ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS SEMINAR SERIES: Designed Landscape Inspired by Native Plant Communities

HYBRID EVENT 
TUESDAY: SEPTEMBER 14, 5:30 P.M.

Darrel Morrison, CED Dean (1983-1991) and Professor emeritus
Designed Landscapes Inspired by Native Plant Communities

View on YouTube Here

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS SEMINAR SERIES: Environmental Leadership: Hope, Women Workers, and Small Business in Haiti

SEPTEMBER 28, 5:30 P.M.
125 JSB AND ZOOM (HYBRID)

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS SEMINAR SERIES
Dr. Christine Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies, UGA
Environmental Leadership: Hope, Women Workers, and Small Business in Haiti

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS SEMINAR SERIES: History and Transformation of Athens' Hot Corner

OCTOBER 26, 5:30PM
125 JSB AND ZOOM (HYBRID)

Dr. Scott Nesbit, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities, UGA CED
History and Transformation of Athens’ Hot Corner

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS SEMINAR SERIES: Local and Regional Policy Efforts for Equitable Sea Level Rise Adaptation

NOVEMBER 16, 5:30PM
125 JSB AND ZOOM (HYBRID)

Speakers, Tybee Island Local Government Leadership:

• Shirley Sessions - Mayor, Tybee Island  
• Shawn Gillen - City Manager, Tybee Island  
• Alan Robertson - Principal, AWR Strategic Consulting

Science-enabled policy and disaster response - lessons from the Deepwater Horizon
Dr. Samantha (Mandy) Joye

Date: 11.12.2019

Dr. Joye is a Regents’ Professor and holds the Athletic Association Professorship in Arts and Sciences in the Department of Marine Sciences in the University of Georgia's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. She is an expert in biogeochemistry and microbial ecology and works in open ocean and coastal ecosystems. Her work is interdisciplinary, bridging the fields of chemistry, microbiology, and geology.

Dr. Joye's research has been widely published in leading scientific journals, and she is regularly called upon by national and international scientific and policy agencies for expert commentary. Her work has been funded by substantial, multi-year grants from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Gulf of Mexico Research Institute, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among others.

Date: 10.26.2016

Each year the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts joins with the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program to co-sponsor a lecture to honor the late Eugene P. Odum. This year's lecture will be presented by Gary Nabhan, a scholar of conservation and environmental themes, particularly with respect to food. He is a prolific writer, having authored or co-authored 28 books on diverse topics, many for popular audiences. He currently is the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Arizona's Southwest Center.rn Nabhan's lecture will focus on the June 2016 Bioscience cover story exploring the emergent properties and creative tensions among ?three sciences? in documenting and protecting landscape-level biodiversity in culturally-influenced terrestrial and marine habitats. It will highlight twenty years of success in community-based projects with the Seri or Comcaac community in the Sea of Cortez region of Mexico. rn

"Greenwashing Was Not Our Goal" by Prof. Brian Orland

Date: 10.04.2016

Brian Orland holds degrees in Architecture (Manchester), and in Landscape Architecture (Arizona). He joined the University of Georgia for Fall 2015 as the Rado Family Foundation /UGA Professor in GeoDesign. He has conducted pioneering work in several areas of computer visualization for landscape design and planning including visual simulation, virtual reality and serious games. Most of his recent work has related to land use change, water resources and energy development in Pennsylvania and the UK but he has also co-led a study abroad program in Tanzania, focused on community design for biodiversity conservation.

Date: 03.24.2016

Paul Sutter is Associate Professor of History and a Faculty Affiliate in Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1997, and he was a member of the History Department at the University of Georgia from 2000-2009. Sutter is the author of Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (University of Washington Press, 2002) and Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies: Providence Canyon and the Soils of the South (University of Georgia Press, 2015); he is co-author of The Art of Managing Longleaf: A Personal History of the Stoddard-Neel Approach (University of Georgia Press, 2010), and co-editor of Environmental History and the American South: A Reader (University of Georgia Press, 2009).

Date: 03.01.2016

Tony Chackal is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy and holder of the graduate certificate in Environmental Ethics. Abstract: Discourse in environmental aesthetics concerns how nature should be aesthetically appreciated. Underlying many environmental aesthetic theories is the nature/culture dualism. Accordingly, many argue that nature should be appreciated "on its own terms," not those of art (Carlson 2004; Saito 2004; Berleant 2004). While the nature/culture distinction can have pragmatic uses, the dualism is misleading and should be replaced with a continuum. When various senses of nature are mapped onto the continuum, the breadth of the cultural can be seen in nature. Varieties of knowledge, narrative, and experience of nature can be utilized for varieties of perception and aesthetic appreciation.

Date: 01.29.2016

David Haskell, professor of biology at The University of the South, will give the University of Georgia's Odum Environmental Ethics lecture on Friday, January 29, at 11:30 a.m. in the Auditorium at the Odum School of Ecology. Haskell will speak on The Forest Unseen: Ecology, Ethics, and Contemplation. Among many other awards, Haskell's book The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature won the 2013 Best Book Award from the National Academies and was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. A book-signing event will follow Haskell's talk. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, and the Integrative Conservation Ph.D. Program. Haskell's lecture is the keynote for the Third Annual Symposium on Integrative Conservation.rn

Date: 12.01.2015

The release of Pope Francis's encyclical on the environment offers an opportunity to revisit the Judeo-Christian approach to environmental ethics. In the late 1960s, many environmental philosophers decried the standard interpretation of "subdue the Earth" as having led to widespread destruction of the environment. Fifty years later, how does this document change the story?

Date: 11.17.2015

This seminar will draw on three readings: Tornados and the Sublime: Discourse on the Human Place in Nature by David R. Keller; Being Prey by Val Plumwood (both available online); and A Florida Swamp: In with the Ixia by Bill Belleville (available by email from dorindad@uga.edu). The seminar is part of this semester's focus on The Biophilia Hypothesis, edited by Stephen Kellert and E.O. Wilson.

Date: 10.20.2015

Date: 04.22.2015

Award-winning writer and environmental activist Gary Ferguson.rnA reception and book-signing follows the talk.rnCo--sponsored by the UGA Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, the UGA Office of Sustainability, and the State Botanical Garden of Georgia

Date: 04.10.2015

Join Professor Zygmunt Plater, Boston College Law School, for a discussion of a landmark case, TVA vs. Hill, better known as the "snail darter" case. This is the 2015 Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture. rnrnEven today, thirty years after the legal battles to save the endangered snail darter, the little fish that blocked completion of a TVA dam is still invoked as an icon of leftist extremism and governmental foolishness. In this eye-opening book, the lawyer who with his students fought and won the Supreme Court case known officially as Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill tells the hidden story behind one of the nation's most significant environmental law battles.rnrnThe realities of the darters case, Plater asserts, have been consistently mischaracterized in politics and the media. This book offers a detailed account of the six-year crusade against a pork-barrel project that made no economic sense and was flawed from the start. In reality TVA's project was designed for recreation and real estate development. And at the heart of the little group fighting the project in the courts and Congress were family farmers trying to save their homes and farms, most of which were to be resold in a corporate land development scheme. Plater's gripping tale of citizens navigating the tangled corridors of national power stimulates important questions about our nations governance, and at last sets the snail darters record straight.rnrnA reception and book-signing will follow the talk. rnrnThe event is co-sponsored by the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, the Willson Center for Humanities and arts, the Georgia Natural History Museum, the Center for Integrative Conservation Research, and the River Basin Center, Odum School of Ecology.

Date: 03.17.2015

Dr. Nalini M. Nadkarni is Professor, Department of Biology and the Director, Center for Science and Math Education, at the University of Utah.

Date: 03.05.2015

Gallery talk and reception

Date: 03.03.2015

Margaret Meg Lowman, Ph.D. is Chief of Science and Sustainability, Dean of Science and Research Collections, Harry W. and Diana V. Hind Chair, and Lindsay Chair of Botany at the University of California.rnrnAs Chief of Science and Sustainability, Dr. Meg Lowman is responsible for the Academys scientific research and exploration programs, as well as a number of efforts meant to address the challenges of sustaining life on Earth. rnrnIn this newly created position, Lowman assumes the leadership of the Academys Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability, which was formed to more fully integrate and expand the Academys scientific research activities and its efforts to address sustainability challenges. This role includes developing and executing the strategic vision for the Academys scientific exploration and research programs; coordinating the engagement of the Academy's 300 Fellows in the ongoing educational and research life of the institution; and developing and implementing crucial sustainability initiatives, including public engagement activities, advocacy programs, and collaborations with organizations focused on ecology, land-use practices, and climate change. Lowman also serves as the Harry W. and Diana V. Hind Dean of Science and Research Collections and oversees the Academys priceless collection of nearly 46 million scientific specimens from around the world. rnrnBefore joining the Academy in January 2014, Lowman was Senior Scientist and Director of Academic Partnerships and Global Initiatives at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and had served as Director of the museums Nature Research Center. She was also a Research Professor of Natural Sciences in the College of Sciences at North Carolina State University, where she focused on initiatives involving communicating science to the public. rnrnNicknamed the real-life Lorax by National Geographic and Einstein of the treetops by the Wall Street Journal, Lowman pioneered the science of canopy ecology. For more than 30 years, she has worked tirelessly to map biodiversity in forest canopies and to champion forest conservation around the world, innovating new research methods and conservation strategies along the way. Her designs for hot-air balloons and treetop walkways are now used by scientists and students around the world who have joined Lowman in studying the little-known ecosystems that thrive high above the forest floor. Her creative approaches to fostering sustainability both at home and abroad, including her work with Coptic priests in Ethiopia to preserve some of the countrys last remaining forests, have garnered Lowman a number of international awards. rnrnLowman holds a Ph.D. in Botany from Sydney University, a M.S. in Ecology from Aberdeen University, a B.A in Biology from Williams College, and a degree in Executive Management from Tuck School of Business. She has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific publications, and her first book, Life in the Treetops, received a cover review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review.

Date: 02.27.2015

Discussion of two chapters from forthcoming book

Date: 02.19.2015

Randy Borman is a conservationist and Chief of the Ecuadorian Cofan tribe. The Cofan people are a small indigenous group of about 1200 people in northeastern Ecuador and southeastern Colombia. The rain forest provides most resources necessary to maintain their subsistence lifestyle. Borman's parents arrived in Ecuador in the 1950s as missionaries, and Borman was raised among the Cofan people. Oil companies began drilling in the region in the 1960s, and towns appeared around the oil activity. These events interrupted the Cofan peoples way of life, and they began resisting further expansion into the rain forest. Today Borman and the Cofan people advocate for the protection of the rain forest. Through partnerships with the Ecuadorian government and other indigenous peoples, they seek to raise awareness around the world of the importance of preserving natural resources. This event is part of the Willson Center's Global Georgia Initiative, which brings world class thinkers to Georgia. It presents global problems in local context by addressing pressing contemporary questions, including the economy, society, and the environment, with a focus on how the arts and humanities can intervene. Global Georgia combines the best contemporary thinking and practice in the arts and humanities with related advances in the sciences and other areas.

Date: 02.17.2015

The term that scientists have assigned to the cracking of a glacier into smaller ice bodies is calving, a term of birth used for many animals. During this calving of a glacier, the cracking and groaning sounds of the ice express labor pains that are befitting those of mother earth. From a depth psychological standpoint, the image described above can be viewed as a living myth; the ice a vital being that we can connect to and even converse with. In this talk we will briefly explore what depth psychology is and why it is relevant to environmental ethics. Then we will venture deep into the image of ice through a variety of mediums to bring this image to life. This presentation will facilitate an imaginal journey into the images of icy landscapes, into the molecular make-up of ice itself, deep into the unconscious of the individual, and into the consciousness of the planet. A new understanding is calved through the deep cracking groans of this living ice showing us what a powerful medium for knowledge this image can become in connecting the individual, the unconscious, and the natural world especially in this era of environmental concern. Sarah Norton holds a Masters and is a current PhD candidate in Depth Psychology with an emphasis in Jungian and archetypal studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. Her dissertation research is focused on the issue of climate change, specifically the melting of polar ice, viewed through the lens of Jungian psychology, archetypal psychology, and ecopsychology.

Date: 01.27.2015

Ecosystem service valuation has come into focus as a means of representing the value of goods that are not typically traded in markets. While valuing ecosystem services can be very useful, it is often quite challenging in practice. We will review, critique, and discuss current approaches, and how they might mature into a key set of methods for informing local, regional, and national policy. JP Schmidt is an assistant research scientist at the Odum School of Ecology. He obtained a B.A. degree in philosophy from Emory University, an M.S. degree in plant biology from the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Georgia. His research interests include plant population biology, environmental policy, ecological economics, and landscape ecology.

Date: 12.04.2014

William (Bill) Coates Jr., First Baptist Church of Gainesville, is the last speaker in the "Welcome to the Anthropocene" lecture series.

The physical sciences tell us the what and the how regarding the condition of the earth, but the why question -- why should we engage in helping to repair our world -- is a matter seriously addressed by people of faith. There are also many people of no faith equally concerned and willing simply because it is the right thing to do. We trust science every day because it is based on facts and it improves the quality of our lives. Good theology and good science make a powerful team in dealing with the condition of our home, the foremost issue of our future.

Date: 11.13.2014

Dr. Capra is an eminent scholar of theoretical physics and systems theory who has authored several international bestsellers including The Tao of Physics (1975), The Web of Life (1996), The Hidden Connections (2002), and Learning from Leonardo:Decoding the Notebooks of a Genius (2013). He has studied living systems for over 35 years and has most recently published The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (Cambridge 2014), co-authored with Pier Luigi Luisi. He is a founding director of Ecoliteracy in Berkley.

A reception will follow the lecture.

Dr. Capra's lecture is sponsored by the College of Engineering, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Environmental and Design.

Date: 11.04.2014

Lawrence Frank is a professional planner and certified floodplain manager with 20 years of experience in hazard mitigation and environmental planning. Mr. Frank works at URS Corporation in Atlanta and serves a wide range of clients including the Federal government, several States, local governments, universities, and Indian tribes. A primary career focus is assisting communities and tribes in preparing plans and identifying actions to help reduce risk to natural hazards while also protecting the environment. Mr. Frank is currently one of the lead planners for URS in the preparation of an update to the State of Louisianas Coastal Master Plan. In this plan, the State is evaluating actions needed to reduce the loss of wetlands and marsh due to changes in river flows, subsidence and sea level rise while also protecting its residents from the impacts of coastal storms. The plan takes into account the variety of users in the coastal region and how the protection of the wetlands and risk reduction benefits almost all of the users.

From July 2013 to May 2014, Mr. Frank led the development of a long-term disaster recovery plan for Long Beach, NY, a city on a barrier island which had been devastated by Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. While the plan focused on rebuilding in a manner to prevent future flood damage, it also addressed several key environmental issues including dune restoration, how to better co-exist as a highly developed city on a barrier island surrounded by marsh and the ocean, and how to leverage disaster funds to achieve a balance of risk reduction and environmental restoration. 

Mr. Frank has also led several hazard mitigation planning efforts across the country including preparation of multiple plans for tribes and local governments in New Mexico. In these efforts, Mr. Frank has worked with the tribes and communities to drive the connection between protecting the environment while also reducing natural hazard risk, especially from wildfire and flash floods. Mr. Frank also worked with the City of Savannah to prepare a flood mitigation plan which included recommendations to protect marsh areas from overdevelopment. 

Prior to joining URS in 2004, Mr. Frank worked at FEMA Region IV in Atlanta and managed hazard mitigation grant programs within Florida for five years. He worked on several innovative hazard mitigation projects in the Miami and Florida Keys areas that met multiple objectives including flood risk reduction and environmental protection. He interned at Biscayne National Park during this time to assist on a Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) coastal wetlands restoration project along Biscayne Bay. Mr. Frank earned a Masters degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina, and a Bachelors degree in English Literature also from UNC.

Date: 10.22.2014

This event will serve as the Athens premiere for the documentary "Who Owns Water?," which follows two brothers as they paddle from the headwaters of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers in Georgia all the way to the Apalachicola River and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. These three rivers are the battleground for the "Water Wars" which have raged since 1989 between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida over allocations of water between the three states.

Also the event will serve as the Athens launch party for the "Chattahoochee River Users Guide" by Joe Cook, released in August 2014 by the University of Georgia Press. Avid Bookshop will be selling copies of the UGA Press River Guides and Joe Cook will be present to sign them.

Georgia River Network, The Broad River Watershed Association, and Upper Oconee Watershed Network will be on hand to discuss water issues in our region and statewide.

6:30 - 7:30pm -- Complementary hors d'oeuvres from The National for ticket holders and cash bar; book signing; river group representatives in place.

7:30 - 8:30 -- David Hanson introduces and screens film

8:30 - 8:45 -- Q&A with Dave Hanson.

8:45 - 9:15 -- more mingling, book signing, and talking.

This event is co-sponsored by the UGA Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, the University of Georgia Press, and Georgia River Network.

Date: 09.25.2014

Welcome to the Anthropocene
A series of public lectures that looks at how mankind is interacting with and changing the world.
All lectures will take place in the historic UGA Chapel at 7 PM on Thursday evenings.

About the Anthropocene Lecture Series
First coined by ecologist Eugene Stoermer in the 1980s, the term Anthropocene has come to stand for a geological time period in which the actions of mankind have had a significant impact on the Earths ecosystems. In an effort to better understand this period of unprecedented change a number of UGAs leading scholars have come together to present the latest scientific findings on everything from how we are altering the planets chemistry to what these changes will mean for billions of people from around the world. The Anthropocene Lecture Series is intended for the entire Athens community. In clear and plain language these talks are geared for those who want to know more about who we are, how we got here, and where we are going.


