Lecturer, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources

Brian Tokar is an activist and author, a part-time lecturer in the Environmental Program since 2006, and a long-time faculty and board member of the Institute for Social Ecology, based in Plainfield, Vermont. He is the author of The Green Alternative (1987, Revised 1992), Earth for Sale (1997), and Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change (2010, Revised 2014), and he has also edited three volumes on biotechnology and food issues.  His latest book is Climate Justice and Community Renewal: Resistance and Grassroots Solutions (Routledge, 2020), an international collection on grassroots climate responses, coedited with Tamra Gilbertson, a lecturer at the University of Tennessee.

Brian was a founding board member of Vermont’s 350.org affiliate, 350Vermont, and served on that board for ten years. He has contributed to several recent international collections, including The Routledge Handbook on the Climate Change Movement (2014) and Handbook of Climate Justice (2019), Climate Justice and the Economy (2018), Globalism and Localization: Emergent Solutions to Our Ecological and Social Crises (2019), The Global Food System: Issues and Solutions (2014), and Pluriverse: The Post-Development Reader (2019).

Associations and Affiliations

  • Institute for Social Ecology
  • 350-Vermont

Areas of Expertise and/or Research

Social and environmental movements, climate justice, social ecology, GMOs and food justice

Education

  • MA, Biophysics, Harvard University
  • BS, Physics and Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Contact

Website(s):
  1. Personal Website

Courses Taught

ENVS Courses:

ENVS 180 Radical Environmentalism
ENVS 185 Climate Justice and Advocacy: Critical Social Movement Perspectives
ENVS 185 Land and Food Justice
ENVS 295 Energy and Climate in Vermont