Tim Flannery to Sign Books on March 5 at MSU Bookstore – Richard Branson asks Tim to help judge $25MM contest to remove CO2

Meet Tim Flannery face to face during a book signing in MSU’s Bookstore on Monday, March 5 from 12–1pm. Flannery’s most recent book, The Weather Makers has just passed one million copies sold, making it one of the best selling books ever written about climate change.

After reading The Weather Makers , Richard Branson, Virgin Atlantic Airways founder, pledged an estimated three billion dollars toward developing sustainable energy sources to try to wean the world off fossil fuels, effectively starting a race toward biofuels. This month, Branson offered $25 million to the scientist who develops the best way of removing significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Branson has chosen Flannery to be one of the judges, and he will help select the $25 million winner.

The evening of the book signing, also on March 5, Flannery will lecture at 7:30pm in the MSU Ballrooms. Tickets are $5 and on sale and available at all TicketsWest locations, including ticketswest.com and at the Bobcat Ticket Office.

Flannery won 2006 Australian of the Year this month, one of that country’s most prestigious awards. He is director of the South Australian Museum, and chairman of the State Science Council and Sustainability Roundtable, as well as the National Geographic Society’s Australasian representative. He spent a year as professor of Australian studies at Harvard, where he taught in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. In 2002, he became the first environmentalist to deliver The Australia Day address to the nation, and in 2005 he was honored as Australian Humanist of the Year.

Sponsored by ASMSU, MSU Leadership Institute, Montana Committee for the Humanities, MSU Office of the President, and MSU Parent Family Association, for information on the book signing or the lecture, please call the MSU Leadership Institute at 994-7275.