September 25, 2014 - Urbanization and Climate Change 
http://anthropocene.uga.edu/lecture/urbanization-and-climate-change
J. Marshall Shepherd, Dept. of Geography

October 9, 2014 - Economics of the Transition Away from Fossil Fuels 
http://anthropocene.uga.edu/lecture/economics-transition-away-fossil-fuels
Daniel M. Everett, Dept. of Computer Science

October 23, 2014 - Pestilence in the 21st Century: Are diseases moving out of control?
http://anthropocene.uga.edu/lecture/pestilence-21st-century-are-diseases-moving-out-control
Sonia Altizer, Odum School of Ecology

November 6, 2014 - War and Global Environmental Change
http://anthropocene.uga.edu/lecture/war-and-global-environmental-change
James W. Porter, Odum School of Ecology

December 4, 2014 - Repairing the World: The Theological and Moral Perspective
http://anthropocene.uga.edu/lecture/repairing-world-theological-and-moral-perspective
William (Bill) Coates Jr., First Baptist Church of Gainesville

Date: 09.23.2014

This seminar will be a general discussion of the paper "The Southern Megalopolis: Using the Past to Predict the Future of Urban Sprawl in the Southeast U.S.," by A. J. Terando et al. The paper appeared in July 2014 in the journal PLoS ONE. 

The paper may be downloaded in its entirety at: 

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102261

Date: 09.05.2014

The elephant has shared a complex relationship with people through Asian history. From being a source of food and an agricultural pest through its role as a beast of burden, a war machine, a cultural icon, a sacred animal, a trade commodity, and an object of public display, the elephant has profoundly influenced the course of Asian civilizations. I shall successively trace this elephant-human relationship through successive stages in history the stone age, the Indus civilization, the Vedic period, the Mauryan empire, the Buddhist culture, the mediaeval Hindu world, the Islamic period, the colonial period and post-independent Asia. I would argue that the nature of the elephant-human relationship has been shaped by the specific ecological and socio-political conditions at various stages in Asian history. The ethics of this historical relationship is being increasingly questioned in the contemporary use of the captive elephant in circuses, temple festivities, and tourism. I shall conclude by outlining the roles of the elephant in the wild and in captivity in the modern world.

Dr. Sukumar is a professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

This seminar is co-sponsored by the Odum School of Ecology, the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, and the Georgia Natural History Museum.

Date: 09.02.2014

Join EECP faculty member Dr. Alan Covich for a discussion of the profound influence Dr. Frank Golley had on broader conceptions of ecology. Frank was one of the founders of the EECP. Current interest in developing a worldview to enhance Earth stewardship recognizes the importance of a multicultural perspective based on environmental ethics and a global understanding of the value of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Frank Golley was a champion in developing and implementing ecosystem concepts based on "nature-centered thinking". His environmental ethics-based principles emphasized "connectedness" among people and their environment that included the value of cultural differences in responding to natural and human-driven disturbances. 

We are holding this seminar at the Special Collections Library to be able to view some of the archival material Dr. Covich has been using. Currently the Special Collections Library houses more than 100 boxes of archives spanning Dr. Golley's career.

Date: 04.22.2014

Ann Pancake -- fiction writer, essayist, and environmental activist -- will read from her work at The Georgia Review's sixth annual Earth Day program, to be hosted by the State Botanical Garden of Georgia on Tuesday, April 22, at 7:00 pm in the Day Chapel. Local music duo Hawk Proof Rooster will open the evening with a brief concert and will also play during the reception that will follow Pancake's presentation.

Special additional support for this years event is provided by the University of Georgia's Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts and by UGA's Environmental Ethics Certificate Program.

Ann Pancake currently lives in Seattle, but the West Virginia native's writing, political efforts, and heart remain firmly focused in her home state, where the coal mining industry in particular the highly controversial process of mountaintop removal has both supported and devastated the populace in many areas.

The Georgia Reviews commitment both to enduring writing and to heightening awareness about environmental problems has brought Pancake to its pages with two short stories and an essay. Her story Arsonists (Summer 2009) explores the mysterious circumstances under which the homes of anti-coal-policy residents begin going up in flames. The second story, Mouseskull (Winter 2011), is told by a young West Virginia girl reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird's Scout who unravels the tangled forces behind her grandfathers suicide. Arsonists was selected for reprinting in New Stories from the South 2010; Mouseskull received a Special Mention listing in The Pushcart Prize XXXVII (2013).

Pancake's recent Georgia Review essay, Creative Responses to Worlds Unraveling: The Artist in the 21st Century (Fall 2013), worries the hows and whys of what a writer might do in the face of the huge complexities of environmental degradation: "I believe literature's most pressing political task of all in these times is envisioning alternative future realities . . . a way forward which is not based in idealism or fantasy, which does not offer dystopia or utopia, but still turns current paradigms on their heads. I now feel charged to make stories that invent more than represent, that dream more than reflect. This is not to say that I have more than glimmers of what such fiction will be, but I carry a burning urgency that it must be done." 

Ann Pancake's first book was Given Ground (2000), a collection of short stories published as the winner of the Bakeless Prize. Her novel Strange As This Weather Has Been (2007) won the Weatherford Award, was a finalist for the Orion Book Award, and was named one of the top ten fiction books of that year by Kirkus Reviews. Wendell Berry termed this work "one of the bravest novels I've ever read."

Her individual stories and essays have appeared in such diverse publications as Massachusetts Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Chattahoochee Review, Orion, Narrative, and Poets & Writers.

Hawk Proof Rooster, a.k.a. Charlie and Nancy Hartness, have provided after-program music for The Georgia Reviews Earth Day events several times. The Review is proud to make them a part of the main program this year, and attendees are advised to arrive early to get the best seating.

Past speakers for this series have included National Book Award winner Barry Lopez, Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Tretheway, Coleman Barks, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Alice Friman, and Scott Russell Sanders.

Date: 04.17.2014

This talk examines relationships between colonial power and Indigenous peoples on unceded Gitxsan and Witsuwiten territories in Northwest British Columbia, Canada. Exploring the contemporary place of Indigeneity in Canadian law and energy governance, I argue that the workings of colonial power must be understood as embroiled with the ontological dynamism of Indigenous resistance. I draw upon and problematize Foucaults concepts to theorize colonial power, demonstrating both the utility of Foucaults work and the necessity of reformulating his concepts in an analysis of contemporary settler colonialism. This paper argues that state strategies for governing Indigenous being must be read in relation to emergent Indigenous political assertions of authority and difference that undermine the operation of colonial power. Focusing on land claims litigation, I show how Gitxsan and Witsuwiten performed claims to Indigenous forms of territory and jurisdiction within Canadian courts that were in excess of those courts traditions. These subversive performances incited reforms in juridical and governance processes as the state struggled to reckon with Indigenous claims. However, entering the courts rendered Gitxsan and Witsuwiten traditions subject to new forms of colonial authority. Emergent arts of governing Indigeneity work to sublate Indigenous claims into colonial registers, thereby curtailing assertions of Indigenous territory and authority. Yet, Indigeneity is never foreclosed to a set domain. Today, while the Canadian state acts to suspend the excess of Indigenous political and territorial claims, Gitxsan and Witsuwiten activists and authorities continually advance new jurisdictional claims that unsettle those of the colonial sovereign, endlessly reopening spaces of contestation and negotiation.

Tyler McCreary is a post-doctoral research fellow in Geography at the University of British Columbia. His doctoral research examined relations between colonial power and Indigenous peoples in extractive resource governance on Gitxsan and Witsuwit'en territories in Northwestern British Columbia, Canada. His current research examines Indigenous resistance to tar sands pipeline development in Western Canada.

Date: 04.14.2014

DOCUMENTARY: A FIERCE GREEN FIRE -- MONDAY APRIL 14

A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: THE BATTLE FOR A LIVING PLANET is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years from conservation to climate change. Directed and written by Mark Kitchell, Academy Award-nominated director of Berkeley in the Sixties, and narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende and Meryl Streep, the film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2012, has won acclaim at festivals around the world.

Inspired by the book of the same name by Philip Shabecoff and informed by advisors like Edward O. Wilson, the film chronicles the largest movement of the 20th century and one of the keys to the 21st. It brings together all the major parts of environmentalism and connects them. It focuses on activism, people fighting to save their homes, their lives, the future and succeeding against all odds.

SHOWTIME: 7:30p - MON 4/14 -- FOLLOWED BY DISCUSSION w/ FILMMAKER MARK KITCHELL

ADMISSION: $5.00

Date: 04.11.2014

Michael P. Nelson, a philosopher and environmental ethicist, is the co-editor of Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril with Kathleen Dean Moore. He has performed extensive research on the wolves and moose on Isle Royale. He is the Ruth H. Spaniol Chair of Natural Resources and a professor of environmental ethics and philosophy at Oregon State University

Isle Royale in Lake Superior, North America, is home to the longest continuous study of a predator-prey system in the world. Currently in the midst of its 55th year, ecologists are learning how wolves and moose interact in this single-predator, single-prey system. But this isnt just about long-term ecological science. The Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project team also includes geneticists, social scientists, filmmakers, and one bewildered philosopher, Michael P. Nelson. The project has had important implications for and direct impact upon our policies about wolves, and offers an example of efforts to understand something about the human relationship with nature that lies at the edges or fusions of our academic disciplines. The project deals with the isolated wolf and moose communities on Isle Royale, including the genetic constitution of the wolves and ethical dimensions of whether or not to introduce new wolves.

This event is part of the Scott & Heather Kleiner Lecture Series, monthly colloquia in the Department of Philosophy featuring renowned scholars speaking on a wide variety of philosophical topics, and is supported by the Willson Center.

Date: 03.28.2014

Wes Jackson, founder and president of The Land Institute, to speak at UGA
Athens, Ga. The University of Georgia College of Environment and Design will host a
lecture by Wes Jackson, a leader in the international movement for sustainable
agriculture, on March 28 at 2 p.m. in the UGA Chapel.

The lecture is in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Environmental Ethics Certificate
Program and will be co-sponsored by the Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities
and Arts. It is also the annual Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture. This event is free and
open to the public.

Jackson is founder and president of The Land Institute, a nonprofit organization in Salina,
Kan., dedicated to the principles of ecological agriculture. A cornerstone of the institute's
research efforts is the development of agricultural systems that mimic natural ecosystems.
Jackson is the originator of the concept of perennial polyculture, an agricultural system
that relies on perennial grains, preserves soil, reduces water inputs and mimics the Great
Plains ecosystems in the surrounding area.

The institute is also home to Sunshine Farm, a completely solar-powered farm operation,
and the Matfield Green project, an investigation of the economic and social dynamics that
led to the decline of rural America. The work of The Land Institute has been featured in
The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, National Geographic, Time magazine and National
Public Radio.

Jackson's writings include papers and several books, with his most recent being Nature
as a Measure (2011) and Consulting the Genius of Place: An Ecological Approach to
New Agriculture (2010). Jackson was predicted by Life magazine to be among the 100
"important Americans of the 20th century." The Smithsonian recognized him in 2005 as
one of "35 Who Made a Difference," and in 2009 he was included in Rolling Stone's
"100 Agents of Change."

Jackson is a recipient of the Pew Conservation Scholars award (1990), a MacArthur
Fellowship (1992), Right Livelihood Award (Stockholm), known as the "Alternative
Nobel Prize" (2000), and the Louis Bromfield Award (2010). He has received five
honorary doctorates. In 2007, he received the University of Kansas Distinguished Service
Award and was one of the 2011 recipients of the University of Kansas College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumni Awards.

In addition to lecturing nationwide and abroad on the subject of sustainable agriculture,
Jackson is a Post Carbon Institute Fellow and serves on the editorial board of Solutions.
The UGA Chapel is located on the university's historic North Campus, and public pay
parking can be found in the parking deck on South Jackson Street or downtown.

Following the lecture, refreshments will be served in the lobby of the Jackson Street Building to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program.

Date: 02.25.2014

Genetic modification is chasing a rose that glows and supertrees for paper and fuel, with no telling where it all ends up in the landscape.

Genetically modified crops, like corn and soybeans, have become a strong component of the American agricultural industry. Criticism and activism related to biotechnology has also focused heavily on GM food products. Less well known is the emerging interest in biotechnology in the ornamental and landscape industries. Within the Landscape Architecture profession, an important client-base and trendsetter for these industries, there is little clear guidance regarding biotechnologys use in the environment. 

Kevan Williams is a second-year MLA candidate at the UGA College of Environment and Design and a recipient of the graduate certificate in environmental ethics. The article on which this talk is based appeared in the September 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine. A copy of the article is posted at

http://www.uga-eecp.com/user_files/LAM_Sep2013_GMO.pdf

or 
On the EECP website, select "News and Events" in the left column and click on "Newsletters."

Date: 02.06.2014

Opening panel discussion with the artists and reception Thursday, February 6th, 4:30-6:00 p.m.

Betsy Cain is a visual artist and environmental activist living on the marsh on the coast of Georgia. Since 2007 she and her husband, photographer David Kaminsky, have been responding to the environmental impact of a neighbor's 980-foot dock that reaches out into the shallow tidal estuary of Toms Creek on Wilmington Island in Savannah, Ga. Their response has been on two basic fronts: as residents deeply tied to the landscape of the estuary and as artists deeply tied to the natural environment. This response has inspired action in several realms including a local community-level conservation effort and a highly personal, artistic response, as well as a transcendent dialogue of philosophical and ethical dimensions.

"Wrack and Ruin and the Creative Response: A Cautionary Environmental" explores both the artistic response and a pragmatic exercise in environmental conservation. Significantly, the show is designed to engage students in the creative reply to an environmental issue, which will lead to a deeper understanding of the impact of human endeavors on the landscape and also provide inspiration for productive, positive reaction to a challenging situation, both man-made and naturally occurring.

A panel discussion marks the opening of the Wrack and Ruin exhibit at 4:30 p.m. in Jackson Street Building lecture hall 123 on Thursday, Feb. 6. Betsy Cain and David Kaminsky will answer questions from panelists drawn from faculty and students as well as the audience. After the discussion, we will serve refreshments and the artists will be in the gallery for further discussion.

Betsy Cain's work is represented in the collections of the High Museum of Art, the Telfair Museum, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and the Roswell Museum and Art Center in Roswell, New Mexico. She has four professional gallery affiliations in the Southeast.

The Circle Gallery, located in the Jackson Street Building on UGAs North Campus, is an inspiring venue for art that engages, informs, and entertains visitors interested in environmental design. A diverse selection of seven shows per year reflects our colleges interdisciplinary character. From landscape architecture, to historic preservation, to planning and design, the Circle Gallery strives to enrich the experiences of our students and the community.

Date: 02.04.2014

Dr. Evans dissertation research at the University of Florida critically examined invasive plant control programs in several of Florida's spring-fed streams using an integrated approach of philosophical concept analysis, participatory interviews, and physico-ecological scenario models. His initial foray into this research was his intrigue about the strange juxtaposition of a certain floating plant, Pistia stratiotes, being vividly described by William Bartram in Florida as early as 1765, but in recent decades being prominently designated and aggressively controlled by state and federal management agencies as a Class 1 invasive non-native species. 

For his EECP seminar, he will describe the interdisciplinary research, institutional travails, and eventual smoking guns that led him to finally publish his 2013 paper presenting several lines of evidence indicating a pre-Columbian presence of Pistia in Florida. However, he also promises to ask us why such questions of temporal dispersion should matter so much to us anyway when thinking about how to manage the ecosystem assemblages we are presented with today. Put another way, how much credence should we give the pre-Columbian ideal when thinking of ecosystems into an emergent future? And what lessons might we glean from species like water lettuce that may just challenge our views of the romantic pristine?


Dr. Jason Evans holds the public service faculty position of Environmental Sustainability Analyst in the Government Services and Research Division at the UGA Carl Vinson of Institute of Government. Through this position he works with state and local governments in Georgia and the southeast U.S. region applied environmental research and outreach assistance on topics that include sea level rise, land use change, and water resource conservation. He is also currently an Adjunct Professor position in the UGA College of Environment and Design, where he most recently taught a course in Applied Landscape Ecology for graduate students in the MLA, MUPD, and Environmental Ethics Certificate programs. Dr. Evans received both his Ph.D. and M.S. in Interdisciplinary Ecology from the University of Florida, with an area of concentration in Environmental Engineering Sciences. However, he is very proud to have initially embarked upon his academic journey from the perspective of environmental ethics, and has a B.A. in Philosophy from New College of Florida as enduring concrete evidence of these origins.


Please see Dr. Evans paper here:

http://www.conservationandsociety.org/text.asp?2013/11/3/233/121026

EcoFocus Film Festival March 19-29

Date: 

As usual, the EcoFocus Film Festival has an outstanding line-up of films coming to Athens, March 19-29. 

For the Festival Schedule, please see

http://www.ecofocusfilmfest.org/films

for trailers and descriptions of films. The detailed schedule and the varieties of venues involved can be downloaded as a pdf at the same site.


Films of particular relevance to environmental ethics include:

Damnation (removal of dams in America)

GMO OMG (ecological and ethical implications of genetically modified organisms)

Into the Gyre (plastics in the Atlantic)

Population Boom (is the problem too many people or is it overconsumption of resources?)

Shored Up (responses to sea level rise in coastal America)

The Ghosts in Our Machine (evolving views of animal rights)

The Human Experiment (personal autonomy and chemical exposure)

Thin Ice (are climate scientists perpetrating a hoax, as some claim?)

