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THE WORLD IN 2050: CREATING/IMAGINING JUST CLIMATE FUTURES

A NEARLY CARBON-NEUTRAL CONFERENCE

Featured Panel: What Will it Take to Win?

A Discussion of Bill McKibben, the Climate Mobilization Victory Plan, and the World War 2 Mobilization Idea

The recent almost simultaneously publication of two influential statements calling on the United States government and public to treat the climate crisis as a “war-time emergency” that will require of us a “climate mobilization” equivalent to the country’s World War 2 effort to defeat fascism in Germany and Japan has sparked intense interest in just what it would take to somehow “win” the war against climate change.

The two statements – the Climate Mobilization’s 100-plus page Victory Plan and Bill McKibben’s essay “A World at War” – have led to a healthy and vigorous debate about these ideas and their potential to play a role in the US response to the greatest global challenge of the 21st century.

John Foran will introduce this “Open Panel” will take off from presentations by Bill McKibben and Ezra Silk followed by critical appraisals from Paul Gilding and Chris Williams, and then switch to an on-line discussion open to all conference participants.

Expect fireworks – may there be insight and inspiration as well as light and heat!

A selection of published contributions to the discussion so far.

John Foran

John Foran teaches sociology and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a member of 350.org, the Green Party and System Change Not Climate Change. He is co-founder of the International Institute of Climate Action and Theory, and of the Climate Justice Project, where much of his writing on the climate justice movement can be found.North Korea.

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, and activist.  In 1988 he wrote The End of Nature, the first book for a common audience about global warming.  He is a co-founder and Senior Advisor at 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized twenty thousand rallies around the world in every country save

Ezra Silk

Ezra Silk is Director of Policy & Strategy and Co-Founder of The Climate Mobilization. He is the author of The Victory Plan.

Paul Gilding

Paul Gilding serves on the Board of The Climate Mobilization and wrote the Foreword to the Victory Plan. He is a Fellow at University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and former Executive Director of Greenpeace International. He is the author of The Great Disruption: How the Climate Crisis Will Transform the Global Economy.

Chris Williams

Chris Williams is an educator, author and activist whose work has been published in numerous media outlets and his work translated into several languages. He is the author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis (Haymarket Books, 2010) and the forthcoming Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation (Monthly Review Press).

Q & A

Have questions or comments? Feel free to take part in the Q&A!

Before posting, you must first register. Note that questions and comments can be intended for individual speakers, the entire panel, or anyone who has posted to the Q&A. Respond directly to a particular question/comment by way of the little “reply” below it. The vertical threadlike lines are there to make it easier to see which part of the discussion (i.e. “thread”) you are taking up. You can choose to be notified via email (see below) whenever a question, answer, or comment is posted to this particular Q&A. Because the email notification will contain the new comment in its entirety, you can both follow the discussion as it is unfolding, as well as decide whether you would like to step in at any point. You can choose to receive email notifications for as many of the conference Q&A sessions as you like, as well as stop notifications at any time. Because the Q&A sessions will close at the end of the conference, all email notifications will also end at this time. Although only registered conference participants can pose questions and make comments, Q&A sessions are visible to the public and will remain so after the conference has ended, as we hope that they will become cited resources.

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