The Climate Reality Project will host presentations by Dr. Edward Hauser and Bill McKibben at 5:30 p.m. at UNCA’s Humanities Lecture Hall and 7 p.m. in Lipinsky Hall, respectively. McKibben recently gained fame through his work with the Occupy movements and success in getting local chambers of commerce to withdraw from the national chamber.
McKibben’s organization, 350.org, is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. 350.org’s online campaigns, grassroots organizing, and mass public actions are led from the bottom up by thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries. Most recently, 350.org was instrumental in organizing the Tar Sands Action, this Fall, that resulted in the President ordering a new study of the Keystone XL Oil Pipeline, effectively killing the project until at least 2013. A sizeable group of people from western North Carolina were among those arrested and participating in this action. Extraction and burning of all the tar sands oil would guarantee CO2 levels climb to a level that climate scientists say would result in catastrophic global warming. Speaking in Asheville, McKibben will be rallying his audience around a celebration of the Tar Sands victory as he addresses the continuing climate crisis and what has to be done from this moment forward to rapidly reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere back to 350 parts per million from its currently dangerous level of 390+.
Groups supporting this free event include Active Students for a Healthy Environment (ASHE), Asheville Green Drinks, Canary Coalition, Asheville Green Drinks, North Carolina Interfaith Power & Light, Occupy Meet Talk Act Affinity Group, PeaceTown, Sierra Club, Transition Asheville, and the Western North Carolina Alliance (WNCA)
