Environmentalist and Author McKibben to Speak

April 16, 2010

Noted environmentalist and author Bill McKibben will present the 26th annual Ellsworth Lecture at Johnson State College at 7 p.m. Monday, May 3. The focus of McKibben’s address will be the perils of global warming and the “tough new planet” we face as a result – the premise of his newly published book. The lecture will take place at JSC’s Dibden Center for the Arts and is free and open to the public.

McKibben maintains that global warming and other environmental travesties have altered the Earth so significantly that our planet might as well have another name. Our old, familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding and burning in ways that are unprecedented, he says. “We’ve created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth,” His new spelling of Eaarth, with an extra “a,” is the title of new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

Our only hope lies in fundamental change – scaling back, concentrating on essentials, and preparing to withstand troubles on an unprecedented scale wrought by a plant that is “suddenly and violently out of balance,” he says.

McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, Deep Economy and numerous other books. He founded the organizations Step It Up and 350.org, and he was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

The lecture is sponsored by the Ellsworth Trust, a private foundation established to enrich the study of political science and history at Johnson State College through scholarships for undergraduates, annual campus lectures and seminars by visiting scholars, and grants to fund multicultural events on campus, and support for educational travel by students and alumni.