Wild things (predator control in the West)



All tickets for the 2014 festival go on sale March 1, 2014. 

Tickets can be purchased at the Cine box office, which opens daily at 4pm. Cine is unable to offer phone ticket sales at this time. 

Passes and selected tickets are available for on-line purchase through Eventbrite starting March 1, 2014

Tickets and Passes
Note: UGA Students - Free with Student ID (limited to first 25 students per screening)

$45 - EcoFocus 2014 Festival Pass
The EcoFocus Festival Pass allows admission to all regular festival screenings except the 3/20 Opening Night event, which is ticketed separately. Festival passes do not guarantee admission to the films. Please present your festival pass at the Cine box office early (anytime after March 7, 2014) to get a paper ticket and guarantee your spot. Passes are non-refundable and non-transferable.

$20 - Opening Night Reception and Films (Thursday, March 20th, 6pm, Cin)

$7.50 - General Admission to Regular Screenings

$5 - Ripple Effect Events

Free events are non-ticketed

Admission to the EcoFocus/Slingshot Party at Little Kings on 3/22 @ 9:30pm is free with EcoFocus Pass or Ticket Stub; otherwise $5 cover 

Date: 11.20.2013

Fishman's UGA talk will look at the history and future of water. He spent three years circling the globe--from Las Vegas to New Delhi--to uncover how the world of water is changing, and what the implications are. New water attitudes and the connection between water and a number of professional fields will also be presented.

Fishman is the author of The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water (2011), a bestselling book on water in America. His previous book, The Wal-Mart Effect (2006), has also become a bestseller, a catch phrase and an Economist Book of the Year. An award-winning senior writer for Fast Company, Fishman is an investigative journalist, specializing in business innovation and social responsibility. Fishman also blogs about water issues for National Geographic.

This seminar is co-sponsored by the EECP and HGOR, an Atlanta-based planning and landscape architecture firm.

Date: 11.12.2013

Dr. Mikko Saikku, University of Helsinki, is an environmental historian with a keen interest in conservation biology, endangered species, and wilderness. He is the author of This Delta, This Land: An Environmental History of the Yazoo-Mississippi Floodplain (University of Georgia Press 2005) and co-editor of Encountering the Past in Nature (Ohio University Press 2001). 

His current project, under contract with the McGill-Queens University Press, is tentatively titled "Constructing a Manly Nation through Nature: Hunting, Fishing, and the Wilderness Idea in North America and the Nordic Countries." It juxtaposes late nineteenth and early twentieth century North American and Nordic ideas about nature, landscape, and masculinity. The forthcoming monograph attempts to shed light on notions of nationalism and manliness--some shared, some distinct between the two regions, emphasizing the role of recreational hunting and fishing in the creation of national cultures. This transnational project pays special attention to the concepts of wilderness and discusses the formation of an idealized manhood in peripheries of North America and the Nordic countries. The relationship between socioeconomic class and access to wilderness resources, and the roles and motivations of recreational hunters and fishers in the evolving national conservation movements are particularly important.

This seminar is co-sponsored by the EECP, the History Department, and the University of Georgia Press, with the cooperation of the Special Collections Library.It is part of the UGA Spotlight on the arts Festival.

Date: 10.29.2013

This fall, the Chew Crew, a small herd of goats, returns to continue its work clearing invasive plants from the banks of Tanyard Creek. We will start our walk at the Tanyard Creek experimental restoration site at the foot of Baxter Street. Our onsite hosts, EECP faculty member Dr. Eric MacDonald, CED grad student Zach Richardson, and UGA law graduate Mikey Salter, will describe the goals of the project and its progress thus far as we interact with the goats.

Then we will proceed to the Founders Garden House for a potluck dinner. Participants are encouraged to bring goat-themed food to share. Over dinner, our discussion will focus on the ecological, legal, and ethical ramifications of prescribed grazing as an urban restoration tool.

Date: 10.04.2013

Philosopher Frederick Ferre was one of the founding fathers of the EECP and continued to offer insight and encouragement for the Program until his untimely death last spring. The EECP and the Philosophy Department join to reflect on Frederick's wide-ranging contributions to environmental philosophy. 

Our special guest is Dr. Geoffrey Frasz, professor of philosophy at the College of Southern Nevada. Dr. Frasz conducted his dissertation under Frederick's guidance and was among the first recipients of the graduate certificate in environmental ethics in 1984.

Date: 09.24.2013

Professor Alfie Vick is the Georgia Power Professor of Environmental Ethics in the College of Environment and Design, where he teaches many of its ecology-based courses. During Maymester, he also teaches a three-week field course studying native plants of the southern Appalachians, Cherokee ethnobotany, and Cherokee history and culture. As the course progresses, he and his students move west along the northern route of the Trail of Tears, visiting significant sites, meeting with a variety of scholars, and camping along the way. For this seminar, he will discuss how this field course touches on many topics of environmental ethics: interpreting cultural history, tourism, land management, ethno-ecology, and climate change vulnerability

Date: 09.17.2013

The University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology will host a celebration in honor of the 100th birthday of its founder and namesake, Eugene P. Odum, on Sept. 17 from 3-5 p.m. in the ecology building. The event is open to the public, and cake and ice cream will be served. To RSVP, contact Lee Snelling at snelling@uga.edu by Sept. 10.

Dr, Odum was one of the founders of the EECP. We continue his legacy of support through the Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture co-sponsored by the EECP and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

The program will include a welcome from John Gittleman, dean of the Odum School, and remarks by Betty Jean Craige, University Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Director Emerita of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. Craige is the author of Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist, published by the UGA Press in 2001. Craiges remarks will be followed by a panel discussion on Ecology: The Last and Next 100 Years. 

A short film, A Celebration of the Life of Eugene P. Odum, which documents Odums 2002 memorial service, will be shown after the panel discussion. 

Odum, who lived from 1913 to 2002, is often referred to as the father of modern ecology for his pioneering contributions to ecosystem ecology and for promoting the ecosystem concept throughout academia and to the general public. 

Odum came to UGA in 1940 as a professor of zoology, where he focused his early efforts on establishing the science of ecology as its own discipline. During his tenure at UGA, he penned the influential textbook, Fundamentals of Ecology, which was first published in 1953 and is currently in its fifth edition. In the 1950s, he started the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Georgia Marine Biological Laboratory, later known as the UGA Marine Institute, on Sapelo Island. In 1967, he established the Institute of Ecology, which became the Odum School of Ecology in 2007.

Among his many honors were the Crafoord Prizeoften called the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for ecologywhich he shared with his brother Howard T. Odum. He also held membership in the National Academy of Sciences and recognition by numerous organizations both large and small for his contributions to science and environmental conservation. 

As part of the centennial celebration, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library has organized a special exhibition of Odums papers, journals, photographs and other memorabilia. It will be on display from September through December in the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Libraries.

To RSVP, contact Lee Snelling at snelling@uga.edu by Sept. 10.

Date: 09.12.2013

Join us for a special sneak preview of BLACKFISH on Thursday, September 12th at Cine in downtown Athens. BLACKFISH offers a critical look at the consequences of keeping killer whales in captivity.

The event will start with a reception (catered by The National) at 6:30 p.m. followed by the film at 7:30 p.m. Dr. Lori Marino (featured in the film) will lead an audience discussion after the film.

Dr. Marino is a neuroscientist at Emory University and Executive Director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy, an independent non-profit organization dedicated to using science and knowledge to promote animal advocacy causes.

Admission $9.75 ($7.50 for seniors). Tickets include film and reception. UGA students with valid UGACard get in free.

This event is presented by EcoFocus Film Festival, Cine, and the UGA student organization Speak Out for Species. EcoFocus was initiated by UGA's Odum School of Ecology in 2007 and is co-sponsored by the Odum School, Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the UGA Office of Sustainability, and the Georgia Sea Grant.

Date: 09.03.2013

As we explore the history of the EECP and the broader environmental movement, it's worth taking stock of the importance of symbols in accelerating the development of environmental awareness. In the summer of 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught on fire. It was not the first time that pollutants discharged into the river ignited; indeed, earlier fires had caused much more destruction along the waterfront and even resulted in deaths. What made this event a catalyst not only for state action but nationally as well? We will watch excerpts from the documentary The Return of the Cuyahoga and reflect upon where we stand 44 years later.

Date: 08.15.2013

The Circle Gallery in the University of Georgia College of Environment and Design will open its season with an exhibit dedicated to the historic greenhouse on Sapelo Island. "Breaking Dormancy: The Sapelo Island Greenhouse Show" will be on display at the Circle Gallery in the Jackson Street Building August 12-September 20, with a reception featuring the artists August 15 from 4:30-6 p.m. 

Four area artists, Karekin Goekjian, Caroline Montague, Sue Goldstein and Ginger Goekjian, will exhibit paintings, photographs and pastels inspired by the greenhouse. Goldstein, a professor of geology and marine sciences at UGA, has photographed the greenhouse at Sapelo Island for several years. Her work documents the evolution of the greenhouse, which ceased operation in the 1980s. The Goekjians are photographers who produce their photographic art using moonlight. Montague is a painter and sculptor living in Athens and has created works specifically for this exhibit. The exhibit is part of an effort to restore the estate-style greenhouse, a 5,250-square-foot building made of glass and steel that was commissioned in 1925 by early automobile industry pioneer Howard Coffin.

Hours for the Circle Gallery are 9 a.m.-6 p.m. weekdays. Located in the entrance hall of the Jackson Street Building at 285 S. Jackson St., the Circle Gallery is open free to the public. Paid parking is available in the North Campus Parking Deck.

Date: 04.22.2013

Nationally known environmental activist and award-winning writer Scott Russell Sanders will speak on "Near and Distant Bears" during The Georgia Review's fifth annual Earth Day program, to be held at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, April 22, in the Day Chapel at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. A reception will follow, with musical accompaniment by the eclectic Athens duo Hawk Proof Rooster. Supporting sponsors for the event are the University of Georgia's Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the UGA Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, and the Friends of the State Botanical Garden. Sanders' talk is open to the public free of charge, but seating in the chapel is limited and people should plan to arrive early; Sanders' books and copies of The Georgia Review will be available for purchase both before and after he speaks.

Scott Russell Sanders, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Indiana University, has published more than thirty works of nonfiction and fiction over the past forty years, including a number of books for children. Among his titles are Earth Works: Selected Essays (2012), A Conservationist Manifesto (2009), A Private History of Awe (2006), The Country of Language (1999), Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World (1993), The Paradise of Bombs (1987), and Wilderness Plots: Tales about the Settlement of the American Land (1983). His enduring concerns include the place of human beings in nature, the pursuit of social justice, the relationships between culture and geography, and the search for a spiritual path.

Sanders' many honors include the Mark Twain Award, the John Burroughs Essay Award, the Lannan Literary Award, the Indiana Humanities Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Indiana Arts Commission.

Since the early 1980s Sanders has published periodically in The Georgia Review, UGA's internationally regarded quarterly journal of arts and letters that has a growing reputation for its presentation of writings on key environmental matters. Sanders' essay "Simplicity and Sanity" provided the focal point for a special feature in the Spring 2009 issue of the Review, "Culture and the Environment: A Conversation in Five Essays"; his "The Way of Imagination" appeared in Summer 2012; and a version of "Near and Distant Bears" is forthcoming in Summer 2013.

Readers at past Georgia Review Earth Day programs at the State Botanical Garden have included National Book Award-winner Barry Lopez, Coleman Barks, Natasha Tretheway, and Judith Ortiz Cofer.

Reception and book-signing to follow reading at the Day Chapel.

Sanders will also speak at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 23, at the Bowers House Writers' Retreat and Literary Center, located at 100 Depot Street in Canon, Georgia, north of Athens near Royston. This event is also open to the public free of charge; this presentation, "Literature and Legacy," will be based on Sanders' Georgia Review essay "The Way of Imagination," which explores the importance of "leaving a legacy of healthy land." The Georgia Review maintains a writer-in-residence program at the Bowers House and has hosted readings there by such noted writers as poet Alice Friman and novelist Terry Kay.

Date: 03.25.2013

"Restless Fires" provides a detailed rendering of John Muir's thousand-mile walk to the Gulf based on both manuscript and published accounts. Hunt particularly examines the development of Muir's environmental thought as a young adult. The legacy of this walk is found in Muir's perceptive insights generated in part by his background and reading, and by his experience with the Southern environment and its people and plants during the walk.

James B. Hunt is professor emeritus of History at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, and cofounder of the Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship. Hunt taught American, Latin American, and World history while at Whitworth. For twenty-five years, he provided faculty leadership to students traveling to Central America for Whitworth's five months study/service program. This led to his compelling interest and writing on the impact of youthful travel on such American leaders as John Quincy Adams, Frederick Douglass, Jane Addams, and John Muir.

Book-signing to follow.

Date: 03.21.2013

Films qualifying for EECP credit will be announced later.

Date: 03.20.2013

Early American ecologists long lamented the lack of laboratory facilities to support experimental ecology. In the 1940s new funding sources made it possible to create innovative laboratories for the study of whole organisms, which helped spur growth in physiological ecology. Botanists led the way, and these labs became known as "phytotrons", named after the cyclotrons of physics. We'll explore the motives behind the creation of the first phytotron at Caltech in 1949, the brainchild of physiologist and ecologist Frits Went, and the worldwide laboratory movement that grew from this model. These labs represent another form of "Big Biology" that preceded the more familiar "Big Ecology" projects of the International Biological Program.

There will be reception at 5PM after her seminar sponsored by the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program.

Here are some of Sharon's work on the history of ecology:

Books:

1995. Sharon E. Kingsland. Modeling nature—episodes in the history of population ecology. University of Chicago Press (2nd edition).

2005. Sharon E. Kingsland. The evolution of American ecology—1890-2000. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Selected Publications
2009. Sharon E Kingsland. Frits Went's atomic age greenhouse: the changing labscape on the lab-field border. Journal of the history of biology 2009; 42(2): 289-324.

2007. Sharon E Kingsland. Maintaining continuity through a scientific revolution: a rereading of E. B. Wilson and T. H. Morgan on sex determination and Mendelism. Isis; an international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences. 2007;98(3):468-88.

2004. Margaret Palmer; Emily Bernhardt; Elizabeth Chornesky; Scott Collins; Andrew Dobson; Clifford Duke; Barry Gold; Robert Jacobson; Sharon Kingsland; Rhonda Kranz; et al. Ecology. Ecology for a crowded planet. Science (New York, N.Y.) 2004;304(5675):1251-2.

2002. Sharon Kingsland. Designing nature reserves: adapting ecology to real-world problems. Endeavour 2002;26(1):9-14.

1994. S E Kingsland. Essay review: the history of ecology. Journal of the history of biology 1994;27(373):349-57.

1991. S E Kingsland. Essay review: Science and politics in the nineteenth century. Journal of the history of biology 1991;24(1):155-61.

1987. S Kingsland. Defining American biology: new books in the history of American science. Essay review. Bulletin of the history of medicine 1987;61(3):462-70.

1986. S E Kingsland. Mathematical figments, biological facts: population ecology in the thirties. Journal of the history of biology 1986;19(2):235-56.

1984 S Kingsland. Raymond Pearl: on the frontier in the 1920's. Raymond Pearl memorial lecture, 1983. Human biology 1984;56(1):1-18.

Date: 03.07.2013

This book project is a historicist examination of Latin American texts dealing with the environment. It reveals the unfolding of human-nature relations within the specifically Latin American context, including attitudes that are compatible with those that have led us to the current global environmental crisis as well as a plethora of alternative projects and conceptualizations.

Date: 02.13.2013

11 am — Odum School of Ecology

"The Galapagos Islands, Then and Now"

Introduction — Alan Covich, Odum School of Ecology

"Trouble in Paradise: Human-Environment Conflicts and the Galapagos Sea Lion (Zalophus wollebaeki)"
Marielle Abalo, Geography Department

"What Darwin did not say about Galapagos: Geographies of discontent amidst the tropical sublime"
Fausto Sarmiento, Geography Department

Open Discussion

4 pm — Room C127 Davison Life Sciences Center

"The Sandwalk Adventures: the interaction of story, images and science" by Jay Hosler

A 1989 graduate of DePauw University, Dr. Hosler was an Honor Scholar and earned a bachelor's degree in biological sciences. Upon graduation he received the 1989 Albert E. Renolds Senior Biologist Award. Dr. Hosler earned his Ph.D. in 1995 in biological sciences from the University of Notre Dame where he remained as an assistant professional specialist from 1995-96 to teach Evolutionary Ecology and Introductory Biology Laboratory. In 2000, Dr. Hosler joined the faculty of Juniata College where he teaches General Biology, Sensory Biology, Invertebrate Biology and Neurobiology. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Gibbel Award for Outstanding Teaching. 

As a postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Hosler was awarded a National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Health to study olfactory processing in honey bees. Dr. Hosler's research focuses on learning and sensory biology and has been published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, Behavioral Neuroscience, The Journal of Insect Physiology and the Journal of Comparative Psychology. He has also served as a manuscript reviewer for the Journal of Insect Physiology and Naturwissenschaften. In addition to his work with insects, his lab has also started using an eye-tracking device to examine the cognitive basis of how people read comics. Dr. Hosler's research at Juniata has been funded by money from the William von Liebig Foundation and Kresge Foundation.

Outside the lab, Dr. Hosler has garnered national recognition for his work as a cartoonist and in 1998 received a Xeric Grant to publish his first graphic novel Clan Apis, a comic book on honey bee biology and natural history. His second graphic novel The Sandwalk Adventures was released in the spring of 2003. It tells the story of a conversation about evolution between Charles Darwin has with a follicle living in his left eyebrow. His books have been featured on National Public Radio's Morning Edition as well as in The New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education and Science. 

