Award winning Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein is coming to the West Kootenay in April to speak about her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, a powerful analysis of the casual relationship between capitalism and climate change.
The Selkirk College Mir Centre for Peace Lecture Series event will take place at the Brilliant Cultural Centre in Castlegar on April 11. Tickets are now on sale.
“We’re thrilled to have Naomi as part of this year’s series of speakers,” says lecture series coordinator Cara-Lee Malange. “Her work as journalist, author and activist is well known across Canada and the world. We feel her talk will really resonate with people in our region and stimulate wide-scale discussion and action with the climate change debate.”
Released in 2014, Klein’s latest offering is a New York Times non-fiction bestseller and winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. In This Changes Everything, Klein exposes the myths that are clouding the climate debate by offering a compelling critique that an unregulated global market system is directly responsible for warming the planet to levels that threaten our existence and that time is running out.
“Forget everything you think you know about global warming,” states Klein’s website. “The really inconvenient truth is that it’s not about carbon—it’s about capitalism. The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.”
Klein further argues in This Changes Everything that climate change could become a catalyzing force for positive change as it possibly one of the best arguments “progressives have ever had to demand the rebuilding and reviving of local economies.”
“This is will be a wonderful opportunity for people to listen to a world renowned author/activist who is successfully stimulating discussion about climate change and who ultimately offers an optimistic message in the face of crisis,” says Malange. “We expect a full house in April and are looking forward to the impression she will leave on our communities.”
Klein’s previous book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, was published worldwide in 2007 and sold more than a million copies in print. The Montreal-based author’s first book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, propelled her to international stage and was named one of the hundred most important Canadian books ever published by the Literary Review of Canada.
The Mir Lecture Series and Mir Peace Cafes have brought a diverse selection of local and international speakers to the West Kootenay-Boundary since 2007. Canadian humanitarian Stephen Lewis—who is Klein’s father-in-law—was the first marquee speaker to be brought to the region under a Selkirk College endowment that was years in the making. Other featured speakers have included David Suzuki, Izzeldin Abuelaish, Justice Murray Sinclair, Samantha Nutt and Lawrence Hill.
Tickets for the lecture are now available at three Selkirk College bookstores (Castlegar, Tenth Street and Silver King) with credit card payment by phone also available (250-365-1281). Tickets are also available at Otter Books in Nelson (cash and cheques only). Cost of the tickets is $32 for adults and $26 for students/seniors.
Selkirk College wishes to thank the Union of the Spiritual Communities of Christ (USSC) for their generous contribution of the Brilliant Cultural Centre for the event.
Find out more about the Selkirk College Mir Centre for Peace at selkirk.ca/mir-centre-for-peace.