In 1989, while home from school after my freshman year of college, I wandered the aisles of my neighborhood bookstore and stumbled across a book whose title was so provocative I had to buy it:
Since then, its author, Bill McKibben, has been doing everything in his power to get us to pay attention to the same message he first articulated thirty years ago — that we humans are a part of the natural world, not apart from it, meaning our actions will directly shape the sort of world we (and especially our great-great grandchildren) inhabit. As Bill put it in his most recent book, Falter: “The earth seems like a robust place: its ice sheets are miles thick, it’s oceans miles deep. But the lesson of the last thirty years in unequivocal: the planet was actually finely balanced, and the shove we’ve given it has knocked it very much askew.”
What must it feel like to see the head-on collision between your species and the environment before anyone else — and to spend your whole life SCREAMING for people to pay attention before it’s too late?
In what ways can we still feel hopeful — and in what ways has the die, perhaps, already been cast?
And, ultimately, what is most needed today — and what must we do?
Join us tonight, at 8pm EST, for a special Spark Series conversation with Bill McKibben (and the beautiful artistry of Camila Isabel).
This is how we #changethestory.