June 14, 2023

Dear Friends, Blessings of Christ’s peace!

     On June 24th, the Beatitudes Center for the Nonviolent Jesus welcomes one of the world’s leading environmentalists, activists, organizers, and writers on climate change, Bill McKibben, to reflect with us on how we can keep speaking out, taking public action, and mobilizing to fight environmental destruction. Please join me for this important event!

     Bill’s 1989 book, “The End of Nature” was one of the first major books to address climate change and raise global awareness. He is the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont; a contributing writer to “The New Yorker,” “Rolling Stone,” and “Sojourners;” and founder of the first global grassroots climate campaign, www.350.org and the founder, recently, of a new organization, www.thirdact.org about mobilizing Americans over sixty to continue to work to fight climate change. 

   In 2009, Bill and 350.org led the largest global protest against environmental destruction with some 5,200 simultaneous demonstrations in 181 countries. In 2011 and 2012, he led the environmental campaign against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project; he is also a key advisor to Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Fridays movement.

     He has written over a dozen best-selling books including, “Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?” and most recently, “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.”

     In 2009, Foreign Policy magazine named him to its inaugural list of the 100 most important global thinkers, and MSN named him one of the dozen most influential people on the planet. In 2010, the Boston Globe called him “the nation’s leading environmentalist,” and TIME magazine described him as “the world’s best green journalist.” In 2014, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the “alternative” Nobel in the Swedish Parliament. He has been awarded the Gandhi Peace Award, and 19 honorary degrees from colleges and universities.