Environmental author and educator Bill McKibben to speak on climate change March 11

U.S. author, educator and environmentalist Bill McKibben

GOSHEN, Ind. – What is the most important number in the world? According to U.S. author, educator and environmentalist Bill McKibben, it is 350, the number of parts per million that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere needs to be reduced to so as not to cause "huge and irreversible damage to the earth." He believes solutions exist though.

McKibben will be speaking about this and " Building a Worldwide Movement to Fight Climate Change" when he comes to Goshen College on Wednesday, March 11 at 7 p.m. in the Music Center's Sauder Concert Hall as part of the college's Yoder Public Affairs Lecture series. The lecture is free and open to the public.

McKibben, a Methodist and a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, first wrote about environmental issues in his 1989 book The End of Nature (Random House). Since then, he has been published worldwide in more than 20 languages. His books range in topics from global warming to local communities to genetic engineering to family. His writings regularly include a faith perspective.

His other books include The Age of Missing Information (1992), Hope, Human and Wild (1995), The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation (2005), Maybe One (1999), Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously (2001), Enough (2004), Wandering Home (2005) and Deep Economy: the Wealth of Community and the Durable Future (2007). He is a regular contributing writer for various publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones and Rolling Stone.

But McKibben doesn't just write about his passion for environmental care. In late summer 2006, he helped lead a five-day walk across Vermont to demand action on global warming. In 2007, he founded stepitup07.org to demand that Congress enact curbs on carbon emissions that would cut global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050. With six college students, he organized 1,400 global warming demonstrations across all 50 U.S. states on April 14, 2007 – the largest day of protest about climate change in the nation's history.

To build on McKibben's visit on campus, the college has organized interdisciplinary events for faculty and students. On March 4, three faculty from physics, psychology and peace, justice and conflict studies departments presented on separate components of McKibben's general thesis for why the paradigm of growth and "more is better" will ultimately fail society. On March 18, after McKibben is on campus, a panel of students from different academic disciplines will present their responses to the lecture and the earlier gathering.

Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college's Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron's Best Buys in Education, "Colleges of Distinction," "Making a Difference College Guide" and U.S.News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges" edition, which named Goshen a "least debt college." Visit www.goshen.edu.