Climate change activist Bill McKibben to speak at SUNY New Paltz

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences proudly welcomes author and environmentalist Bill McKibben as he mobilizes support for the largest climate march in history. McKibben will deliver a lecture entitled, “On to New York:  Why the Climate Movement is on the March,” on Tuesday, Sept.16, at 7 p.m. in Lecture Center 100.  This event is free and open to the public.

Presidents and prime ministers from all over the world will gather in New York City on Sept. 23, for a landmark UN summit on climate change. In the days prior, dozens of workshops, seminars and events on climate change will culminate in a Sept. 21 march in New York City, as tens of thousands demand action on what McKibben has termed the “biggest crisis our civilization has ever faced.”

McKibben is the author of the 1989 book The End of Nature, regarded as the first book about climate change written for a general audience. He is a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement. The movement is named for the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, 350 parts per million.

The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, McKibben was the 2013 winner of the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize, and holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities. Foreign Policy named him to their inaugural list of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers, and the Boston Globe said he was “probably America’s most important environmentalist.” A former staff writer for the New Yorker, he writes frequently for a wide variety of publications around the world, including the New York Review of Books, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone.

To learn more about the People’s Climate March and People’s Climate Convergence, visit www.peoplesclimate.org.