Get Out: Town Hall Talks Extinction Tonight, Social Justice Tomorrow

EXTINCTION SCIENCE: UW professor of biology and earth and space sciences Peter Ward is the author of Under a Green Sky. In it, Ward explains how the Permian extinction more than 200 million years ago did in more than 90 percent of all species and nearly 97 percent of all living things. Whatever the trigger event was, his research on mollusk fossils indicates that the wipe-out was caused by a familiar pair of culprits: rising levels of carbon dioxide and climate change. It's sort of a sequel to his Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere, where he pointed out how dinosaurs in fact survived several mass extinctions that decimated most other life on earth, before losing their shit during the Permian period.

7:30pm Tuesday // Town Hall // $5

SOCIAL ENVIRONMENTALISM: Paul Hawken's late-'90s book Natural Capitalism launched a thousand sustainability entrepreneurs, making "triple bottom line" into an annoying catchphrase in the process. People liked the "green" part and the "making money" part, but the social justice element was not as widely reported on. Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. His book Blessed Unrest explores the full triple-bottom-line movement, its heroes and saints and history, what he sees as an emerging global phenomenon. It certainly would be nice to think so.

7:30pm Wednesday // Town Hall // $5