"Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery...or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons...?" asked Derrick Jensen last year in Orion magazine. "Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal 'solutions'?"

Jensen, philosopher, environmental activist and acclaimed author, has never been one to soft-pedal his opinions. "We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist," he writes. Now he is asking: can our culture undergo a voluntary transformation to a sustainable way of living?

He'll address this question and others in a keynote address, "Civilization and Resistance: What are the Stakes?" Wednesday, April 21 at 7 p.m. in Ira Allen Chapel.

Part of UVM's Earth Week events, Jensen will be joined by John Todd, professor of ecological planning in UVM's Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, who will speak on "Forty Years Ago Today: Earth Day Then and Now."

The event is free and open to the public.

Unprecedented Assault

Jensen, the author of Endgame, A Language Older than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and many other books, as well as a columnist for Orion, is a teacher, small farmer and leading voice of uncompromising dissent. He regularly stirs auditoriums across the country with revolutionary spirit.

"Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means -- all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity," he writes.

UVM's own John Todd is one of the pioneers in the field of ecological design and the author of From Eco-Cities to Living Machines: Principles of Ecological Design. He is also the founder of John Todd Ecological Design, Inc. and Ocean Arks International. He was the winner of the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Challenge.

The lectures are sponsored by the Environmental Program at the University of Vermont and co-sponsored by the UVM Garden Club, Students for Peace and Global Justice, and Vermont Student Environmental Program.