Media Release

For immediate release
July 15, 2008

Bill McKibben brings new century environmentalism to The Banff Centre August 2

 Saturday, August 2 • 7:30 p.m.
Eric Harvie Theatre, The Banff Centre
Tickets $9 • Arts Lover Passholders and Mountain Culture members free
Banff Centre Box Office: 1-800-413-8368 or 762-6301
Presented as part of the 2008 Banff Summer Arts Festival

Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben will be at The Banff Centre’s Eric Harvie Theatre on Saturday, August 2, to talk about the role of writing, music, and art as well as science and politics in the battle to raise awareness about climate change and environmental crisis. The lecture, titled Imagining a Future That Works: Environmentalism for a New Century, is presented as part of the 2008 Banff Summer Arts Festival and the Centre’s Mountain Culture and Environmental Speakers’ Series.

In 1989, McKibben began building his climate-change movement by writing the first book for a general audience on global warming, The End of Nature. In recent years he's gone on to organize one of the first big grassroots movements on climate change in the U.S. with stepitup07.org, and is now doing the same thing on an international scale with 350.org. 

McKibben has been writing books for almost 20 years and has 12 to his credit, along with frequent contributions to various magazines including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. McKibben writes on global warming, alternative energy, and the need for more localized economies. 

The Vermont-based writer has been awarded Guggenheim and Lyndhurst Fellowships, and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. He has honorary degrees from Green Mountain College, Unity College, Lebanon Valley College and Sterling College. McKibben is also a scholar in residence at Middlebury College.

The Mountain Culture and Environment Speakers’ Series is generously supported by The Juniper Hotel.

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More information about the 2008 Banff Summer Arts Festival