In 2006, Dr. Hosler received a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation to continue integrating science and comics. The grant funds the development of a college biology textbook in comic book format. He was also a writer, artist and consultant for a new line of educational comics from Harcourt Achieve's LYNX line. He wrote and drew two comics for the ten comic line. The first story, Zoo Break, addressed concepts of animal intelligence while the second story, UFO, examines life in the ocean.

For more information, please see

http://darwinday.uga.edu/

Date: 02.07.2013

James Anaya is Regents and James J. Lenoir Professor of Human Rights Law and Policy, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona. An expert in international human rights and indigenous peoples law, he currently serves as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

This is the annual Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture, co-sponsored by the EECP and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

Date: 01.22.2013

We'll start off the New Year with a discussion of the essay "Dark Ecology: Searching for truth in a post-green world" by Paul Kingsnorth. His essay appears in the January/February 2013 issue of Orion magazine:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7277

Our discussion of the essay will be led by EECP faculty member Ron Balthazor. 

Refreshments 5-5:30; seminar 5:30-6:30 pm.

Date: 11.06.2012

Panel discussion featuring Charles Seabrook, author of "World of the Saltmarsh" and Merryl Alber, author of the children's book "And the Tide Comes In...: Exploring a Georgia Salt Marsh." 

Charles Seabrook, a native of John's Island, South Carolina, is a columnist and environmental writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He is the author of "Cumberland Island: Strong Women, Wild Horses" and, with Marcy Louza, "Red Clay, Pink Cadillacs and White Gold: The Kaolin Chalk Wars." 

Dr. Merryl Alber is an Professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at UGA, where she teaches courses in Marine Biology, Marine Ecology, and Coastal Marine Policy. Her research is focused on the marine ecology of nearshore environments, and includes studies of estuarine food webs; analyses of the impacts of freshwater withdrawal on coastal systems; models of estuarine flushing times; studies of the biological characteristics and fate of suspended sediments in estuaries; and investigations of human impacts on the coastal zone. She is also actively involved in efforts to improve communication between scientists and coastal policy makers, and coordinates the Georgia Coastal Research Council.

The panel will be moderated by Dorinda G. Dallmeyer, director of the UGA Environmental Ethics Certificate Program and contributing author to "Altamaha: A River and Its Keeper." 

A reception and book signing follow the seminar at 5:00 p.m. in the lobby. This seminar is co-sponsored by the EECP and the Odum School of Ecology.

This seminar is part of the "Spotlight on the Arts at UGA" festival November 3-11. For more information, go to on the new Arts at UGA web site (http://arts.uga.edu) or on Facebook (http://facebook.com/UGAarts).

(photograph of Black Skimmer by James R. Holland)

Date: 10.30.2012

Author Jay Turner will headline a presentation on federally designated wilderness on Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 6 p.m. at the Richard B. Russell Library in Athens, Ga. Following the presentation, Turner along with event sponsors USDA Forest Service, The Wilderness Society, Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards (SAWS), and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia will share perspectives on wilderness in Georgia and host a question and answer session. 

Beginning at 5 p.m. the library will offer visitors access to special collections that uniquely showcase Georgians and their relationships with the natural world. The event and parking are free and open to the public. 

Keynote speaker Jay Turner is the author of The Promise of Wilderness: AmericanEnvironmental Politics since 1964. His book has been called the most deeply researched, analytically rigorous, and elegantly written study of American Wilderness politics since the 1960s. Turner received adoctorate in history from Princeton University, and is currently anAssistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at WellesleyCollege.
Since 1974 more than 486,000 acres of wilderness have been designated by Congress in Georgia. These lands have been set aside for permanent protection because of their intact natural ecosystems. Wilderness is managed in a way that allows many recreational activities but also contain some restrictions to protect the area in its natural state. In Georgia, the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests feature nearly 118,000 acres of wilderness.

Date: 10.16.2012

Miles Silman is Professor of Biology and Ranlet and Frank Bell Jr. Faculty Fellow and Director, WF Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, Wake Forest University.

Reception precedes seminar at 3:30 p.m. in lobby.

Date: 10.09.2012

David C. McDuffie is a Ph.D. candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently serves as a Lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies and Faculty Member, Environmental Studies Committee, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he teaches classes in Religious and Environmental Studies. His teaching and research interests explore the relationship between religion, science, and ecological conservation. 

McDuffie received the graduate EECP certificate in 2006 on the topic "Process Theism, Environmental Ethics, and a Christian Theology of Ecology."

This seminar is co-sponsored by Emmanuel Episcopal Church. 

If you are registered for credit for EETH 4000/6000 and need transportation, please contact Dorinda Dallmeyer at dorindad@uga.edu, or 706 542-0935.

The text of David McDuffie's lecture is available from the EECP office.

Date: 10.09.2012

Reception follows seminar at 5:00 p.m. in lobby.

Date: 10.04.2012

Paul Ferraro is Professor of Economics, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.

Reception precedes seminar in lobby at 3:30 p.m.

Date: 09.25.2012

Daniel Simberloff received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1964, and his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University in 1968. Initially he planned to attend graduate school in mathematics, but changed his mind after taking a major biology course as an undergrad. This led to his introduction to Edward O. Wilson, with whom he collaborated on many textbooks and experimental studies to assess the theory of island biogeography.

His more recent work focuses on the presence of invasive species, and raises the specter of "invasional meltdown." He currently has a long-term project in Patagonia on the invasion of conifer trees, involving introduced deer, boar, and fungi. Dr. Simberloff is currently also working on a book and several papers on invasive biology. He was instrumental in drafting the presidential Executive Order 13112 on invasive species, and he also serves on the IUCN Invasive Species Specialist Group and the IUCN Species Survival Commission. He has also served on the Board of Governors of the Nature Conservancy. Dr. Simberloff currently is a distinguished professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. He directs the University's Institute for Biological Invasions.

Hosts: Ecology graduate students.

Date: 09.20.2012

Join the EECP for the gala opening of this exhibition in the newly renovated Owens Gallery of the College of Environment and Design on Jackson Street. The exhibition features photographs by James Holland, the former Altamaha Riverkeeper, alongside additional materials exploring the cultural and natural history of Georgia's mightiest river.

Holland's photographs appear in "Altamaha: A River and Its Keeper," published by the University of Georgia Press in June 2012. The book showcases 230 of Holland's photographs taken over the decade of his work on the river and will be available for purchase. 

The exhibition is co-sponsored by the College of Environment and Design, the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, Georgia Sea Grant College Program, UGA Marine Extension Service, the University of Georgia Press, the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Georgia River Network, and the Altamaha Riverkeeper. 

The exhibition will run from September 20 through October 31. The Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 8 am - 6 pm.

Date: 09.14.2012

Kyle Powys Whyte is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and affiliated faculty at the Center for the Study of Standards in Society (CS3), the Peace and Justice Studies Specialization, and the American Indian Studies Program. He is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Dr. Whyte writes on issues in environmental justice, the philosophies of science and technology, and American Indian philosophy. His articles are published in journals such as Synthese, Agricultural & Environmental Ethics, Knowledge, Technology & Policy, Ethics, Place & Environment, Continental Philosophy Review, Environmental Philosophy, Philosophy & Technology, Public Integrity, and Rural Social Sciences, and his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a member of the American Philosophical Association Committee on Public Philosophy, Michigan Environmental and Natural Resources Governance Program, and Michigan Environmental Justice Working Group, and is a 2009 recipient of the K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award from the Association of American Colleges & Universities.

Date: 09.04.2012

When pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, the backlash from her critics thrust her into the center of a political maelstrom. Despite her love of privacy, Carsons convictions and her foresight regarding the risks posed by chemical pesticides forced her into a very public and controversial role.

Using many of Miss Carson's own words, Kaiulani Lee embodies this extraordinary woman in a documentary style film, which depicts Carson in the final year of her life. Struggling with cancer, Carson recounts with both humor and anger the attacks by the chemical industry, the government, and the press as she focuses her limited energy to get her message to Congress and the American people.

The film is an intimate and poignant reflection of Carson's life as she emerges as America's most successful advocate for the natural world. A Sense of Wonder was shot in HD by Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler at Carson's cottage on the coast of Maine.

A light dinner (service beginning at 5 pm) will precede the screening of the movie at 5:15.

Date: 04.18.2012

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet and UGA Graduate Natasha Trethewey to Read at Fourth Annual Georgia Review Earth Day Program

Athens, GA. Natasha Trethewey, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and a graduate of the University of Georgia, will read poems and prose at the fourth annual Georgia Review Earth Day program on Wednesday, April 18. The event, scheduled for 7:00 p.m. in the Day Chapel of the State Botanical Garden at 2450 South Milledge Avenue, will be followed by a patio reception featuring music by the Athens duo Hawk Proof Roosteraka Charlie and Nancy Hartness. The event is free and open to the public.

Cosponsors for this years program are the UGA Environmental Ethics Certificate Program and the Friends of the Garden, with additional support from ABC Liquor.

Tretheweys latest book is a prose work, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, published by the University of Georgia Press in 2010. She will read from this personal study of the environmental devastation brought to her home state by Hurricane Katrina, and she will read a selection of poems as well.

Native Guard (2006), Tretheweys most recent poetry collection, earned her the Pulitzer; her previous volumes were Bellocqs Ophelia (2002) and Domestic Work (2000). In the fall of this year, Houghton Mifflin will release her fourth poetry title, Thrall.

Recently named poet laureate of her native Mississippi, Trethewey is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University. Her numerous other awards and honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She was named Georgia Woman of the Year in 2008, made a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 2009, and inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2011.

The Georgia Review was founded at UGA in 1947 and has been published there quarterly ever since. Under current editor Stephen Corey, the journal has earned an increasingly strong reputation for its periodic presentation of environmentally focused writings. A special major feature in the Reviews Spring 2009 issue, Culture and the EnvironmentA Conversation in Five Essays, birthed the idea of a local Earth Day program, and that program grew into this annual series. Past readers have included Coleman Barks, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Alice Friman, Barry Lopez, and George Singleton.

Hawk Proof Rooster plays old-time music featuring fiddle, ukulele, guitar, banjo, and vocals. The duo has performed at the North Georgia Folk Festival, the Folklife in Georgia Festival, Athfest, and elsewhereas well as on WUGAs Its Friday.

For further information, call The Georgia Review at 706-542-3481 or go to www.thegeorgiareview.com.

Date: 03.27.2012

27th Annual Odum Lecture: Thomas W. Schoener, University of California, Davis

Honoring the late Eugene P. Odum, founder of the Odum School of Ecology, the annual Eugene P. Odum Lecture Series features speakers addressing significant ecological questions in broad social and intellectual contexts.

The Odum Lecture Series is supported in part by the Eugene P. and William E. Odum Endowment and by Terry L. and Gary W. Barrett.

Reception to follow at 5 pm

Date: 03.24.2012

The EcoFocus Film Festival has released its schedule for 2012. For the full program see

www.ecofocusfilmfest.org

There are six screenings that may be of particular interest to EECP students, friends and faculty:

Saturday, March 24 at 5 pm, Cin, $5 admission -- "Semper Fi: Always Faithful" (groundwater pollution at Camp Lejeune, NC and its impacts on soldiers and their families) 

Sunday, March 25 at 7:15 pm, Cin, $5 admission -- "The City Dark" (light pollution)

Tuesday, March 27 at 7 pm, Miller Learning Center Room 171, FREE -- "Blood on the Mobile" (environmental impact of cell-phone manufacture and use)

Thursday, March 29 at 6 pm, Georgia Museum of Art, FREE -- "Sushi: The Global Catch" (unsustainable fisheries)

Friday, March 30 at 7 pm, Cin, $5 admission -- "If a Tree Falls..." (Earth Liberation Front)

Saturday, March 31 at 3 pm, Cin, $5 admission -- "Pipe Dreams" (Keystone XL Pipeline)

Check the EcoFocus website for details on ticket purchase.

EECP students may attend any of the above films for credit toward the EETH 4000/6000 seminar requirement. Proof of attendance is a one-page response and analysis of each film to be submitted to dorindad@uga.edu by April 9.

Date: 03.20.2012

Peter A. Appel joined the University of Georgia School of Law faculty in 1997 and teaches in the areas of property, natural resources law and environmental law. In 2011, he was named the Alex W. Smith Professor of Law. He also is a member of the EECP faculty.

Appels research spans three primary areas: the use of law to promote sustainable commerce, wilderness preservation and the courts, and more traditional doctrinal scholarship in environmental and natural resources law. n addition to his teaching at UGA, Appel has also served as an instructor to senior members of federal agencies. 

He has been invited to train federal wilderness managers at the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center, a facility in Missoula, Mont., run jointly by all federal agencies responsible for wilderness management. He also taught environmental laws and regulations to employees of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Reception follows talk at 5.

EECP co-sponsors this lecture with the Odum School of Ecology

Date: 02.22.2012

Chris Cuomo, Philosophy and Womens Studies Institute, EECP Faculty Member 
4 pm, 150 Miller Learning Center

Sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, in their Science for Humanists series

Date: 02.21.2012

Join EECP for snacks and a movie! We'll begin screening the movie at 5:00 with discussion afterward.

Journey of the Universe is a compelling film about our place in the universe. Although academic scholars often frame humanity's search for meaning in abstract solitary terms, or as a conversation between an individual and God, this movie shifts the focus to the world itself. Science has found patterns of interconnection in Nature, for instance, pivotal balances in the Big Bang that determined the existence of the universe as we know it. Through a single day as a visitor on Samos, Pythagoreas' island in the Aegean, narrator Brian Swimme describes how biology has illuminated the shared links of all life, while chemistry and physics have illuminated the interactions and origins of all matter.

Brian Thomas Swimme is a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon in 1978 for work in gravitational dynamics. He brings the context of story to our understanding of the 13.7 billion year trajectory of cosmogenesis. Such a story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community. Swimme is the author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos and The Universe is a Green Dragon. He is co-author of The Universe Story, which is the result of a 10-year collaboration with the cultural historian, Thomas Berry. Swimme is also the creator of three educational video series: Canticle to the Cosmos (1990), Earths Imagination (1998), and The Powers of the Universe (2006).

Executive producer and co-writer Mary Evelyn Tucker is a Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University where she has appointments in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the Divinity School, the Department of Religious Studies, and the Center for Bioethics. She teaches in the joint MA program in religion and ecology and directs the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale with her husband, John Grim.

Executive producer John Grim is Senior Lecturer and Research Scholar at Yale University with appointments at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale Divinity School, the Department of Religious Studies and the Center for Bioethics. Both he and Mary Evelyn Tucker direct the masters program in Religion and Ecology at Yale.

He is also Coordinator of the Forum on Religion and Ecology with Mary Evelyn, and series editor with her of World Religions and Ecology, from the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions. In that series he edited Indigenous Traditions & Ecology: the Interbeing of Cosmology & Community (Harvard, 2001). He is also the author of The Shaman (Oklahoma University Press, 1983). With Mary Evelyn he edited Worldviews and Ecology (Orbis, 5th printing 2000), and a Daedalus volume (2001) entitled, Religion and Ecology: Can the Climate Change?

Date: 01.27.2012

In observance of the Universitys 227th anniversary, Dr. Betty Jean Craige will present the 10th Annual Founders Day Lecture, We Are All Part of the Tangled Bank. Betty Jean is an emeritus EECP Faculty Member, among many other honors.

The annual lecture recognizes the date UGA was established. In 1785, the Georgia General Assembly adopted a charter creating the University as the nations first state-chartered institution of higher education.

The Founders Day Lecture is sponsored by the UGA Alumni Association and the Emeriti Scholars, a group of retired faculty members especially known for their teaching abilities and continued involvement in the Universitys academic life.

Date: 01.24.2012

Robert Warren, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Reception at 3:30 in lobby precedes seminar.

Date: 01.18.2012

Climate change is here. It is going to get worse, much worse. And, if you agree that moving cities is hard, then the time left for us to attempt to mitigate these changes is very short. While the certainty of global warming (and its cause by burning fossil fuels) is no longer debated in scientific circles, the rapidity and extent of climate change is. Using examples from Georgia, this talk will amplify the Precautionary Principle (if it might matter, then behave as if it does) to advance the thesis that because of the catastrophic nature of coming changes, we must begin now to discuss highly likely climate change scenarios for which standard statistical confidence limits cannot be computed. As with our global success in slowing human population growth, there is also the chance that we can slow down the growth of greenhouse gases. As the earth enters greenhouse gas concentrations for which there are no validated predictive models, policy makers must begin to take seriously the consequences of inaction.

Date: 01.17.2012

In Frontiers of Justice, Nussbaum argues that nonhuman animals are subjects of justice, and that we must guarantee their central capabilities up to a minimum threshold in order to treat them justly. But she sets aside the question of whether other nonhuman entities in nature could be viewed as subjects of capabilities justice. David Schlosberg argues that the capabilities approach can be extended to include ecosystems as subjects of justice if we view integrity as the conceptual ground for being a subject of justice. 

Picking up where Schlosberg leaves off, I further specify the concept of ecosystem integrity, arguing that it should be understood as loose integrity, integrity that may come in and out of being over non-evolutionary time. Finally, I argue that if we view ecosystem integrity as loose integrity, then the opportunity for ecosystems to maintain their integrity could plausibly become the object of an overlapping consensus. 

