All We Can Save series will highlight discussion on clean energy transition

LAWRENCE — The All We Can Save series at the University of Kansas returns this week with a virtual event titled “The Power of Local Advocacy: Beyond Coal to Clean Energy,” featuring Mary Anne Hitt, senior director of Climate Imperative.

Hitt will join Ali Brox, assistant teaching professor of environmental studies, and Madeleine Bonnallie, graduate student in English, for this moderated event, with opportunities for audience members to ask questions. The program will take place at 3 p.m. March 28; register online on Zoom.

Hitt previously worked for 12 years as the national director of campaigns for the Sierra Club and also served for a decade as director of the Beyond Coal Campaign. That campaign blocked the construction of 200 proposed coal plants in the U.S. and confirmed the closure of two-thirds of existing coal plants.

"The opportunity to connect with Mary Anne Hitt, whose career and experiences provide concrete examples of successful strategies used to work for a cleaner and more just future, means we can interact with someone whose national initiatives coincide with issues KU students are learning about in their classes and that are relevant to campus and the wider Lawrence community,” Brox said.

The All We Can Save series centers climate justice and draws from knowledge across and beyond fields of academic research. Contributors to the book “All We Can Save,” edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson, share wisdom from their own experiences and work to inspire collective agency around the urgency of climate change. The KU series highlights activists, scholars, thinkers and others whose life work generates and speaks to ideas for action, survival and nourishment.

The All We Can Save series is supported by The Commons; the Hall Center for the Humanities; the Environmental Studies Program; the KU departments of African & African-American Studies, English, Geography & Atmospheric Science, and Geology; the Emily Taylor Center for Women & Gender Equity; the History of Black Writing; the Office of Multicultural Affairs; and the University Honors Program.