Efforts to prevent catastrophic global warming have become a signature struggle of our time. While scientists emphasize the potential long-range consequences of continuing climate changes, the world’s poorest people are already directly affected. The destruction of many New Orleans neighborhoods by Hurricane Katrina is linked to long-range climate trends, and the UN’s World Development Report states that one out of 19 people in the global South has already been impacted by increased droughts, floods, wildfires and other consequences of climate disruption. While the US has historically been the largest source of excessive emissions of "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere, our government lags far behind the rest of the world in addressing the problem. We will explore the global justice dimensions of today’s climate changes, and discuss the economic, political and social transformations that are needed to sustain the earth’s ecological balances and our hopes for a more just society.
Brian Tokar has been an activist, author and a leading critical voice for ecological activism since the 1970's, and is currently the Director of the Institute for Social Ecology, based in Vermont. He is the author of The Green Alternative (1987, revised 1992) and Earth for Sale (1997), and edited Redesigning Life?, an international collection on the politics and implications of biotechnology, (Zed Books, 2001), as well as Gene Traders: Biotechnology, World Trade and Globalization of Hunger (Toward Freedom, 2004). Brian has lectured throughout the US, as well as internationally, and is acclaimed as a passionate advocate of grassroots action for food sovereignty and global justice. His articles on environmental issues, emerging ecological movements, and resistance to genetic engineering appear in Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, Toward Freedom, and on websites such as Counterpunch, Znet, Truthout, and WW4Report. Brian holds concurrent degrees from MIT in biology and physics, and a Masters degree in biophysics from Harvard University.
April 11, 2008 at 8:00 p.m. Sharp!
7:30 p.m. for coffee and cake
Hewlett-Woodmere Library
1125 Broadway
Hewlett, New York
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