In the first section I outline Nussbaums capabilities approach. I then address what is perhaps the biggest hurdle to extending capabilities justice to ecosystems: Nussbaums use of the concept of dignity. It is one thing to argue, as Nussbaum does, that individual animals have a dignity that is tied up with their functioning as the kinds of beings they are, and that this dignity identifies them as subjects of justice. But it is quite another to argue that ecosystems have such dignity and are therefore subjects of justice. The latter argument seems doomed to failure because the claim that ecosystems have dignity is implausible on the face of it. David Schlosberg argues that we should replace dignity with integrity as the conceptual ground for being a subject of justice. Integrity is a better candidate for this ground because it applies to a wider range of entities in nature, ecosystems as well as individual animals, and has none of the sticky psychological connotations that the concept of dignity has in the rights literature. Schlosberg also argues that integrityrepresents the idea of non-interruption of functioning which is ultimately what Nussbaum sees as the essence of justice. Because ecosystems have a function that can be interrupted, it follows that we must guarantee them the opportunity to function as the kinds of systems they are if we are to treat them justly. Schlosberg also recognizes that because ecosystems are the kinds of systems that evolve, we must guarantee them the opportunity to evolve, in more Aristotelian terms, to fulfill their teleological potential. I accept this understanding of ecosystem integrity as far as it goes. But the concept of ecosystem integrity must be further specified. 

In the second section, I first argue that ecosystem integrity should be understood as loose integrity, integrity that may come in and out of being over non-evolutionary time. When we view ecosystem integrity as loose integrity, to say that an ecosystem has lost its integrity is to say not only that its function has been disrupted, but also that it no longer has the potential on a non-evolutionary timescale to function as substantially the same kind of system it was before the disruption. There is a tension in evaluating the function of ecosystems between valuing their evolution and valuing their persistence as the kinds of systems they are that must be resolved before any account that takes ecosystems to be moral subjects or subjects of justice can proceed. My account of integrity as loose integrity resolves this tension by opening up a space for disruption of ecosystem function but also setting a limit on how great disruption can be. If a given ecosystem has the potential to return on a non-evolutionary timescale to functioning as substantially the same kind of ecosystem it was before a disruption, then the disruption is not unjust and may in fact contribute to the evolution of the system. If this potential is lost due to a disruption, then integrity is destroyed and the disruption is unjust.

It would not be unjust, for instance, to clear parts of a forest (assuming that substantial portions of it remain intact) and to build sustainable farms because the forest ecosystem would retain its potential to return on a non-evolutionary timescale to substantially the same kind of function it had before it was cleared (i.e., when the farming activity stops or moves elsewhere). But clearing parts of the forest and farming the land in an unsustainable fashion, or clearing the entire forest and farming the land, whether in a sustainable fashion or not, would constitute unjust treatment of the forest ecosystem because this would destroy its potential to return on a non-evolutionary timescale to substantially the same kind of function it had before it was cleared. Another obvious example of an unjust disruption of an ecosystem is the loss of winter ice from the arctic ecosystem due to irreversible climate change. Through these examples and others like them, we see that guaranteeing the opportunity for ecosystems to maintain their integrity (understood as loose integrity) does not require enacting policies that are overly radical. In many cases, the kinds of policies required are the same environmental policies that many countries around the world are already enacting, at least in part. I conclude that the opportunity for ecosystems to maintain their integrity could plausibly become the object of an overlapping consensus.

Date: 12.02.2011

Wendy Donner is on the faculty at Carleton University, Ottawa and her talk is hosted by the UGA Philosophy Department.

Abstract: The theoretical framework of the Art of Life is the foundation of Mills moral philosophy. In the Logic, Mill lays out the three departments of the Art of Life-- Morality, Prudence or Policy, and Aesthetics; the Right, the Expedient, and the Beautiful or Noble. Mills moral philosophy has a doctrine of Aesthetics and Virtue that compliments his theory of Morality. The distinction between Morality or Duty, on the one hand, and Nobility or Virtue, on the other, plays a crucial role in Mills theory. Understanding the framework of the Art of Life makes it apparent that much happiness depends upon the flourishing of wellbeing outside of the limited domain of Morality. However, the place of the domain of Virtue and Aesthetics is relatively neglected as an object of study and research. For example, there are important connections between Mills environmentalism and his views on aesthetic education.

In this paper I explore Mills views on virtue and aesthetics as it relates to his environmentalism to examine how it interacts with his liberalism and green commitments. I offer an interpretation of Mills environmentalism that looks at his stance on certain questions of economic growth and development ethics. Mill is well known for being an early critic of continual economic growth and for advocating in its place a stationary growth economy. Many of his reasons are the very reasons invoked by contemporary environmentalists who are alarmed at the environmental impact of continual and escalating economic growth on the environment. I want to place his environmentalism within this contemporary movement against excessive materialism and consumerism and in favour of a conception of the good life as concerned with a life that is simple in means, rich in ends in the words of deep ecologist Arne Naess, or voluntary simplicity in the words of ecofeminists Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies. It would seem that a life that is simple in means and rich in ends is very much in keeping with Mills notions of higher value virtuous activities and ends, with his love of natural beauty, and with his disdain for the excesses of materialism and consumerism. It also seems that many of Mills concerns echo and overlap with some principles and tenets of ecological feminism. Mill is widely acknowledged as being an early liberal feminist. His liberalism espouses a powerful critique of oppression and domination. In this paper I explore the prospects for including him as an early advocate of some of the commitments of contemporary ecofeminism.

Date: 11.17.2011

The Willson Center-EECP Odum Lecture is presented this year by Jonathan Herz, Chief Architect for Sustainable Facilities, Office for Facilities Management & Policy, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Jonathan Herz is a registered architect with more than 30 years of experience in design, construction and policy in both the public and private sectors. His work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) involves the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the Indian Health Service. 

Herzs research and writing focus on sustainability. His most recent publication is The New Sustainable Frontier: Principles of Sustainable Development (2009) published by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). Prior to joining Health and Human Services, Herz headed the sustainable development education initiative for the General Services Administrations Office of Government-wide Policy, and managed major design and construction projects for GSAs Public Buildings Service. Mr. Herz holds a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture from the University of Virginia, along with a Masters degree in architecture from the University of California at Berkeley.

Date: 11.16.2011

Book launch for John Lane's book MY PADDLE TO THE SEA: Eleven Days on the River of the Carolinas, published by the University of Georgia Press, and premiere of "River Time," a documentary film on John's 300-mile trip from Spartanburg via the Santee River watershed all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Q&A with John Lane and the filmmakers follows the film. 

John Lane's books include Waist Deep in Black Water, The Woods Stretched for Miles, Chattooga: Descending into the Myth of Deliverance River, and Circling Home (all Georgia); several volumes of poetry; and The Best of the Kudzu Telegraph, a selection of his columns. Lane is an associate professor of English and environmental studies at Wofford College.

Date: 11.11.2011

Mattias Klum, Swedish photographer, filmmaker and international conservationist, will deliver the University of Georgia fall 2011 Boyd Lecture on Nov. 11 at 2:30 p.m. in Mahler Auditorium of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Conference Center and Hotel. His lecture, "The Big Picture: Communicating Conservation in a Complex World," is free and open to the public.

The Boyd Distinguished Lecture Series, supported by UGA's Office of the Vice President for Research and the William S. and Elizabeth Boyd Foundation, brings international leaders in science, education and related fields to campus to discuss contemporary issues in education and research.

"I have had the privilege of watching Mattias Klum close-up in the forests of Borneo, and his genius derives from more than just a combination of technical expertise and artistic vision," said Pete Brosius, director of UGA's Integrative Conservation Program. "He recognizes that in the 21st century, we have to tell conservation stories differently than in the past. Rather than simply focusing on sublime images of charismatic species and untouched wilderness, Klum's work compels us to confront the forces that are changing the planet."

Klum, through his work as a freelance photographer, filmmaker and lecturer, has been a tireless advocate for conservation around the world. His work has appeared in many international publications, including National Geographic, Wildlife Conservation, Audubon, Geo, Terre Sauvage, Der Spiegel and The New York Times. In 1997, he became the first Swede-and then, the youngest photographer ever-to have his work published on the cover of National Geographic. He has since photographed multiple stories for the magazine, notably a 30-page feature titled "Borneo's Moment of Truth" in November 2008.

Klum has presented more than 2,500 lectures around the world and has been part of the National Geographic Speakers Bureau since 2003. In that same year, he co-founded the communications agency Tierra Grande, and in 2007, he helped to establish Tierra Grande Publishing and the non-profit Terra Magna Foundation. Today, he is increasingly involved in developing multidisciplinary platforms and awareness campaigns with globally recognized organizations to support key environmental, sustainability and humanitarian initiatives.

His recent and ongoing projects include Expedition Sweden, a five-year environmental and inspirational project for young adults in Sweden, and the Baltic Sea Media Project, which will culminate in a feature-length documentary film in 2017. In 2011, Klum released two new films: The Testament of Tebaran, a Penan elder's plea to end deforestation in Borneo, and The Coral Eden, part of the Project Oceans initiative to alleviate overfishing and protect endangered marine species. His eleventh book will be published in 2012.

Klum's advocacy on behalf of biodiversity earned him a medal from the King of Sweden and nomination as a 2008 Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. In 2010, he was named Senior Fellow of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and a National Geographic Fellow, in which he supports ongoing National Geographic Mission Programs, focusing on critical biodiversity and conservation issues. He also is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, a member of the Board of Trustees of the World Wide Fund for nature of Sweden and was recently named Goodwill Ambassador for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. His photographs won first place in Pictures of the Year International, and he has twice been chosen to serve on the jury of World Press Photo.

Date: 10.20.2011

Bert Way, assistant professor of history at Kennesaw State University, will discuss his new book, Conserving Southern Longleaf: Herbert Stoddard and the Rise of Ecological Land Management, published by the University of Georgia Press. A reception and book signing will follow the seminar in the lobby from 4:30 - 5:30 p.m. Sponsored by the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center, the Odum School of Ecology, the University of Georgia Press, and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources.

Date: 10.12.2011

David Gessner is the author of eight books, including Sick of Nature, The Prophet of Dry Hill, and Return of the Osprey, which was chosen by the Boston Globe as one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year and the Book-of-the-Month club as one of its top books of the year. The Globe called it a "classic of American Nature Writing." His work has appeared in many magazines and journals including The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, Outside, The Georgia Review, The Harvard Review, and Orion. He has taught environmental writing at Harvard, and is currently an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he founded the national literary journal, Ecotone.

Gessner describes The Tarball Chronicles this way: The writing was not just about the oil spill itself, but about larger connections: connections between how we have chosen to live and the consequences of those choices; between what we are doing now and our future; between our need for fuel and our love of nature; between the need for sacrifice and the love of luxury.

This will be a Q&A coffee-hour session sponsored by The Georgia Review and EECP.

Date: 10.11.2011

David Gessner is the author of eight books, including Sick of Nature, The Prophet of Dry Hill, and Return of the Osprey, which was chosen by the Boston Globe as one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year and the Book-of-the-Month club as one of its top books of the year. The Globe called it a "classic of American Nature Writing." His work has appeared in many magazines and journals including The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, Outside, The Georgia Review, The Harvard Review, and Orion. He has taught environmental writing at Harvard, and is currently an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he founded the national literary journal, Ecotone.

Gessner describes The Tarball Chronicles this way: The writing was not just about the oil spill itself, but about larger connections: connections between how we have chosen to live and the consequences of those choices; between what we are doing now and our future; between our need for fuel and our love of nature; between the need for sacrifice and the love of luxury.

Reception and book-signing to follow.

Date: 09.20.2011

Over his career as a wildlife ecology professor at Clemson University, Drew Lanham has committed himself to educating and mentoring young professionals who can meet the challenges of natural resources conservation ethically, enthusiastically, and with fresh perspectives. A birder and ornithologist, Lanham's research efforts have centered largely on the habitat relationships of songbirds and other wildlife. More recently,a critical aspect of his studies have focused on African-American rural property owners and how their lands might be sustainably managed to maintain family legacy and healthy ecological function. A prolific writer and researcher, he has received Clemson University Wildlife Society's Excellence in Teaching Award multiple times, the John Madden Fellowship from the Outdoor Writer's Association of America, and a Toyota TogetherGreen Fellowship, among many other honors.

Reception following seminar. Co-sponsored with the Odum School of Ecology

To view the seminar, please go to:

http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/22039/384607046.mov

Date: 09.15.2011

Have you ever wanted to see an ivorybill woodpecker, Carolina parakeet, or passenger pigeon? 

The Georgia Museum of Natural History, which has been closed for extensive renovations, will reopen on Thursday, Sept. 15 at 6:00 p.m. with a reception for the new exhibition Lost Species, Visions of Landscapes Past. The reception will feature a discussion by landscape artist Philip Juras, whose paintings are included in the exhibition, and a short reading by nature writer Dorinda Dallmeyer, director of the University of Georgia Environmental Ethics Certificate Program. The reception is free and open to the public.

Lost Species, Visions of Landscapes Past explores historic southern landscapes and the species that inhabited them. It features specimens of long-lost, iconic species such as the ivory-billed woodpecker, Carolina parakeet, and passenger pigeon, and paintings of pre-settlement southeastern landscapes by artist Philip Juras.

Juras, who received his BFA and MLA from the University of Georgia, has long been interested in the landscapes of the pre-settlement South. He combines direct observation with historical, scientific, and natural history research to depict, and in some cases re-create, landscapes as they appeared in the 1770s. His recent exhibition, Philip Juras: The Southern Frontier, Landscapes Inspired by Bartram's Travels, explored the southern wilderness as eighteenth century naturalist William Bartram described it. Lost Species, Visions of Landscapes Past includes several of the paintings from The Southern Frontier, which was on display at the Telfair Museums in Savannah and the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta in 2011, as well as new work.

The Georgia Museum of Natural History is the repository for the preservation and study of the tangible evidence of the history, culture and natural heritage of the state of Georgia and its people. It is a consortium of 14 important natural history collections, each the largest of its kind in Georgia, supported by the departments of Anthropology, Botany, Entomology, Geography, Geology, and Plant Pathology at UGA. The Museum links collections, research, public service, and education through programs designed for a diverse audience.

The exhibition will run through the fall. The Exhibit Hall is open Monday through Friday, 10 am to 4 pm.

Date: 08.31.2011

Conservation Ecology and Sustainable Development—special lecture by Dr. Samantha Joye, Professor, UGA Dept. of Marine Sciences.

Date: 08.23.2011

How do people make sense of nearly losing their lives during an encounter with untamed nature? What if the two people involved are environmental philosophers? We'll discuss two classics David Kellers Tornados and the Sublime: Discourse on the Human Place in Nature and Val Plumwoods Being Prey. The discussion will be led by Dorinda Dallmeyer.

David R. Keller is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethics at Utah Valley University (UVU). After receiving a double-major baccalaureate degree in English and Philosophy from Franklin & Marshall College and a masters degree in Philosophy from Boston College, Keller earned a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Georgia. His dissertation, written under the direction of Frederick Ferr, addressed environmental philosophy. At Georgia, he also completed the interdisciplinary graduate Environmental Ethics Certificate Program. His most recent book is Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). The Tornados essay can be found at the EECP website under the Newsletters tab.

Val Plumwood (11 August 1939 c. 28 February 2008) was an Australian ecofeminist intellectual and activist, who was prominent in the development of radical ecosophy from the early 1970s through the remainder of the 20th century. Plumwood was active in movements to preserve biodiversity and halt deforestation from the 1960s on, and helped establish the trans-discipline known as ecological humanities. You can read Being Prey online at valplumwood.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/being-prey.doc

Date: 04.19.2011

The Georgia Review 2011 Earth Day Celebration

Barry Lopez is the author of many books, among them the National Book Award winner Arctic Dreams (1986); Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited with Debra Gwartney (2006); and eight works of fiction. His honors include the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the John Hay Medal; Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundation fellowships; and Pushcart prizes in fiction and nonfiction. The San Francisco Chronicle has called him arguably the nations premier nature writer.

Barry Lopez's distinctive essays and stories have graced eight issues of The Georgia Review since 1993 most recently, in Fall 2010, A Dark Light in the West: Racism and Reconciliation. This essay is an example of the sustained attention Lopez applies, throughout his work, to the complex ethical problems of our social, environmental, and political systems. Meet Lopez at a reception after his presentation, which will include readings from new fiction and nonfiction.

NOTE: Seating is limited and advance purchase is strongly recommended.

This event is presented by The Georgia Review and the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, with vital support from the UGA Department of English, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications, the Office of International Education, and the UGA Press. Additional support is provided by Big City Bread Cafe, Terrapin Brewery, and Northeast Sales Distributing.

Date: 04.18.2011

This EECP seminar will be delivered by Dr. Trisha Glazebrook, professor and chairperson of the Department of Philosophy, University of North Texas.

Date: 04.12.2011

Join Doug Oetter as he reflects on how the EECP continues to affect his professional life 20 years later. 

Doug Oetter is Associate Professor and Geography Program Coordinator in the Department of History, Geography, and Philosophy at Georgia College and State University. A recipient of the Graduate Environmental Ethics Certificate in 1990, he received his PhD in geography from Oregon State University in 2002. 

Refreshments 5:00-5:30; seminar 5:30-6:30.

Date: 03.25.2011

The EECP continues its focus on Ecotopias in a joint seminar series presented with the Philosophy Department with a seminar delivered by Laura Dassow Walls, English, University of South Carolina.

Date: 03.10.2011

This movie is being shown as part of the Aldo Leopold Weekend observance March 10-12.

The events include two screenings of "Green Fire," a new documentary film about the life and work of Leopold, whose philosophy and writing helped shape the modern environmental movement. The film, the first full-length, high definition documentary ever made about Leopold, will be shown March 10 at 7 p.m. at the Athens-Clarke County Library, and March 12 at 9:15 a.m. at the State Botanical Garden. Both showings are free and open to the public.

