The University of Oregon will host science writer Craig Childs for his lecture “Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Future of the Earth,” at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 28, in 182 Lillis Hall.
Childs will serve as the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2013–14 Robert D. Clark Lecturer and the second speaker in the center's “vulnerable” series.
Childs asserts in his lecture, based on years of experience in the field, that Earth is an unstable, constantly changing and sometimes violent place to live. His conclusions were confirmed as he teetered about on the third floor of an apartment building in Pasadena, Calif., during a 6.7 magnitude earthquake centered at nearby Northridge in 1994.
“Humans may have a big hand in carpeting the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases and dumping every toxin we can imagine into waterways, but when the earth begins to roll, it is no longer our game,” Childs writes.
Childs has traveled the globe, visiting what he names as some of Earth’s most remote and inhospitable places, including the deserts of Chile, the genetic wasteland of a cornfield in central Iowa and the Greenland Ice Cap.
Drawing upon geology, archaeology, biology, natural history, climate science, literary references and personal reflections, Childs aims to paint an engaging and evocative picture of the planet and the sixth mass extinction that some scientists believe is underway.
Childs is a regular commentator for NPR’s Morning Edition and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Apocalyptic Planet”—which won both the 2013 Orion Book Award and the 2013 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award—and “The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild” (2009). His work has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Men’s Journal, Outside and Orion. He is a contributing editor at High Country News, and he teaches writing at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and at Southern New Hampshire University.
The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book sale and signing. It can also be viewed as live-streaming video at ohc.uoregon.edu. For more information, contact 541-346-3934 or ohc@uoregon.edu.
- by Katherine Cook, UO Office of Strategic Communications intern