Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, the first global, grassroots climate change movement, will give the Deneke Lecture at LMH.

350.org organized 20,000 rallies around the work in almost every country, spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.

The author and environmentalist was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel’, in 2014. Receiving his award he said: “The climate fight is the first timed test humanity has faced; if we don’t win quickly we won’t win at all. It’s the definition of urgent.”

Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. His book The End of Nature (1989) is regarded as the first book for a general audience about the subject, and has appeared in 24 languages.

He has gone on to write a dozen more books and his latest is called: FALTER, Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? It is a sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity itself.

The Deneke Lecture was established in 1930 to promote ‘humane studies’ and in memory of musicologist Philip Maurice Deneke who died in 1924.

One of the first speakers was Albert Einstein who delivered his lecture in 1933. It was called: Einiges zue Atomistik.

Einstein was friendly with Margaret Deneke, daughter of Philip Deneke who he met on his visits to Oxford. She writes of the effect the lecture had on her in her unpublished memoirs:

“The Deneke Lecture was packed and many of our friends failed to get seats. Sir Charles Sherrington took the Chair. Whilst Dr. Einstein was speaking and using his blackboard I thought I understood his arguments. When someone at the end begged me to explain points I could reproduce nothing. It had been the Professor’s magnetism that held my attention.”