Other events that are part of "Aldo in Athens" include a guided walk of the University of Georgia campus March 10, led by Dorinda Dallmeyer, and a guided hike in the State Botanical Garden March 12 led by Linda Chafin. In addition, Dallmeyer and Walt Cook will speak at the March 10 screening of "Green Fire" about how the impact of Leopold's work is visible in Athens today.

The "Aldo in Athens" events are organized by Nancy Lindbloom, an Athens conservationist who is chair of the annual GreenFest in Athens and an admirer of Leopold. The events are a precursor to GreenFest, which will be held in April and May.

Leopold, an educator, forester, ecologist and author who died in 1948, is best known for his seminal book A Sand County Almanac, a series of essays in which he developed the "land ethic" philosophy. His ideas about conservation and the connection between people and the natural world are considered major influences in the development of environmental awareness and activism in the last half of the 20th century.

The "Green Fire" film was completed last year and is being shown around the country in 2011. In addition to highlighting Leopold's life and career, the film shows how his ideas remain influential today through such initiatives as the local food movement, ecological restorations, community conservation efforts and protection of endangered species. More information about the film is available at http://www.greenfiremovie.com.

At the March 10 screening in the Athens-Clarke County Library auditorium, Dallmeyer and Cook will discuss Leopold's legacy. Dallmeyer is director of UGA's Environmental Ethics Certificate Program and helped create the Southern Nature Project, a collaborative that fosters writing about the southern landscape. Cook, a retired UGA forestry professor, is a founder of Sandy Creek Nature Center and long-time leader in local environmental activities.

From 3-4 p.m. on March 10, Dallmeyer will lead a walk around the UGA campus based on a guide she created titled Sand County on Campus 
(http://www.uga-eecp.com/user_files/FinalSandCounty%20on%20CampusFeb.22.pdf ). Those taking the walk should meet Dallmeyer on the top floor (Level G) of the UGA North Campus Parking Deck.

Following the March 12 screening of "Green Fire" in the State Botanical Garden Callaway Building, Linda Chafin, a researcher and educator at the garden, will lead a Leopold-themed hike through several areas of the garden. The hike will begin about 11 a.m. from the Callaway Building.

For more information about "Aldo in Athens," contact Nancy Lindbloom at (706) 549-4720 or nancylindbloom@aol.com.

Date: 03.09.2011

Martin Kagel and Sarah Hemmings collaborate on research focusing on the sublime beauty, history, and social implications of one of the most important and extensive public park projects of our time, the Ladschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, in the environmentally and economically challenged post-industrial Ruhr district of Germany. Dr. Kagel is a Professor of German and Department Head of UGAs Germanic & Slavic Studies program, the recipient of numerous distinguished teaching awards, and is a member of the UGA Teaching Academy. Ms. Hemmings is a NASA researcher on the use of remote sensing technology for environmental public health applications. She holds an MS in Ecology and an Environmental Ethics Certificate from UGA and an MPH in Environmental Health from the University of Alabama. Sarah Hemmings received the first Feighner Award for Outstanding Undergraduate EECP Paper in 2006.

Date: 03.03.2011

Women's History Month Kick-Off event

An invitation from Women's Studies

Screening of the documentary film 
"For the Next 7 Generations" 
Thursday, March 3rd at 6pm in Miller Learning Center, Rm. 171.

"In 2004, 13 Indigenous Grandmothers from all four corners, moved by their concern for our planet, came together at a historic gathering, where they decided to form an alliance: The International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers. This is their story."

This event is FREE and open to the public. Co-sponsored by the Women's Studies Student Organization.

Take a look at the film trailer: http://vimeo.com/6538094

And learn more about the film: http://www.forthenext7generations.com/home.php

Please RSVP to the Facebook invite: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=137792956284679 and be sure to invite ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS! Even if you can't attend, maybe they can! It's also a Blue Card Event!

Date: 03.02.2011

Abstract: In January of this year, Stephanie Wolgang and Natalie Daniels were part of a multi-national team that travelled to Goa, India to conduct a participatory rapid appraisal. The team conducted this appraisal in the coastal town of Morjim, a vulnerable community currently at a developmental crossroads. To conclude this appraisal, the team gave a presentation to the community at the local fish market, before holding a meeting with local press and policy makers. Their findings were then made publicly available.

In this talk, Stephanie and Natalie will discuss the context of the work they conducted, the processes they undertook, and the conclusions that the team drew. The work they will present will provoke discussions about the roles and duties of designers operating in vulnerable communities.

Speakers: Stephanie Wolfgang and Natalie Daniels

Bios:

Stephanie Wolfgang is a graduate student in the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Georgia's College of Environment and Design. She received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia in 2009, spending time working in the realm of organic agriculture in addition to the architecture field.

Natalie Daniels is also a graduate in the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the College of Environment and Design, as well as being enrolled in the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program. She received an undergraduate degree in Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield in 2006. Having worked as an architect and a landscape architect for two years, Natalie returned to study at Oxford Brookes University, where she received a Diploma in Architecture and a Masters degree in International Development and Emergency Practice in 2010.

Date: 01.25.2011

The UGA Sea Grant Program to invites you to attend the University of Georgia/Georgia Sea Grant Gulf Oil Spill Symposium, which will bring scientists, government officials, Gulf coast community leaders and journalists from across the nation to Athens on January 25-27 to examine communication during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The Symposium will explore how these groups collaborated in research and response efforts and coordinated information flow throughout the nations worst maritime oil spill. 

The symposium will begin on Jan. 25, with the keynote lecture "The Worlds Ocean, the Worlds Future" delivered by Dr. Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Explorer-in Residence; former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Dr. Earle spoke to the EECP in 1998. 

For more information, visit http://oilspill.uga.edu, where you can register to attend the Symposium. Both the keynote address and Jan. 26 panel discussions are free and open to the public.

Date: 01.24.2011

Paul B. Thompson, W. K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan
State University, will deliver a Willson Center lecture on The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics on Monday, January 24, 2011 at 4 p.m. in 248 Miller Learning Center.

Thompson is author of a number of books including The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and
Environmental Ethics (2010) and Food Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective (2007).

Thompson is editor of The Ethics of Intensification: Agricultural Development and Cultural Change (2008). He is co-editor of Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy (2008) and What Can Nanotechnology Learn from Biotechnology? Social and Ethical Lessons for Nanoscience from the Debate over Agrifood Biotechnology and GMOs (2008).

Thompson's research interests include American pragmatist approaches in practical ethics, environmental ethics, risks and ethics of agricultural and food biotechnology, science policy, philosophy of technology and philosophy of economics.

Date: 01.21.2011

We continue our joint seminar series on Ecotopias with the Philosophy Department with this seminar by David Whiteman, Political Science, University of South Carolina.

Date: 12.02.2010

On the one hand, it may be possible to argue that in some respects the Sea Shepherds may constitute either a blind spot in the literature on terrorism and political violence, because its actions could in some circumstances be considered activism, militant direct action, piracy, vigilantism, terrorism, or eco-defense, which makes it very difficult to classify. On the other hand, that both the Sea Shepherds and the whalers may both engage in illegal activities, but are not prosecuted, may indicate that states and the international community may have neither the will nor the means to enforce laws against them. Therefore, they may be turning a blind eye to their actions. 

Despite the ambiguity surrounding their legal status and academic interpretations of their actions, the results of nearly three decades of the organization's activities, including its 2007 campaign to disrupt Japanese Antarctic Whaling, suggest that the Sea Shepherds may be best categorized as a vigilante group, because they claim they are seeking to enforce a legal status quo because of states' and the international community's inabilities or unwillingness to do so. 

Refreshments 5-5:30 pm; seminar 5:30-6:30 pm

Date: 11.30.2010

Anthony Weston is Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies and Chair, Department of Philosophy at Elon University, North Carolina. The author of ten previous books on ethics and creativity, including A Rulebook for Arguments now in its third edition, he has been teaching creative thinking and radical social creativity for ten years. He is also the author of How to Re-imagine the World: A Pocket Guide for Practical Visionaries.

Refreshments 5-5:30 pm; seminar 5:30-6:30 pm

The painting "Green Dreaming" is by dotartdude.

Date: 11.19.2010

Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich presents the annual Willson Center-EECP Environmental Ethics Lecture. Luckovich began his career with The Greenville News in South Carolina in 1984 and moved to the New Orleans Times-Picayune later that year. He has worked for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 1989. 

He is syndicated nationally to about 150 newspapers and is the 2006 winner of the Reuben, the National Cartoonists Society's top award for cartoonist of the year. He won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize and 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. He also received the National Cartoonists Society Editorial Cartoon Award for 2001, with additional nominations for 1998 and 2002. He won the 2008 National Journalism Awards, for Editorial Cartooning.

Date: 10.22.2010

Abstract:
In this essay I present an overview of the problem of climate change, with an emphasis on
issues of interest to feminists, such as dominant tropes concerning the "vulnerabilities" of
women and girls. I agree with other philosophers that justice requires governments,
corporations, and individuals to take full responsibility for histories of pollution and
present and future greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless I worry that in the most
common environmental discourses an overemphasis on personal sphere fossil fuel
emissions distracts from attention to higher-level corporate and governmental
responsibilities for causing, perpetuating, and addressing the problem of climate change.
I argue that more attention should be placed on the higher-level responsibilities of
corporations and governments, and ask how individuals might more effectively take
responsibility for addressing global climate change, especially when corporations and
governments refuse to do so. I conclude that it may be more effective for people and
communities in high-emitting societies who are moved to take responsibility for climate
change to prioritize building a greater and more effective political will, so as to influence
higher-level decision-makers, than to focus primarily on personal mitigation efforts.

Date: 10.01.2010

Bryan G. Norton (School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology) describes his work this way:

"Practical philosophy is philosophy that is undertaken in the context of real-world problems. Philosophical thinking can often clarify problem contexts and bring to bear careful analysis of concepts and principles of how to act. In my research, I have addressed the problems of species loss, degradation and "illness" of ecological systems, the problems of watershed management, and most recently, the problem of placing boundaries around environmental problems so that they can be modeled for study and management. In addressing these problems, I have sought unity among my views of these multiple problems by creating a theory of sustainable development that captures the key role of human values in the search for better policies to protect nature and humans of the future."

Date: 09.21.2010

Students, Faculty and Friends of the EECP are invited to visit Spring Hollow, the cabin owned by Martha and Eugene Odum near Ila, Georgia, on Tuesday, September 21. 

The property includes a log house for gathering, reference watershed and pond, and an old-growth forest. This site is available for education, research, and service functions. Eugene P. Odum provided an endowment through the University of Georgia Foundation for the maintenance and support of this facility. Restoration of the log house has begun, including the completion of a cedar-plank shingle roof. An interpretive nature trail recently has been traced through the property; this trail focuses on careful observation of native flora and fauna, and unique topography of this property regarding ecological and anthropogenic management.

We'll walk the grounds and join together for a discussion of the changes this landscape has seen since the advent of human occupation. We'll have dinner on the grounds so please bring a dessert or whole side dish. Also information will be forthcoming about carpool/vanpool options as well as driving directions.

Date: 08.17.2010

Marius de Geus of the University of Leiden starts the 2010-2011 seminar season with a discussion of ecological utopias.

Date: 04.15.2010

The 40th anniversary of Earth Day will be celebrated in Athens April 15 with a program that examines the history and impact of the grass-roots movement that has made environmental awareness and action a top national priority.

The program, titled Earth Day @ 40: Where Do We Stand, will include a reception; a showing of the film Earth Days; and a round-table discussion featuring four Athens environmental leaders, Allen Stovall, Carol Couch, Laurie Fowler and Mark Milby. It will be held in the University of Georgias Eugene Odum School of Ecology, headquarters for the first Earth Day in Athens on April 22, 1970.

The program, which is free and open to the public, is part of GreenFest, the series of environment-themed activities and events held in Athens each spring. Mayor Heidi Davison has designated the program as Athens official event for Earth Day 2010-Global Day of Conversation, a national observance of Earth Day sponsored by the Earth Day Network.

Sponsors for the program include the EcoFocus Film Festival, the UGA Office of Sustainability and the Odum School of Ecology.

The first Earth Day in 1970 drew national attention to environmental issues and brought out millions of Americans for marches, demonstrations, festivals and educational seminars known as teach-ins that focused on such problems as pollution, overpopulation and preservation of natural resources. Earth Day has been observed every year since and is credited with fostering many of the nations major environmental advances and reforms, from creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Superfund to passage of the Clean Water Act and bans on DDT, leaded gasoline and PCBs.

In Athens, the first Earth Day was organized by a group called Balance, composed mainly of graduate students in UGAs Institute of Ecology. The event included a speech by former Gov. Carl Sanders; exhibits and films at Memorial Hall; and more than 25 teach-ins led by UGA faculty and graduate students. Balance also sponsored environment-themed art, photography and poetry contests, and put together a collection of essays on environmental issues, titled Toward Balance, written by faculty and students.

The April 15 program will begin with a 6 p.m. reception in the foyer outside the ecology auditorium. It is sponsored by the EcoFocus Film Festival, which brings top environmental films to Athens each fall.

At 6:30, the movie Earth Days will be shown in the auditorium. Directed by documentary film-maker Robert Stone, the film recounts the beginnings of the environmental movement and features such influential figures as former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall (who died in March), author Paul Ehrlich, Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand and renewable energy pioneer Hunter Lovins. The film will be shown nationally April 19 on the PBS program American Experience.

Following the film will be a round-table discussion in which participants will assess progress on environmental problems over the past 40 years, discuss current environmental issues and look to environmental challenges of the future. The participants include:

Allen Stovall, professor emeritus in the UGA College of Environment and Design. Stovall was at UGA for the first Earth Day and contributed an essay on environmental planning for the collection published by Balance. An authority on landscape architecture and historic preservation, he is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Carol Couch, senior public service associate in the College of Environment and Design. Before joining UGA, Couch was director of Georgias Environmental Protection Division for six years and headed the states Water Council. She has led national water studies for the U.S. Geological Survey.

Laurie Fowler, associate dean of the Odum School of Ecology and co-director of the UGA River Basin Center. A long-time Athens environmental activist, Fowler has served on the Governors Environmental Advisory Council, the Georgia Land Conservation Partnership Advisory Council and the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority. 

Mark Milby, a UGA senior majoring in ecology. The recipient of a Morris Udall Undergraduate Scholarship, Milby is a leader of the UGA GoGreen Alliance, which was instrumental in passage of a student referendum approving a student fee to support environmental improvements at UGA. The referendum was a major factor in UGAs decision to create an Office of Sustainability. Milby is co-president of the Ecology Club and helped start the student-led recycling program on football game days.

Date: 04.06.2010

How do we judge past environmental actions? The Frederick Billings story of environmental conquest and conservation reveals the complexity and apparent contradictions involved in a historical interpretation of environmental ethics.

Dan Nadenicek is the Dean of the UGA College of Environment and Design.

Refreshments 5:00-5:30 p.m.; seminar 5:30-6:30 p.m.

(photo by J. Bartlett at Pogue Brook, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park)

Date: 03.23.2010

Professor Eric MacDonald of the College of Environment and Design leads a discussion the impact historic cultural landscapes have not only as we attempt to conserve them but also as models for guiding our future relationships to the land.

Refreshments at 5:00 pm., seminar 5:30-6:30 pm.

Date: 03.16.2010

RESCHEDULED

In recognition of Women's History Month, EECP is joining with the Institute for Women's Studies to present this documentary and discussion. 

Before the environmental movement began, the late Jane Yarn was blazing a path for conservation. Yarn helped save thousands of acres of Georgia barrier islands and marshland from development, created river recreation areas in inland Georgia, and played a role in founding the Nature Conservancy and other conservation groups in Georgia. Through her friendship with former Georgia governor and President Jimmy Carter, Jane was able to play a bigger role on a much larger stage, helping create underwater marine sanctuaries off the East and West Coasts of the U.S. The documentary includes interviews with Jimmy Carter, members of Jane Yarn's family, and others who knew her, as well as incredible underwater footage of the wreck of the Research Vessel Jane Yarn, named after the pioneering conservationist and later sunk to create an artificial reef off the Georgia coast.

Following the film, we'll have a discussion session with filmmaker Michael Jordan and Jane's son Doug Yarn.

Refreshments at 5 pm; film at 5:30.

Date: 02.12.2010

The Law School's Conference on International Human Rights and Climate Change will take place on the 4th floor of the Dean Rusk Center on north campus on Feb. 12th. The conference will run from 8:30am until roughly 3:30pm. 

Thomas Pogge (Yale) will deliver the keynote speech on
*"Poverty, Climate Change, and Overpopulation* from 12:30pm-1:30pm. Other panelists include:

Prof. Dinah Shelton (George Washington University) - Introduction - Who Did That? 

Mr. Edward Cameron (World Bank) - From Principles to Practice

Prof. Naomi Roht-Arriaza (University of California, Hastings) - Potential Human Rights Effects of the Proposed Climate Change Regime

Prof. Rebecca Bratspies (City University of New York) - Human Rights and Environmental Regulation

Ms. Elizabeth O'Sullivan (US Environmental Protection Agency) - Focusing on Vulnerability: Incorporating Human Rights into Climate Change Planning

Prof. John Knox (Wake Forest University) - Climate Change Refugees

Prof. Svitlana Kravchenko (University of Oregon) - Rights of Access to Information and Public Participation in Climate Related Decisions: A Crucial Tool to Combat Global Warming

Prof. John Bonine (University of Oregon) - Climate Change Laws, Judicial Review, and Citizen Suits: Necessary Partners

Lunch will be provided for everyone who registers by Friday, Feb. 5th. After that day, people can still register for the conference, but no lunch will be provided. They ask that you register if you want to come to the Pogge lecture or any of the others. 

