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Life as We Know It (Can Be) - a talk with CNN's Bill Weir

Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World

Bill Weir, CNN's Chief Climate Correspondent, will share stories of communities working together to address climate change, groundbreaking innovations, and how we can leave behind a habitable planet.

Booked and Evanston Public Library are thrilled to partner together to bring you this event with Bill Weir, who will be discussing his new book. Book sales and book signing following the talk.  

Through Booked, you can also pre-order the book  Life As We Know It (Can Be): Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World.

The award-winning journalist, climate reporter and host of the CNN series “The Wonder List with Bill Weir” draws on his immersive, globetrotting reporting to share the secrets of the happiest, healthiest, and most resilient communities around the world. In a wide search for practical ways to protect nature, communities and our mental health in the face of frightening change, his riveting, intimate and deeply-researched stories include practical and inspiring solutions and a call for communities to rally around nature and each other.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

While reporting from every state and every continent, and filming his acclaimed CNN Original Series The Wonder List, Bill Weir has spent decades telling the stories of unique people, places, cultures, and creatures on the brink of change. As the first Chief Climate Correspondent in network news, he’s immersed in the latest science and breakthroughs on the topic, while often on the frontlines of disasters, natural and manmade.

In 2020, Bill began distilling these experiences into a series of Earth Day letters for his then newborn son to read in 2050, to help him better understand the world he will have grown up in, and be better prepared to embrace the future. Bill’s work and his letters were the inspiration for Life As We Know It (Can Be): Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World (Chronicle Prism Books; April 2024), which confronts the worry and wonder of climate change, with messages and examples of hope for all of us on how a better future can still be written.

Highlighting groundbreaking innovation in fields of clean energy, food and water sources, housing and building materials, and more, and touching on how happiness, resilience, and health and wellness factor into the topic of climate change, Bill’s stories take readers on a global journey, from the one community in Florida that took on a hurricane and never lost power, to the Antarctic Peninsula where one species of penguin is showing us the key to survival, to the nuclear fusion labs where scientists are trying to build a star in box. In these pages, we join a search for ancient wisdom and new ideas.

Life As We Know It (Can Be) is a celebration of the wonders of our planet, a meditation on the human wants and needs that drive it out of balance, and an inspiration for communities to galvanize around nature and each other as the very best way to best prepare and plan for what’s next.

Broken down into chapters based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Life As We Know It (Can Be) delves into how we must first meet the fundamentals for survival, so that we can then achieve love, esteem, and self- actualization. Overuse and lack of care for our planet’s limited resources has created a crisis that has left many people unable to secure basics like ocean air, water, food, and a habitable temperature in which to thrive. Weir focuses on how to meet these requirements so that we can move from the physiological to safety, and finally to love, connection, and belonging. By "flipping the pyramid,” or reversing the way we view the hierarchy of needs through an environmental lens, we can re-prioritize, change course, and leave behind a habitable planet for future generations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Bill Weir is a veteran anchor, writer, producer, and host who came to CNN in 2013 after a decade of award-winning journalism at ABC News. In 2019, he was named the network’s first Chief Climate Correspondent, drawing on his experience creating and hosting the primetime CNN Original Series “The Wonder List with Bill Weir,” now streaming on Max. With his distinctive storytelling style, lush photography and a focus on our connected planet, Weir and his team produced four seasons of the show across 28 countries, highlighting wondrous people, places, cultures, and creatures on the brink of seismic change.

In 2022, Weir earned a News & Documentary Emmy® Award for his CNN Special Report: Eating Planet Earth: The Future of Your Food, and Columbia Journalism Review called his 2020 CNN Special Report: The Road to Change “one of the very best pieces of climate journalism ever run by a mainstream US news organization.” His first book, Life As We Know It (Can Be) will be published by Chronicle Prism in April 2024.

In his network career, Weir reported from all 50 states and more than 50 countries, covering breaking news and uncovering global trends. He was among the first reporters into the floodwaters of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and Japan’s tsunami zone during the nuclear crisis of 2011. He dodged Taliban bullets in Afghanistan, led network coverage from Iraq and was the first American to broadcast live from Tibet. As a writer and anchor, Weir produced several special hours for CNN and ABC prime time on topics ranging from religion, brain science and Woodstock to the business of mail-order brides and the rise and fall of General Motors.

His live shots have come from atop the Golden Gate Bridge and below the waters of the Great Barrier Reef while his adventure reporting includes jumps from hot air balloons, hikes deep into the Amazon and one fun night spent lashed to the side of Yosemite’s El Capitan.

Before joining ABC News, Weir wrote and hosted projects for the FX and USA Networks and was an anchor/reporter in Los Angeles, Chicago, Green Bay and Austin, MN.

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