He was in Wanaka as a guest of the Otago University's Centre for Science Communication to take part in the Festival of Colour's Aspiring Conversations programme.
The rising lakes and rivers provided a cool counterpoint to his environmental message of how communities should respond to the major challenge of slowing global change so societies could continue to function effectively.
The Harvard University-educated former New Yorker journalist lives in South Vermont, where a gathering of 1000 people a few years ago to call for action on global warming was "many more people than had been seen in one place in a very long time".
Mr McKibben believed fundamental changes in global energy systems were needed to head off fast-moving environmental changes.
Halting environmental change altogether was impossible, he said.
Mr McKibben is an unashamed bearer of bad tidings, and his penchant for turning off lights in his home had caused his daughter to refer to him as "the Dark Lord".
The only way to get the change the world needed, on a scale needed and within the time required, was to drastically increase the price of fossil fuel, he said.
Price would drive change, but politicians drove the prices.
It was important for communities not to leave politicians to their own devices.
Instead, communities needed to build a movement to make change happen, he said.
Mr McKibben is promoting a world-wide movement on October 24 to try to "set the bar psychologically" for political delegations attending an environmental summit in Copenhagen in December.
That "bar" is the number 350, which is 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide, described by scientists as the "red line" of emissions above which the world should not go.
But it already has reached 387.
Mr McKibben hoped his 350.org campaign would get through to politicians everywhere, and wanted every community to hold an event on October 24, whether it be 350 cyclists going somewhere or 350 pumpkins stacked at a market.
• Mr McKibben will talk about the 350.org movement in Dunedin at noon today at the Dunedin Teachers College auditorium.
