Acclaimed environmental and climate activist Bill McKibben will be the featured speaker at an October 6 presentation at American Flatbread in Waitsfield at 4 p.m.
This event was rescheduled from earlier this year due to weather. The event is presented by Mad River Climate Action with assistance from Friends of the Mad River and the Harwood Youth Lobby. Harwood Union student Harmony Devoe will read a poem.
McKibben will speak and then a Q and A takes place. Books and beverages will be for sale in the pavilion at American Flatbread.
McKibben is the founder of 350.org and the Third Act. In 2014, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, often referred to as the alternative Nobel. Currently, he serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College.
Last fall, Sal Spinosa, Waitsfield, founder of Mad River Climate Action conceived of a plan to have McKibben speak in Vermont and gathered a coalition of partners including the Mad River Path Association, Mad River Climate Action (which he founded), Champlain College, American Flatbread and The Valley Reporter to present McKibben.
The last time McKibben was in The Valley was for 350.org Climate Impacts Day Connect the Dots Rally in 2012. Many who attended that event spent their morning volunteering at Green Up Day activities in and around the Mad River Valley, one of the regions hardest hit by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
