Richard Powers & Bill McKibben Discuss The Overstory | JCCSF

Richard Powers is the Pulitzer-prize and National Book Award-winning author of twelve novels, including Orfeo, The Echo Maker, and The Time of Our Singing. The Overstory, Powers most recent novel, is a sweeping, impassioned tale of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that explore the essential conflict on our planet: the one taking place between humans and nonhumans.
Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, activist, and the co-founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign that works in 188 countries around the world. His 1989 groundbreaking book, The End of Nature - issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic - was the first book to alert us to global warming. He’s gone on to write a dozen more books, most recently Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? The Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the recipient of the Right Livelihood Prize, the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize, and holds honorary degrees from 18 colleges and universities.
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#Overstory #Lecture #Literature

How wonderful to have these two in conversation!! Thankyou Richard, Bill, and the JCCSF!!

[@captainf]

Fascinating discussion, thanks. I am reading The Overstory at the moment and came here seeking to learn more about Richard Powers. Now I'm subscribed to Bill McKibben's mailing list too! Thank you :)

[@jennistorytree4838]

I am deeply grateful for this powerful, transformative book and for this fascinating interview. I am glad Powers acknowledged Robin Wall Kimmerer, but I am surprised he didn't mention who he based his lynchpin character of the scientist, Patricia Westerford. It seems hard to believe he wasn't drawing on Suzanne Simard and her book 'Finding the Mother Tree'?

[@MaryDBethany]

I have not experienced such a pleasurable hour in many years. Thank you both.

[@jylyhughes5085]

The Overstory ... A sublime towering novel ... transformative and utterly inspirational. Thank you Bill McKibben and Richard Powers.

[@mariemaccabee6692]

I love this!. I worked on my own book while listening. It is an inspiration

[@conniekampas7074]

Excellent 😢

[@TimondeNood]

❤

[@globetraveler1954]

In indigenous communities forests are seen both as something sacred and as a source of goods necessary for their survival, just like us in cities, except that we buy the items at stores, but every thing is made of a material that was extracted from nature and many times from a forests. The solution is in the urban areas, condone foreign debt so countries can rebuild their forests and urban people learn to live with less

[@rd264]

I beleive there is still a small remnant of old growth forest near New Brunswick, NJ owned by Rutgers - its possible to visit it with supervision/permission.

[@peacebeing]

Wish I knew about that when I lived in NJ!

[@jonathanedwardgibson]

The word for world is forrest - LeGuin

[@xflyingtiger]

The American Chestnut part of this book, planted way outside of its native range as the entire East Coast range died off from blight, may very well be analogous to a human Mars colony watching the entire human population of Earth die off back on home. In The Overstory, the transplanted American Chestnuts, three I believe, didn't have an ideal life either. I can foresee the Mars colony struggling too.

[@globetraveler1954]

Are the leaders of powerful countries the ones that need to be persuaded, along with the inhabitants of largest cities in the world, unfortunately no hope, and what you really propuse is to keep the poorest people of the world to remain poor and "protect" the forests

[@globetraveler1954]

It is not that indigenous people are "intentionally" protecting the forest, they live there and above all they have a "very simple life style" something that the rest of the world is totally unwilling to use as a model to reduce the huge amount of resources that consume. That is to me the problem with this isolated way to talk about forests,.

[@globetraveler1954]

Very sad to play with an octopus deprived o his freedom, and we are all animals, but certain human societies are just using more resources , and very difficult to think that will change, what worries me is that "simple living societies" are adopting the "high demand resources lifestyles"

[@globetraveler1954]

Bay the way the soil has the most biodiversity of all the planet

[@mikehaye5527]

Seems like Bill interrupts a lot and double talks over author.