Environmentalist Author Bill McKibben at the Hett on Nov. 16
10/18/2009
Lebanon, Ill. — Bill McKibben wants us to think more about the things we buy, the food we eat, the energy we use, where it comes from and the price we pay for it in the natural world.
The author, educator, Christian environmentalist and conservation advocate brings his optimistic yet practical views to McKendree University’s Hettenhausen Center for the Arts on Monday, Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m.
The program, a presentation of the George E. McCammon Memorial Distinguished Speaker Series, is open to the public. Admission is free but reservations are recommended; call the box office at 618-537-6863.
McKibben has written a dozen books on business, culture and the environment, including his most recent, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He challenges the idea that “more is better” and offers a realistic, if challenging, scenario for the future that pursues prosperity beyond growth. He stresses the need for strong local business as the backbone of successful, interdependent communities.
His first book, The End of Nature, was one of the first accounts of global warming written for a general audience back in 1989. First published as a series of articles in The New Yorker, it has been used in thousands of classrooms and book discussion groups, excerpted for major nature writing anthologies and published in 20 languages.
McKibben is a scholar in residence in environmental studies at Middlebury College in Vermont. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Review of Books. He leads 350.org, a grassroots movement “to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis.” In 2007 he led the country’s largest day of protest about climate change to date and founded stepitup07.org, which builds local movements to support curbs on carbon emissions.
For more information, visit the Web site billmckibben.com.
The Russel E. and Fern M. Hettenhausen Center for the Arts—“The Hett”—is Southern Illinois’s premier performing arts venue, located on the McKendree University campus in Lebanon, Ill., 25 miles from downtown St. Louis. www.theHett.com
McKendree University’s Distinguished Speaker Series continues:
Feb. 2 – Frank Warren, founder of the PostSecret project and blog phenomenon
Feb. 25 – Orville Schell, expert on China and U.S.-China relations
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