Author and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert to speak about the future of climate change April 3

Lecture is part of Middlebury’s “Meet the Press” series

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. ? Elizabeth Kolbert, author and staff writer for the New Yorker, will deliver a lecture titled “After the Ice: Reporting from a Warming World” on Monday, April 3, at 4:30 p.m. Kolbert is the award-winning author of a three-part series on climate change, published by the New Yorker in 2005. Her book based on the series, “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change,” was released in March 2006. Following her talk, Kolbert will answer questions and be available for a book signing during a brief reception. The lecture, reception and signing are free and open to the public and are part of Middlebury’s “Meet the Press” series. All events will take place in Room 220 of McCardell Bicentennial Hall, located on Bicentennial Way off College Street (Route 125).

Early reviewers have praised Kolbert’s latest book, noting her objective reporting and keen delivery of the facts surrounding the issues of climate change. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, writing: “On the burgeoning shelf of cautionary but occasionally alarmist books warning about the consequences of dramatic climate change, Kolbert’s calmly persuasive reporting stands out for its sobering clarity. Kolbert lets facts rather than polemics tell the story.”

While researching climate change, Kolbert traveled to Alaska and Greenland to interview residents who had observed changes occurring close to home and scientists who had compiled evidence of the global warming phenomenon. “It may be impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing,” Kolbert wrote in the last installment of the New Yorker series.
 
Kolbert has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1999, and prior to that she was a political reporter at The New York Times for more than a decade. She served as Albany bureau chief and later wrote the column “Metro Matters” in the metropolitan section. In 2004, Kolbert published “The Prophet of Love: And Other Tales of Power and Deceit,” a compilation of articles she wrote for the New Yorker on New York public figures.

Kolbert’s talk is part of Middlebury College’s “Meet the Press” lecture series and is co-sponsored by the Middlebury College English Department, the Environmental Studies Program and Atwater Commons. “Meet the Press” was started in 2004 by author and Scholar in Residence in English Sue Halpern. According to Halpern, the lectures are presented under the auspices of the Middlebury College Institute on Working Journalism, a program designed to bring workaday newsmakers - reporters, editors, critics, photojournalists, bloggers and editorialists - to the Middlebury campus.

McCardell Bicentennial Hall is located on Bicentennial Way off College Street (Route 125). For more information, contact Sue Halpern at shalpern@middlebury.edu or 802-443-3418.