Bill McKibben, one of the nation’s leading environmental activists and an authority on climate change, will give a free public lecture on Thursday, January 26th at 7 p.m. at the Exeter Congregational Church:
Climate Change Awareness Lecture: Bill McKibben
Congregational Church in Exeter, 21 Front Street, Exeter, NH
Thursday, January 26, 2012
7 p.m.
Free and open to the public
Join today’s leading voice on climate change, Bill McKibben, in our vestry for an intimate conversation on what is happening to our weather, and how taking a more local stance can help.
A scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with The End of Nature in 1989, which is regarded as the first book for a general audience on climate change. He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. Time Magazine called him “the planet’s best green journalist” and the Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was “probably the country’s most important environmentalist.”
Most recently, McKibben has led the opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project, which would transport oil from the tar sands in northern Alberta, Canada, through the Great Plains states to the Texas Gulf Coast. Supporters claim the Keystone pipeline will be a new source of jobs as well as oil; opponents point to the catastrophic levels of greenhouse gas emissions that extracting, refining, and burning the heavy crude oil would generate. “Essentially, it’s game over for the planet,” climatologist James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has told McKibben. President Obama is scheduled to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline project by Feb. 21.
Bill McKibben’s talk is presented by We the People, a free lecture and film series co-sponsored by the Congregational, Episcopal, and Unitarian Universalist churches of Exeter, in association with Phillips Exeter Academy. The forum will be held in the vestry of the Congregational Church, which is handicapped-accessible. Street parking is available.
For more information: (603) 772-4216 or www.exetercongchurch.org.