Bill McKibben has a house “covered with solar panels”. He drives a hybrid-electric car.

However, the one lifestyle change that the American environmentalist would recommend has nothing to do with consuming less energy, or getting it from a renewable source.

“It’s not that we shouldn’t do things at home. We should. But I don’t try to fool myself that I’m stopping climate change that way”, he told this website.

“Given the emergency that we’re in, given the short time that we have to act, it’s a lot more important at the moment to change the policies of the people running things, then try to get everyone on the planet to instantly shift their ways of life”, noted McKibben. The most important policy change he advocates, is to stop using fossil fuels.

“If you had to do one thing, it would be to organise. To become engaged in a movement that can change this stuff.”

McKibben is the leader of one such movement, the campaign group 350.org. He is possibly the most famous environmentalist in the US, and last year over 300,000 people responded to his invitation to join a climate march in New York. In 1989, he published The End of Nature, which has been credited as the first book on global warming for a general audience.

Bill McKibben spoke to EUobserver in Paris, where in December the world’s countries will try to reach consensus on the first legally binding international treaty aimed at slowing down climate change since 1997.