Bangor Daily News column highlights Center for Global Humanities Lecture by Bill McKibben

A lecture by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben on Jan. 20 sponsored by the UNE Center for Global Humanities was the focus of an op-ed column in the Bangor Daily News Jan. 23, 2012 written by Kathryn Olmstead.

Olmstead begins her column noting that "An OpEd by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben in the Jan. 23 Bangor Daily News probably attracted more readers than it would have had it not appeared on the heels of a Jan. 20 statewide forum sponsored by the University of New England Center for Global Humanities and the Maine Humanities Council."

Olmstead continues "The 80 people who gathered Jan. 20 at libraries in Houlton, Belfast, Bangor, Lewiston and Portland [for the live streaming of the UNE lecture] and the audience of about 1,000 at Westbrook Performing Arts Center [where the lecture was held] understand the significance of [the numbers on CO2 emissions cited in McKibben's OpEd]. They heard McKibben explain the effects of increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as he described his worldwide campaign to encourage people to help reduce the concentration to 350 ppm, a number set by NASA climatologist James Hansen as “the maximum atmospheric concentration compatible with maintaining the planet on which civilization developed and to which life is adapted.” Read the entire Olmstead column and Bill McKibben's column.

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