Author John Green kicks off Noble Lecture series

New York Times bestselling author John Green will open the 2022-2023 William Belden Noble Lecture series at the Memorial Church, 7 p.m. Oct. 14, with a deep plunge into the subject of apocalyptic climate change.

Green is the author of such well-known titles as “The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down,” and “The Anthropocene Reviewed.” He is also a podcaster, philanthropist, and one half of the vlogbrothers on YouTube, which has nearly 3.5 million followers.

Green’s lecture “How the World Ends,” is a not-so-subtle hint at the urgency and seriousness of the rising global climate crisis. His latest book, “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” explores in 40 short essays how to live in a world of accelerated uncertainty.

“We are powerful enough to radically reshape the Earth’s climate and biodiversity but not powerful enough to choose how we reshape them,” he writes in the introduction of the book. “We are so powerful that we have escaped our planet’s atmosphere. But we are not powerful enough to save those we love from suffering.”

Those lines pinpoint the theme of this academic year’s Noble Lectures. The four-part-series is purposely designed to open unvarnished discussions about moral and ethical questions surrounding our environmental crisis, and the role we all have in this global reckoning.

“Part of our responsibility as Christians is to pay attention to folks who are already suffering. It’s not just about anticipating our own suffering and preparing for our own suffering. It is also about caring for the people suffering now — the people here, and on the other side of the world,” said the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity. “Thirty-three million people in Pakistan were displaced by floods, which were caused by a nonstop monsoon all summer, which is caused by climate change.”

With the list of extreme environmental events on the rise, the invitation to pay attention to the climate is clear. Heat waves, drought, floods, forest fires, severe storms, receding glaciers, and other climate events — from floods in Pakistan to destructive hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Florida, and a water shortage in Mississippi — make headlines nearly every day. For many, these events are revealing the eerie specter of a climate and society in immediate danger.

Part of the overall discussion of the series will be directed on how not to become overwhelmed in a spectrum of simmering emotions — fear, empathy, guilt, anger, and hopelessness — to the point of inaction Potts said.

In addition to Green, the Noble’s distinguished guest speakers will focus their lectures around many of these questions and others centered on ethics, action and redemption:

• Norman Wirzba, Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology, senior fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University’s Divinity School, Nov. 10.
• Dekila Chungyalpa, director of the Loka Initiative at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, March 22.
• Emmanuel Katongole, professor of Theology and of Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, April (date to be determined.)