For release: September 25, 2025
Press contact: editors@coveringclimatenow.org
Covering Climate Now, the global media collaboration, has honored the writer Bill McKibben as its first-ever lifetime achievement award winner.
McKibben is the author of 19 books, including The End of Nature, published more than 36 years ago. He has since produced dozens of New Yorker stories, and countless magazine pieces, podcasts, blog posts, and newsletters.
“McKibben is the graceful father of modern climate journalism,” write CCNow co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope, in a piece explaining the award. “It is not an exaggeration to say that many … journalists might not be covering climate change today if McKibben had not paved the way — demonstrating the power of telling the climate story in a way that resonates.”
McKibben’s award comes a week after CCNow announced its fifth Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards, honoring journalists from across the globe for their coverage of the climate story.
CCNow notes that McKibben in recent years has gained prominence for his activism, including his founding of the environmental group 350.org. But it is for his journalism that he is being honored, and for covering the climate crisis, and its solutions, longer than any other reporter working today.
“Our profession has a lot of catching up to do on the climate story,” Hertsgaard and Pope write, noting that now, more than ever, McKibben’s “body of work should inspire and motivate us all.”