fossil fuel corporations have more than five times that amount in coal, oil and gas reserves.

The Sophie Prize winner 2013 appreciates the jury decision:

–  It means an enormous amount to me, because I loved the original book that underwrote this prize, and because after my home country Norway is perhaps the place I love best (and my daughter is named Sophie!).

– But mostly it means that the work so many are doing around the world to fight climate change is not going unnoticed.  This award will help fund more of that organizing all over the planet, McKibben says. 

McKibben will receive the award in Oslo on October 28. This will be the last Sophie Prize  award. The Sophie Prize board is convinced, however, that the spirit of the prize – a sustainable future – will continue.

”Climate change is the single biggest thing humans have ever done on this planet. The only thing that needs to be bigger is our movement to stop it”  (Bill McKibben).