Bill McKibben
Keynote: Eaarth; Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
Presenter: Bill McKibben, Author, Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet and
DEEP ECONOMY: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
Bill McKibben says that global warming is no longer a philosophical threat. It’s our reality. In fact, the earth has changed so much that it merits a new name: “Eaarth.” With climate change underway, we now live on a far less hospitable planet than our ancestors, with much less diversity, vanishing ice, dying forests, encroaching deserts, acid oceans and diminishing food crops. The “cascading effects” of climate change are alarming, but do not have to be devastating, says McKibben. At the Iowa Environmental Annual Conference, McKibben will chronicle these events and demonstrate how innovative, proactive individuals and groups can and are embracing more desirable and resilient food and energy systems, and more creative and conscious ways of living.
William Ernest "Bill" McKibben is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming and alternative energy and advocates for more localized economies. Beginning in the summer of 2006, he led the organization of the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history. In 2009 he led the organization of 350.org, which coordinated what Foreign Policy magazine called "the largest ever global coordinated rally of any kind," with 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181
countries. The magazine named him to its inaugural list of the 100 most important global thinkers, and MSN named him one of the dozen most influential men of 2009. McKibben is active in the Methodist Church, and his writing is sometimes spiritual in nature. Al Gore wrote in 2007 that "when I was serving in the Senate, Bill McKibben’s descriptions of the planetary impacts... made such an impression on me that it led, among other things, to my receiving the honorific title 'Ozone Man' from the first President Bush.”
McKibben grew up in suburban Lexington, Massachusetts. As an undergraduate at Harvard University, he was president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper. Immediately after college he joined the The New Yorker as a staff writer and wrote much of the Talk of the Town column from 1982 to early 1987. He quit the magazine when its longtime editor William Shawn was forced out of his job, and soon moved to the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.
He currently resides in Vermont with his wife, writer Sue Halpern, and their only daughter, Sophie. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, where he also directs the Middlebury Fellowships in Environmental Journalism. He is also a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
Read a recent article by McKibben: If There was Ever a Moment to Sieze
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