Brian Tokar

Brian Tokar has been an activist, author and a well-known critical voice for ecological activism since the 1980s. He is currently the Director of the Institute for Social Ecology (social-ecology.org) and a lecturer in Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont. Brian's books include The Green Alternative (1987, revised 1992), Earth for Sale (1997), and Toward Climate Justice: Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change, originally published in 2010, and revised and expanded in 2014. He edited two books on the politics of biotechnology, Redesigning Life? and Gene Traders, and co-edited (with Fred Magdoff) the recent collection, Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict, Resistance and Renewal (Monthly Review Press). He serves on the board of 350-Vermont, and his articles on environmental issues and popular movements appear in Z Magazine and Green Social Thought, as well as on websites such as Counterpunch, ZNet, and Toward Freedom.

Brian has lectured throughout the U.S., as well as internationally, and is acclaimed as an advocate of grassroots action for ecological sanity and global justice. He received a Project Censored award for his investigative history of Monsanto (originally published in The Ecologist), and was an organizer of the annual “Biojustice” protests against the biotechnology industry from 2000 - 2007. He is a contributor to the Routledge Handbook of the Climate Change Movement, A Line in the Tar Sands, and other recent books. Brian holds concurrent degrees from MIT in biology and physics, and a Masters degree in biophysics from Harvard University.