Online registration is now available for the conference at the following website:
http://www.law.uga.edu/international-human-rights-and-climate-change-conference.

Date: 02.02.2010

A founding member of the Georgia River Survey (www.georgiariversurvey.org), Ben is a canoeist and birdwatcher who has spent time on rivers throughout the state over the past several years. He is a frequent volunteer with the Upper Oconee Watershed Network in Athens and a member of the Oconee Rivers Greenway Commission for the Athens-Clarke County government. A native of Decatur, GA, he has lived in Athens since 1998 and graduated in English from the University of Georgia in 2002. From 2005-2009, he was City Editor at Flagpole Magazine, the alternative weekly newspaper in Athens. His experience includes field assistance on marsh bird study in the upper Midwest, a year of volunteer service as an AmeriCorps member in Boston, MA, and out-of-school work with middle-school students at Citizen Schools, a Boston-based nonprofit. He is also currently working under a grant to Altamaha Riverkeeper on policies to promote water efficiency in Athens' commercial sector. He serves as an administrative assistant with the Georgia River Network.

Refreshments 5:00-5:30 p.m.; seminar 5:30-6:30 p.m.

(photo by Alan Cressler)

Date: 01.21.2010

Athens artist Philip Juras examines the challenges inherent in combining art with environmental science to yield an environmental ethic.

This seminar is co-sponsored with the UGA Department of Geology.

A native of Augusta, Georgia, Philips love for the landscape began on the many trips his family made to explore the forests and fields of the Southeast, and continued to grow through later years of travel through Europe and the United States. In 1990, he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in drawing and painting from the University of Georgia. Following his studies, Philips work primarily explored the landscapes of travel. In 1997, he earned a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Georgia, writing his thesis on the pre-settlement savannas that once flourished across the southeastern piedmont, a subject that has informed much of his work since then. Now living in Athens, Georgia, Philip still paints the landscapes of travel, but focuses primarily on remnant natural landscapes that offer a glimpse of the Southeast before European settlement.

Philip's work is held in private, corporate, and public collections and has been exhibited in one- and two- person shows and juried group exhibitions.

As a landscape painter, Philip's interest is in light, volume, and capturing the impression of a particular place at a particular time. His paintings convey information about the subjects landscape history and the kind of sensory impressions that can make the viewer feel as if he or she is right there. Philip's paintings transform the physical experience of the place into two dimensions.

Date: 01.12.2010

Seminar presented by Dan Crescenzo, UGA Department of Philosophy

Aldo Leopold famously argued that we are plain citizens of the biotic community, and that our relationship with this community is therefore an ethical one. In this paper I propose a normative principle to guide our interactions with ecosystems in accordance with Leopolds ecocentrism: the principle of naturalistic preservation. According to this principle, actions which tend to preserve the coevolved dynamic relationships between organisms and their environment within a given ecosystem should be promoted, and those which do not should be discouraged. In order to demonstrate what this principle would look like in action, I examine a hypothetical proposal to introduce mountain lions (Puma concolor) into southwestern North Carolina in order to control wild boar (Sus scrofa) populations. I conclude that it would be right to do so according to the principle of naturalistic preservation. I also discuss more generally some practical implications of following this principle and why it only applies to human beings as causal agents.

Date: 12.01.2009

Australian environmental theorist Gerry Nagtzaam of Monash University presents a seminar discussing the ethical and practical problems of controlling whaling at the international level. Dr. Nagtzaam will be visiting UGA as the guest of EECP faculty member Piers Stephens.

Refreshments at 5, followed by the seminar at 5:30.

Date: 11.10.2009

The human race is now polluted with hundreds of industrial chemicals - with little or no understanding of the consequences. Even babies are born pre-polluted with as many as 300 industrial chemicals in their bodies when they enter the world. What are the implications not only for human health but for our sense of bodily integrity?

Lecture by Ken Cook, Environmental Working Group, followed by expert panel discussion with Dr. Jeffrey W. Fisher, UGA Interdisciplinary Toxicology Program and Dr. Maria E. Faase, Director of Neonatology at Athens Regional Medical Center.

Co-sponsored by Office of Environmental Sciences, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; Environmental Ethics Certificate Program; and Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication

Date: 11.03.2009

Janisse Ray, writer, naturalist and activist, will give the Willson Center-EECP Odum Lecture at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, in the Chapel. 

Ray is author of Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land (2005), Card Quilt: Taking a 
Chance on Home (2003) and Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (1999).

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a memoir about growing up on a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast, won the Southeastern Booksellers Award for Nonfiction 1999, an American Book Award 2000, the Southern Environmental Law Center 2000 Award for Outstanding Writing, and the Southern Book Critics Circle Award 2000. It was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as the Book All Georgians Should Read.

Ray co-edited Between Two Rivers: Stories from the Red Hills to the Gulf (2004). She has published articles in Audubon, Grays Sporting Journal, Hope, Natural History, Oprah Magazine, Orion, Sierra and The Washington Post. She is anthologized in A Road Runs Through It; Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent; Elemental South: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water; The Roadless Yaak; and The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing. 

Ray lectures on nature, community, sustainability and the politics of wholeness. As an organizer and 
activist she works to create sustainable communities, local food systems, a stable global climate, intact ecosystems, clean rivers, life-enhancing economies, and participatory democracy.

DVD available for checkout from UGA Center for Teaching and Learning and the EECP Library

Date: 10.06.2009

EECP faculty member Alan Covich leads a discussion on how environmental ethics influences his work as a conservation biologist.

Covich joined the UGA faculty as Director of the Institute of Ecology 2003-2006 and is currently a Professor at the Odum School of Ecology. He previously served as head of Colorado State University's Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology and was a professor of zoology at the University of Oklahoma and an assistant professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis. Covich received his Ph.D. (1970) in biology from Yale University. He also is past-president of the Ecological Society of America.

Refreshments from 5-5:30 p.m., followed by the seminar.

Date: 09.15.2009

THE RAIN APPEARS TO BE HOLDING OFF, SO WE WILL RUN THE PHILOSOPHERS WALK AS SCHEDULED

The first EECP seminar of the fall semester will be Tuesday, September 15. Dorinda Dallmeyer will offer "Sand County on Campus," a tour of a variety of sites on UGA's north campus from the perspective of Aldo Leopold's classic environmental ethics book, A Sand County Almanac. Plan to meet at the top level of the North Parking Deck on Jackson Street at 5:15. From there, we will wend our way back to the EECP's home at the Founders Garden to enjoy refreshments.

Date: 04.23.2009

David Foster is Director of the Harvard Forest and an ecologist who is interested in the interpretation
and conservation of landscapes shaped by natural and cultural processes. His research focus has
included boreal fire and wetland ecology in Labrador and Sweden, temperate forest dynamics in New
England, and land use history and forest dynamics of tropical ecosystems in Puerto Rico and the
southern Yucatan peninsula of Mexico.

This lecture is sponsored by the Wormsloe Institute for Environmental History.

Date: 03.30.2009

Dr. Charles Zerner is the Barbara B. and Bertram J. Cohn Professor of Environmental Studies at Sarah Lawrence College and the Director of Intersections: Boundary Work in Science, the Humanities and Arts, an interdisciplinary colloquium series on contemporary environmental issues.

Dr. Zerner's current research focuses on the emergence of a dimension of the environment he calls "stealth nature": the creation of forms of life, designed by biologists and engineers, containing electromechanical components. Stealth insects, for example, including Monarch butterflies with cybernetic components, or purely mechanical "warbots" in the form of dragonflies, are being designed and tested to assess their capacities to conduct surveillance operations. These creatures are designed to blend in with other living creatures and environmental ecologies, thus making stealth and surveillance possible. Zerner is engaged in asking several kinds of questions about these "vivisystems" including: What states of nature do we dream? What kinds of governance and powers over nature do we wish to legitimize, empower, and enact? How will the creation of machinic organisms -- cyborgian creatures -- be judged or regulated? Can we begin to create an ethical, moral, and political language that lays the groundwork for judging and critically assessing interventions in the structure of the organic world, while avoiding the pitfalls of a fantasized, green, sacralized pristine nature, on the one hand, or an uncritical celebration of polymorphous hybridity, on the other hand? These are questions about the history of our ideas of and attitudes toward nature. Crossing the boundaries of culture, biology, engineering, and ethics, Zerner's research on military design and anticipated uses of vivisystems as potential tools for surveillance and attack, a process he calls the weaponization of life, poses unsettling questions in the humanities and the arts.

Trained as a lawyer (J.D.) and as an architect (M.Arch.), Zerner worked as a botanical artist drawing the "weeds of Cambridge, Massachusetts" as Artist-in Residence for Cambridge. He taught drawing to architects at the Massachusetts College of the Arts and the Boston Architectural Center. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork on environmental ritual and common property management of marine and forest environments in Sulawesi, Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, and the Moluccan islands of Indonesia. Zerner has made a distinctive contribution to the international environmental justice field, linking issues of culture and rights to environmental policy. Charles Zerner is a contributing editor of Culture and the Question of Rights: Forest, Coasts, and Seas in Southeast Asia (2003), People, Plants, and Justice: The Politics of Nature Conservation (2000), co-editor of Communities and Conservation: Histories and Politics of Community-Based Resource Management (2005) and Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (2005).

This seminar is co-sponsored by the Center for Integrative Conservation Research and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

Date: 03.20.2009

In recognition of this years national Womens History Month theme Women: Taking the Lead to Save Our Planet, the Institute for Womens Studies will be sponsoring a great number of events, films, and lectures of interest to the EECP community. For the months keynote event, on March 20-21 EECP is joining with Womens Studies to present a symposium in honor of the late Australian philosopher Val Plumwood, a leading contributor in the development of ecofeminism and radical environmental philosophy. Entitled Environmental Justice and Ecofeminism: Ethical Complexity in Action, the symposium will bring together prominent theorists, activists, and community members working on issues and questions that are deeply social and ecological.

The symposium will open at the Coverdell Center with a Friday afternoon keynote address by feminist ethicist and animal rights activist Lori Gruen (supported by a grant from the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts), and will continue on Saturday with sessions at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.

Invited speakers include the following:

Lori Gruen is associate professor of philosophy at Wesleyan University, whose current research lies at the intersection of ethical theory and ethical practice, including the ethical implications of human interactions with non-human animals.

Teri Blanton is often called the Erin Brockovich of the social justice movement within the Appalachian coalfields for her tireless efforts to protect headwater streams, and ultimately to end mountaintop removal mining of coal. Currently she is a Fellow with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, where she concentrates on the campaign to end mountaintop removal mining in eastern Kentucky and help create a sustainable and survivable energy future.

Jamie Baker Roskie joined the University of Georgia in the fall of 2002 as managing attorney of the Land Use Clinic. She supervises students in a variety of projects assisting local governments and other stakeholders with regulatory solutions to help preserve the environment while promoting quality growth. At the symposium, she will focus on one Georgia communitys quest for
environmental justice—the community of Newtown in Gainesville, where residents have been fighting since the 1990s to end exposure to toxic chemicals. 

The symposium also will feature panel discussions by faculty members from the EECP and Womens Studies. Papers from the symposium will be collected in a special issue of the journal Ethics and the Environment.

Friday's events will be held at the Coverdell Center and Saturday's at the Callaway Building at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. There is no registration fee for the symposium; all meals are included. Please check the EECP website for further updates, and visit the Institute for Womens Studies website (www.uga.edu/iws) for more information about the many Womens History Month events focused on environmental issues.

Date: 03.04.2009

Renowned author and activist Carol J. Adams will visit the University of Georgia to present a lecture and slideshow based on her classic book The Sexual Politics of Meat. Her presentation provides an ecofeminist analysis of the interconnected oppressions of sexism, racism, and speciesism by exploring the way popular culture presents images of race, gender, and species to further oppressive attitudes in society. Her presentation will be followed by a book signing and vegan banquet in the North Tower of the Miller Learning Center. 

This event is sponsored and funded by Speak Out for Species, Women's Studies Student Organization, Institute of African American Studies, the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, UGA Student Government Association Small Club Allocation Fund, Alumni Association and the Institute of Women's Studies.

Date: 03.04.2009

Renowned scientist Gretchen C. Daily will be the keynote speaker at the annual Odum Lecture Seminar, sponsored by the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology. 

I will discuss my new vision of conservation for the 21st century, said Daily. This is a world in which people and institutions appreciate natural systems as vital assets, recognize the central roles these assets play in supporting human well-being, and routinely incorporate their material and intangible values into decision-making.

Daily is a Bing Professor in Environmental Science in the Stanford University department of biology. Her primary scientific efforts concern the future of extinction, the resulting changes in ecosystem services and novel opportunities for biodiversity conservation. She works extensively with economists, lawyers, business people and government agencies to incorporate environmental issues into business practice and government policy.

(Photo by Dorinda G. Dallmeyer)

Date: 02.20.2009

Cecilia Herles, Assistant Director of the Institute for Women's Studies, is a member of the EECP faculty and a recipient of the graduate certificate in environmental Ethics.

(Photo by Dorinda G. Dallmeyer)

Date: 02.10.2009

Rasmus Karlsson is a PhD Candidate in political science at Lund University, Sweden. His research interests traverse theories of intergenerational justice, sustainable development, and the temporal dimension of democracy. Karlsson's visit is hosted by EECP faculty member Piers Stephens.

Reception 5:00-5:30 pm; seminar 5:30-6:30 pm

Date: 02.03.2009

Peggy Barlett holds the Goodrich C. White Professorship in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University.

Her interests in cultural transformation and in the challenges of sustainability to American society in particular have led her to focus on Emory University as a hands-on arena of change. Several new "communities of practice" have emerged in the last two years: the Faculty Green Lunch Group, the Ad Hoc Committee for Environmental Stewardship (a grassroots effort of faculty, staff, and students) that has carried out Woods Walks and Forest Restoration Projects, the Friends of Emory Forest, a group that successfully campaigned for the passage of a University-wide Environmental Mission Statement, and new campus architectural commitments to "green buildings." New structures to implement its mission statement and foster awareness and new practices on campus are now being debated. In addition, Emory seeks to emerge as an environmental leader in the city and region, thus providing a fascinating laboratory for her interests in cultural change and sustainability. 

Her previous research focused on agricultural development in Latin America and the United States. In the 1970's, she carried out economic and ecological research among peasant farmers in a mountainous village in Costa Rica. She explored the intersections of ecological and demographic change, emerging stratification, penetration of global markets, and household economic decisions and to link these local changes to larger international processes. In the 1980s, she extended these interests to the industrial world and explored the 1980s farm crisis through an in-depth study of one south Georgia county . She focused on the survival of family farms in America and combined political economy with an understanding of men's and women's visions of personal "success" and desired lifestyle. 

Dr. Barlett's talk is co-sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the Odum School of Ecology, and the Certificate Program in Organic Agriculture.

Following the lecture the Willson Center will host a reception for Dr. Barlett in the Odum School Foyer.

Date: 11.11.2008

Join legendary Georgia environmental lobbyist Neill Herring for an inside look at what will be happening under the Gold Dome and elsewhere in the wake of Election Day.

Neill Herring was born in Dalton GA in 1947, attended Dalton Public Schools, and graduated from Georgia State College in 1969. He was active in the anti-war movement, and later in several groups opposing various Georgia Power Company projects and policies. In addition to working as a self-employed commercial woodworker from 1970 to 1985, he wrote for a number of weekly papers in Atlanta, including the Great Speckled Bird.

Herring started lobbying at the General Assembly in 1980, against Georgia Power. He became a full-time lobbyist in 1986, and has pursued that occupation since then, representing a number of environmental organizations at the Georgia General Assembly. Herring also writes as a hobby and as an occupation, with a strong interest in industrial history and political economy.

Refreshments 5:00-5:30 pm; seminar from 5:30-6:30 pm

Date: 10.21.2008

James Howard Kunstler will deliver the 2008 Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture, co-sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. 

With his classics of social commentary The Geography of Nowhere and Home from Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler has established himself as one of the great commentators on American space and place. Now, with his book The Long Emergency, he offers a shocking vision of a post-oil future. As a result of artificially cheap fossil-fuel energy we have developed global models of industry, commerce, food production, and finance that will collapse. The Long Emergency tells us just what to expect after we pass the tipping point of global peak oil production and the honeymoon of affordable energy is over, preparing us for economic, political, and social changes of an unimaginable scale.

Mr. Kunstler was born in New York City in 1948. He moved to the Long Island suburbs in 1954 and returned to the city in 1957 where he spent most of his childhood. He graduated from the State Univerity of New York, Brockport campus, worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out to write books on a full-time basis. He has no formal training in architecture or the related design fields. He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, RPI, the University of Virginia and many other colleges, and he has appeared before many professional organizations such as the AIA , the APA, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He lives in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York.

A DVD of the lecture is available on loan from the EECP Library.

Date: 10.07.2008

Dr. Cecilia Herles, the Assistant Director of the Institute for Women's Studies, holds degrees in philosophy and English from Clemson University. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy and graduate certificates in women's studies and environmental ethics from the University of Georgia. During her time in graduate school, she spent two years working as an assistant on the journal, Ethics and the Environment. She has received recognition for her teaching and enjoys teaching her classes on Feminist Theories and Women and the Environment. In the future, she hopes to develop a course on Asian Feminisms. Dr. Herles' research examines feminist philosophies, environmental ethics and philosophies of race. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies and Women's Studies International Forum. She has presented numerous papers at conferences, here and abroad. Her current research focuses on natural disasters, global climate change, population, and activism.

