PARIS — On March 5, world renowned climate activist and New York Times best-selling author, Bill McKibben will share the stage in The Forum at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris. This event, organized by the Center for an Ecology Based Economy (CEBE) in Norway, is the kickoff for CEBE’s two day Climate Action Convergence called 2020 Vision: Finding Hope in Climate Action happening in downtown Norway on the following Friday and Saturday, March 6-7.

Joining McKibben on the stage that night will be youth climate activist Anna Seigel of Maine Strikes and local artist and activist Jessica Cooper of CEBE and Maine Youth for Climate Justice. Doors will open at 6 p.m. with music by Otisfield’s 75 Scottys, and tabling by some of Maine’s premiere environmental organizations. Speakers will begin at 6:30 joined by western Maine poet Lisa Moore, and Portland-based singer-songwriter Emilia Dahlin.

Bill McKibben is a co-founder of the international climate action organization 350.org which has organized over 20,000 climate rallies around the world in every country except North Korea, and galvanized the ongoing resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, often called the alternative Nobel, in 2014.

McKibben has written 12 books as well as countless essays on the climate and ecological crisis for publications including National Geographic, The New York Review of Books, and the New Yorker where he was a staff writer. His 1989 best seller, The End of Nature was one of the first popular books to expose the threat of global warming to a general audience.

It has since been translated into 24 languages. His seminal 2012 Rolling Stone essay, Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math shined a light on the disparity between our global carbon budget if we are to prevent catastrophic warming of over 2 degrees Celsius, and the proven fossil fuel reserves of the major oil, coal and gas companies and petro-states that represent five times that budget if burned. It was a clarion call for the climate movement.

“We know how much we can burn,” he stated, “and we know who’s planning to burn more. Climate change…[is] not an impersonal force of nature; the more carefully you do the math, the more thoroughly you realize that this is, at bottom, a moral issue…”

McKibben’s current book Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? explores the relationship between the climate emergency, artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. This book will be available for signing at the event from The Tribune book store in Norway. McKibben is currently working to foster a movement to divest banks, pensions, and other institutions from fossil fuels as an organizer of StopTheMoneyPipeline.com.

On Friday March 6, Mr. McKibben will be meeting with youth activists before a full day of training, support, action and celebration for climate organizers and activists. On Saturday March 7, the general public is invited to find their own place in the climate movement.

To learn more about this event, please visit CEBE at www.ecologybasedeconomy.org or find 2020 Vision Norway on Eventbrite to register.

For more information, call CEBE at 739 2101 or email info@ecologybasedeconomy.org