after all this time, bill mckibben's stamina and soulfulness continue to amaze me. we met over a decade ago on a canoe trip together for the making of my series "america's first river," about the history of the hudson and the struggle to save it from industrial pollution. >> in the fall, and the winter, and the spring, it's pretty lonely, beautiful place. >> i had read his classic work on our environmental crisis, he called it "the end of nature, a prophetic summons for a profound philosophical shift in order to save the earth from suicide." it established mckibben at the forefront of efforts to cope with the potential cataclysm of climate change. i asked him to join the board of the schumann fountain -- i was the president of it -- which promoted environmental and independent journalism. but as he continued to publish books and articles he grew impatient with the pace of public awareness and change. so in the tradition of muckrakers of old, he resigned from the board to combine his writing with activism. with the foundation's support, he became the schumann disting

bill mckibben, your response?none of this should come as a surprise if people have been paying attention. climately what scientists and campaigners have been saying now for the better part of two decades. i wrote the first book about this for general audience, literally, 25 years ago. these are exactly the sort of things scientists said would happen. there happening somewhat more quickly and a larger scale, most because scientists, by their nature, are conservative and under predict. is the fear of scientists palpable. that is why so many of them are out there getting arrested to stop things like the keystone pipeline, speaking out in all the ways they can think of. we have got to not just, as the british prime ministers said i'm a money is no object we will do what we can to get people back in their houses -- well, that is good and well, but the place we really need to be spending money and energy and attention is in keeping this problem from getting worse. the climatic disruption you see today comes with a rise

. >>> this week on "moyers and company," the showdown nears for the keystone xl pipeline, and bill mckibben says it's time for president obama to stand up to the oil companies and just say "no." >> he wants to have it both ways. mostly the fossil fuel way. and we need him to actually stand up for the environment. >> announcer: funding is provided by -- anne gumowitz, encouraging the renewal of democracy. carnegie corporation of new york, celebrating 100 years of philanthropy, and committed to doing real and permanent good in the world. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. the herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations whose mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society.

the organizations that we spoke to in making this documentary fifty dot org being one of them bill mckibben organization sierra club oil change international they've got all this data we did we didn't uncover a lot of stones here what we did is we took research from a lot of these extremely well well well sourced organizations and put it all together into one legal brief so to speak where we took the claims and showed the evidence and the evident. shows that keystone x.l. is just a raw deal for the american people it's a colossal boondoggle all right no jobs no oil no enough and it's just to get the poison we get the danger they get the money right and here's here's something that a lot of people don't know that the you know the jobs numbers have been grossly inflated we know that now but something that a lot of people don't know is that in the all risk no reward portion of this you know they've been touting oh there will be great tax income benefits actually there won't. change international reported about a month ago were what they could what they could do a trance candidates create what'