Wednesday, August 30
6:30pm
at Payomet Theater
FREE

In partnership with the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies

There couldn’t be a more important time to listen to the state of the Ocean! The ocean holds the key to humanity’s survival. At a time when the world faces a multitude of potential calamities, from climate change to a struggling oil industry to rapid population growth, author and environmentalist Peter Neill of the World Ocean Observatory argues that now is the time to begin organizing.

The Once and Future Ocean offers a bold vision for a practical and possible future, based on a revolutionary shift toward a new hydraulic society that can be implemented through the political will of individuals who understand the necessity for change, the logic of a new moral alternative, and the reality of the consequences if we fail to act in time.

At 7.4 billion and counting, the world population is putting extraordinary demands on the planets resources: it is crucial that world leaders and its citizens look to the ocean and the water cycle as vital resources that must be protected. In his lecture, Neill argues that the threats facing us are real and the consequences devastating if we continue to use the same systems and business as usual. The ocean, he argues, is where we must go for fresh water, food, energy, health, protection from extreme weather and storm surge, political stability, community development and personal renaissance.

 The lecture series is in honor of John P. Bunker, who was Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and a visiting Fellow at King’s Fund Center for Health Services Development in London. Dr. Bunker, a pioneer in evidence-based medicine, was the founding chairman of the Stanford University Department of Anesthesia; he later headed Stanford’s Department of Health Services Research. He began coming to Truro in the summer as a small boy in the 1920s, and then, twenty years later, started bringing along his wife and four children. John Bunker’s many interests include art, music, literature, philosophy, medicine, politics, and spirituality.