(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) is bringing renowned environmentalist, author, and educator Bill McKibben as his guest to Tuesday night’s State of the Union Address.

Bill McKibben is a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized 20,000 global rallies, spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.  

In 2014, McKibben was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, also dubbed the ‘alternative Nobel.’ His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about the perils of climate change and he’s gone on to write a dozen more books.

The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he was the 2013 winner of the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize, and holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities.

“I have been galvanized about climate change ever since I read Bill’s first book, The End of Nature,” said Raskin. “He has been a friend of mine since college, but that book totally shocked me. I’ve understood that climate change is not an issue, but the whole context in which we need to decide every other issue, whether it is infrastructure, trade policy, transportation, or agriculture. I’m delighted Bill is joining me at the State of the Union and hope that together we can sound the alarm about the true national and civilizational emergency that demands our attention. It is an imperative to overcome our political divisions and mobilize the whole country and the nations of the world to overcome our carbon addiction and enact pragmatic renewable energy policies that will save us from rising oceans, cataclysmic weather events, drought and floods, and all the traumas of the era of climate change.”

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