This is the last year I get to write my annual fundraising letter for 350.org. I’m stepping back from my duties — I’ve had my last board meeting, and as the year ends even my volunteer job as ‘senior advisor’ transitions to emeritus status.

It’s always hard to leave behind an institution one helped found, but the time is right: the people now doing most of the work at 350.org.

need the space to assert their own identities, become public figures in their own right. And to plan new campaigns. I’m very proud of our work together fighting pipelines, divesting trillions of dollars from fossil fuel, and standing up to banks — but there are other battles ahead that need new ideas.

And those battles will need resources. From the South Pacific to South America, from the Arctic to Australia, from London and Paris to DC and New York, 350.org remains the essential global grassroots climate campaign. We have people scattered across the planet — 150 or so hardy souls, most of them young, together catalyzing a vast volunteer base to take on the entire fossil fuel industry. It might seem like a mismatch, but in fact we’re winning: I took a day to celebrate this year when the news came that Exxon was no longer the world’s biggest energy company, that it had been surpassed by a solar and wind company. There will be more important news like this if we keep fighting.

So give what you can, and perhaps a little more. If you can give something each month, that’s especially helpful — it lets the planners plan.

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I’m of course nostalgic right now, thinking back to the early days of 350.org, when the climate movement was tiny. But I’m also thinking ahead — to the new projects I’ll be working on but also to the work that 350 will be undertaking in every corner of the globe. As long as I’m alive I’ll be here to help out in some way with those fights — and I hope you will too.

Let me just finish by saying thanks. It’s been the privilege of my life to work shoulder to shoulder with y’all.

On we go,

Bill McKibben
Founder, 350.org

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350.org is a global movement that fights for a just and equitable world by stopping the fossil fuel industry from continuing to destroy our climate.