Bill McKibben Offers 'Reality Check' on Economic Growth
On Monday, March 8, Bill McKibben will present a lecture as part of the Ecologies of Human Flourishing series, sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.
The lecture, "Reality Check: How the Facts of Life on a Tough New Planet Shape Our Choices," will take place from 5:15 to 7 pm, in the Sperry Room, located in Andover Hall, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge.
McKibben is scholar in residence at Middlebury College and an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic engineering.
He is active in the Methodist Church, and his writing often has a spiritual bent. He has led one of the largest demonstrations against global warming in American history and continues to organize around this issue. In January 2007, he founded Step It Up 2007 to demand that Congress enact curbs on carbon emissions that would cut global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050.
With many of the youth organizers involved in Step It Up, he cofounded and directs 350.org, an international campaign named for the parts per million of CO2 that scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for our planet.
His talk on March 8 will develop further the ideas in his 2007 book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, in which he addresses the shortcomings of the growth economy and envisions a transition to more local-scale enterprise. He puts forward a new way to think about what we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, and the money that pays for it all.
A response will be given by Daniel Schrag, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Reservations are required.
—by Jonathan Beasley