Combating Climate Change

Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, activist, and the co-founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement. His first book,The End of Nature, is considered the first book about climate change written for a general readership. McKibben has been awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, The Gandhi Prize, a fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has a species of woodland gnat (Megophthalmidia mckibbeni) named in his honor. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, McKibben regularly contributes to The New York Review of Books, National Geographic, and Rolling Stone, and teaches at Middlebury College. His forthcoming debut novel, Radio Free Vermont, follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic.

Mustafa Santiago Ali is the senior vice president of Climate, Environmental Justice & Community Revitalization for the Hip Hop Caucus, a national non-profit organization that brings together members of the Hip Hop community to enact political change. Before joining the Hip Hop Caucus, Ali worked for twenty-four years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, most recently as a Senior Advisor for Environmental Justice and Community Revitalization. His work focuses on cases of social and environmental justice, and brings a holistic approach to the revitalization of vulnerable communities. A renowned speaker, policy maker, community liaison, trainer, and facilitator, Mustafa Santiago Ali has worked with over 500 domestic and international communities to improve people’s lives by addressing environmental, health, and economic justice issues.