Cecilia's EECP graduate certificate paper was entitled "Muddying the Waters Does Not Have to Entail Erosion: An Examination of the Logic of Purity from an Ecological Feminist Perspective."

Refreshments 5:00-5:30 pm; seminar from 5:30-6:30 pm

Date: 09.23.2008

Finland's national epic, the Kalevala, is a thousand-year-old epic that was passed down by singers. A product of its time, the epic exhibits the typical themes and elements of Northern folklore, including a pronounced spirituality associated with nature. Today most Finns read a version compiled by Elias Lonrot in the mid-nineteenth century, a version that aided in mobilizing Finnish nationalism. Standing out as a clear root of much of Finnish culture, this epic is arguably part of the reason for modern-day Finland's strong environmental ethic, whereby respect for the environment is the norm. The Kalevala echoes the ancient spirit of the Finns and that spirit establishes the root of their environmental ethic.

Sanna Barrineau is the recipient of the 2007 Feighner Award given for the Outstanding Undergraduate Certificate Paper. She is a senior at UGA majoring in International Affairs and Environmental Economics and Management. She is an Athens native, and learned Finnish from her Finnish born mother, Anna-Mari. Unsurprisingly, her EECP paper is on the Finnish national epic. She's currently on the UGA track team as a heptathlete. Her EECP faculty reader was Betty Jean Craige. 

Refreshments 5:00-5:30 pm; seminar from 5:30-6:30 pm

Date: 09.04.2008

Global warming suggests that today's dominant economic paradigm is bumping up against physical and biological limits. As will likely become ever clearer in coming decades, endlessly growing populations, consumption and economic activity is incompatible with human happiness and the flourishing of wild nature. The world's peoples need to shift to an economic paradigm focused on providing sufficient resources for a limited number of people and on leaving sufficient resources for the millions of other species on Earth. For 2500 years philosophers and thinkers East and West, religious and secular, have argued that wealth is not the key to happiness and that goodness is better than greatness. Contemporary thinkers and leaders should work to convince our societies to grow up and accept this message, rather than trying to shoehorn a few more decades of economic growth into an already overstressed system. 

Philip Cafaro is an associate professor in the Philosophy Department of Colorado State University. A former ranger with the U.S. National Park Service, Cafaro's research interests center in environmental ethics, virtue ethics, American philosophy, and wild lands preservation. 
He is the author of Thoreau's Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue (2004) and co-editor of the recent anthology Environmental Virtue Ethics (2005). Cafaro has published articles in Environmental Ethics, the Journal of Social Philosophy, Philosophy Today, and BioScience, as well as in the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity and the Encyclopedia of World Environmental History.

NOTE CHANGE IN VENUE: THIS SEMINAR WILL BE HELD IN ROOM 136 PARK HALL

Reception begins at 5 pm, with the seminar beginning at 5:30 pm.

Date: 04.03.2008

Dr. Susan Power Bratton is the director of Environmental Studies at Baylor University. She is the author of three books on Christianity and environmental ethics. The most recent is Environmental Values in Christian Art (SUNY Press), which should appear in early 2008. She previously published: Six Billion and More: Human Population Regulation and Christian Ethics, and Christianity Wilderness and Wildlife: The Original Desert Solitaire. She teaches courses in environmental subfields such as conserving biodiversity, forest ecology, and environment and society. In addition to publishing numerous scientific articles on subjects ranging from fire management in parks, to the impacts of wild hogs, to restoration of disturbed high mountain floras, she has been writing and teaching in the field of environmental ethics. She also has recently published articles and book chapters on ecology and religion, Rachel Carson and ocean ethics, the ethics of commercial fishing, and Christian ecotheology and the Hebrew Scriptures. She also was the first graduate student to receive a certificate in Environmental Ethics.

Following her lecture, we'll celebrate the 25th anniversary of the EECP with a reception at the Founders Garden House, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.

Date: 03.26.2008

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is a Member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, where she teaches in the Environmental Studies program. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology from Brown University (1976) and her PhD in Forest Ecology from the University of Washington (1983). Her research is focused on the ecology of tropical and temperate forest canopies, particularly the role that canopy-dwelling plants play in forests at the ecosystem level. She carries out field research in Washington State and in Monteverde, Costa Rica with the support of the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. She has published two books and over 55 scientific articles in scientific journals in the area of forest canopy ecology and forest ecosystem ecology. Nalini has presented a number of endowed lectures at academic institutions around the country. 

In 1994, she co-founded and is President of the International Canopy Network, a non-profit organization that fosters communication among researchers, educators, and conservationists concerned with forest canopies. She spends a great deal of energy on public outreach to the general public, children, and policy-makers on matters concerning forest canopies and forest conservation. She has appeared in numerous television documentaries, and was most recently featured as a canopy scientist in the National Geographic television special on tropical forest canopies, titled "Heroes of the High Frontier", which won the Emmy Award for Best Documentary Film of 2001. A new project she initiated involves the creation of a multi-disciplinary Forest Canopy Walkway project on The Evergreen State College campus. In 2001, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to pursue her interests in communication of forest canopy research results to non-scientists with collaborations of artists, musicians, physicians, sports figures, and religious leaders.

Date: 02.27.2008

Join the Athens community in celebrating the life and work of American conservationist Aldo Leopold. The EECP and a variety of Athens/Clarke County environmental groups will host a wide range of events, from live readings from "A Sand County Almanac" to nature walks to films to woodcraft demonstrations.

The EECP has a self-guided walk of the UGA Campus inspired by Aldo Leopold's writing. To download the materials, go here and click on "Sand County on Campus."

"Aldo in Athens"
ALDO LEOPOLD WEEKEND
February 27th - March 2nd, 2008

Schedule of events:

WEDNESDAY, 2/27
11AM: WUGA-FM 91.7 airs "Remembering Aldo Leopold"

THURSDAY, 2/28
7 PM: Athens-Clarke County Library: Screening of "Aldo Leopold: Learning from the Land"

FRIDAY, 2/29
6:30PM: Lyndon House Arts Center: Reception, Food provided by Dondero's

7PM - 9 PM: Reading of Sand County Almanac - Part I, with nature photography exhibit by David Lindsay

SATURDAY, 3/1
8 AM: Birdwalk, State Botanical Gardens, led by Ed Maiorello, Oconee Rivers Audubon Society

9 - 11 AM: Reading of Sand County Almanac - Part II, Callaway Building, State Botanical Gardens

10:30 AM - 1PM: Sandy Creek Park Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resource student ambassadors will lead wildlife games & activities for children ages 7 - 12

12:30 - 1:30PM: Guided walk of State Botanical Gardens trails led by Linda Chafin

12 - 1:30 Piedmont Prairie -- Sandy Creek Nature Center
Prescribed Burn (conditions permitting)
Talk by Shan Cammack
Walk/talk  prairie restoration by Elaine Nash

2 - 4 PM: Guided Walk of Cook's Trail & Oxbow Trail by Walt Cook, Sandy Creek Nature Center

2 - 4PM: Fly tying/fly fishing- Sandy Creek Nature Center, offered by Clyde Peek

SUNDAY, 3/2
2 - 3PM: Guided Walk - Birchmore Trail, Memorial Park, led by Connie Grey

3 - 5 PM: Ivy Pull (invasives removal) Birchmore Trail, Memorial Park, led by Sue Wilde and Dan Sullivan

For more information, Go to:

www.HANDSONNORTHEASTGEORGIA.ORG

Date: 02.26.2008

Doug Yarn is Executive Director of the Consortium on Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and Professor of Law at Georgia State University College of Law where he teaches conflict resolution and legal ethics. After private practice as a litigator, Professor Yarn served as in-house attorney, mediator, and trainer for the American Arbitration Association from 1987-1994. He has trained mediators and arbitrators nationwide and designed conflict management systems for private and public entities, domestic and international. His research interests include conflict in institutions of higher education, international environmental dispute resolution, dispute resolution ethics, dueling codes, apology and forgiveness, biological foundations of conflict resolution, and conciliatory behavior in non-human primates. He is a Gruter Institute Research Fellow and Salzburg Fellow. His degrees are from Duke University (B.A.), University of Georgia (J.D), and Cambridge University, England (M. Litt.).

Date: 01.31.2008

Writer, naturalist and activist Janisse Ray is author of three books of literary nonfiction. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, a memoir about growing up on a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast, was published by Milkweed Editions in 1999. Besides being a plea to protect and restore the glorious pine flatwoods of the South, the book looks hard at family, mental illness, poverty, and fundamentalist religion.

Author Wendell Berry called the book "well done and deeply moving." Anne Raver of The New York Times said of Janisse Ray, "The forests of the South find their Rachel Carson." The book won the Southeastern Booksellers Award for Nonfiction 1999, an American Book Award 2000, the Southern Environmental Law Center 2000 Award for Outstanding Writing, and the Southern Book Critics Circle Award 2000. It was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as the Book All Georgians Should Read.

Ray's second book, Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, about rural community, was published by Milkweed Editions in early 2003.

The third, Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land, is the story of a 750,000-acre wildland corridor between south Georgia and north Florida and was published by Chelsea Green in 2005. Ray co-edited Between Two Rivers: Stories from the Red Hills to the Gulf, out in 2004

Ray co-edited Between Two River: Stories from the Red Hills to the Gulf, with Susan Cerulean and Laura Newton. She edited Milton Hopkin's book of essays, In One Place: The Natural History of a Georgia Farmer. She has published essays and poems in such periodicals as Audubon, Gray's Sporting Journal, Hope, Natural History, Oprah Magazine, Orion, Sierra and The Washington Post. 

Janisse Ray is speaking as part of "Focus the Nation" at UGA. Please see http://athensfocusthenation.cfsites.org/

Her visit is co-sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

Date: 01.30.2008

With global climate change as today's pressing environmental issue, students at the University of Georgia are banding together to participate in Focus the Nation, a national teach-in on global warming solutions. The public event will kick off the night of Wed., Jan. 30 and end with a rally on Thurs., Jan. 31.

"This is an unprecedented opportunity for students and communities from across the country to learn about, discuss and voice opinions about the solutions to global climate change that will have major implications for the fate of our planet," said Kelly Siragusa, Odum School of Ecology graduate student and Focus the Nation coordinator.

On Jan. 30, the national event will begin with the 2% Solution web cast at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Hall Ballroom, followed by a free dinner. Events will be held all day on Jan. 31, with seminar highlights including the 2 p.m. lecture by Ecology of a Cracker Childhood author Janisse Ray and the Charter Lecture presented by National Geographic executive editor Dennis Dimick at 3:30 p.m. Both lectures will be held in the Mahler Auditorium of the Georgia Center for Continuing Education Hotel and Conference Center and admission is free.

Another aspect of the event is the Choose Your Future vote, where students, faculty and the community-at-large will choose their top five global climate change solutions from a list of approximately 15. The ballot will be available Jan. 21 at www.focusthenation.org. Paper ballots will also be available at the Georgia Center, with drop-off locations there and in downtown Athens.

"Based on the national top five votes, Dr. Goodstein will travel to Washington to ask Congress for a solution," said Siragusa. "Focus the Nation believes that addressing global warming requires political participation, but it is a non-partisan, non-profit initiative."

The event will conclude with a Power Hour Rally featuring Athens mayor Heidi Davison at 7 p.m. at the 40 Watt (located at 285 W. Washington St. in Athens), followed by performances from locally favorite bands. In addition to support from the Athens-Clarke County Unified Government, local business, non-profits and UGA are also supporting the event.

Over 1,000 universities and colleges in all 50 states will participate in Focus the Nation, making it the largest teach-in in U.S. history.

"The University of Georgia is a leader in the national Focus the Nation effort," said Eban Goodstein, project director. "Georgia students are showing how young people are facing up to the challenge of their generation."

For more information including the full schedule and sponsors, please see the UGA Focus the Nation web site at www.athensfocusthenation.cfsites.org. National information is located at www.focusthenation.org.

Date: 01.24.2008

Every year, the UGA Alumni Association and the UGA Emeriti Scholars sponsor the Founders' Day Lecture to celebrate the University of Georgia's birthday which is January 27. Celebrate the 223rd anniversary of the University with alumni, students, faculty, esteemed guests and members of the community Jan. 24, 2008 at 3 p.m. at the University Chapel. For the first time, an UGA alum will be the speaker at the lecture. Dorinda Dallmeyer '73, '77, '84, director of Environmental Ethics Certificate Program will present the lecture, "Turning the Tide: Saving the Seas" which will cover the topic of marine environmental issues at stake in today's world.

Date: 11.12.2007

Holmes Rolston is University Distinguished Professor of philosophy at Colorado State University. He has written six books, acclaimed in critical notice in both professional journals and the national press. The more recent are: Genes, Genesis and God (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (Random House, McGraw Hill, Harcourt Brace), Philosophy Gone Wild (Prometheus Books) Environmental Ethics (Temple University Press), and Conserving Natural Value (Columbia University Press). He has edited Biology, Ethics, and the Origins of Life (Jones and Bartlett, Wadsworth). He has written chapters in eighty other books and over one hundred articles.

Scholars have cited and discussed in print Rolston's work over two thousand times. His articles have been reprinted and anthologized one hundred times. (See publications lists on home-page). His books have been used as texts in a hundred and fifty colleges and universities. See list. His work is published in Australian, Canadian, British, German, Scandinavian, Slovenian, South African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian presses and journals, translated, reviewed, or cited in journals and books in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, Czechoslovakian, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovenian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese. Environmental Ethics, Philosophy Gone Wild, and Genes, Genesis and God are in Chinese translation.

Rolston was awarded the Templeton Prize in Religion in 2003, awarded by H.R.H. Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. He was awarded the Mendel Medal by Villanova University in 2005. Rolston has spoken as distinguished lecturer on all seven continents. He gave the opening conference address to the Royal Institute of Philosophy annual conference, Cardiff, Wales, 1993. He was Distinguished Lecturer in Beijing, China, at the invitation of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Philosophy. He participated by invitation in pre-conferences and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, 1992, where he was an official observer. He spoke at the World Congress of Philosophy, Moscow, 1993, and again in Boston, 1998. He was distinguished Visiting Professor of Bioethics, Yale University, 2005-2006.

Rolston was distinguished lecturer at the 28th Nobel Conference, 1992, at Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota, authorized by the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm. The American Philosophical Association named him a distinguished speaker at their Pacific Division, with a three hour panel devoted to his work. He was awarded the Distinguished Visiting Russell Fellow at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. In 1991, a research conference was held in Berkeley devoted to his work, and the results have been published. He was Distinguished Scholar leading a National Endowment for the Humanities colloquium at North Idaho College. He delivered the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997/1998. He was awarded a Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.), Davidson College, 2002.

Date: 10.23.2007

Please join Paul Sutter, Peter Hartel and other EECP faculty in a roundtable discussion on the continuing impact of Silent Spring. Seminar attendance is required for studentes registered for credit in EETH 4000/6000. All faculty, students, and Friends are encouraged to attend.

Date: 10.06.2007

Details on speakers and times will be forthcoming from the Odum School of Ecology. The program will begin Friday evening, October 5, and will run all day Saturday, October 6.

Moderator - Becky Sharitz, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and The International Association for Ecology

Liz Blood, Alumna and National Science Foundation 

Betty Jean Craige, Director of UGA Center for Humanities and Arts 

Carl Jordan, Professor, UGA Odum School of Ecology 

John Leffler, Alumnus and former Ferrum College Dean 

Vince Nabholz, Alumnus and Environmental Protection Agency

After the panel, there will be a catered lunch in Ecology to be followed by a slide show. The audience will have the opportunity at that time to reminisce about Frank's many contributions to science, his views on the community of scholars, his efforts in environmental ethics and landscape design, and especially, the impact he had on all of us.

Date: 10.05.2007

Peter Hartel led a Philosophers Walk from the Golley home at 517 Hampton Court to the Institute of Ecology. The Walk lasted approximately one-half hour, with stops along the way to talk about Frank's environmental ethic.

Date: 09.25.2007

With a passion for nature instilled in her at an early age, writer and biologist Rachel Carson became a fearless champion for the environment. She had been a biologist for the federal government when she first took note of the effects of the unregulated use of pesticides and herbicides. Carson's great love of the natural world drove her to write an expose of the chemical industry, specifically its unregulated use of DDT. Defying her failing health and risking her reputation, Carson published her controversial work, Silent Spring, in 1962. She was viciously attacked, called "an ignorant and hysterical woman." But her warning sparked a revolution in environmental policy and created a new ecological consciousness. Silent Spring, which became an instant bestseller, was translated into 22 languages and changed the way we think about the natural world.

All students registered for the EETH 4000 and EETH 6000 must attend; all EECP faculty, students and friends are welcome.

Date: 09.04.2007

To mark the centennial of the birth of Rachel Carson, the EECP seminar series will start with all students and faculty reading Silent Spring, the book credited with starting the modern environmental movement in America. Undergraduate and graduate students registered for credit in EETH 4000 and EETH 6000 will meet this evening at 5:30 to discuss the plans for the entire fall seminar series and to receive questions to guide their reading. Inexpensive used copies of the book may be obtained from booksellers online; multiple copies are available for checkout from the UGA Science Library.

Date: 04.17.2007

The mountains of Appalachia are home to one of the great forests of the world--they predate the Ice Age and scientists refer to them as the "rainforests" of North America for their remarkable species diversity. These mountains also hold the mother lode of American coal, and the coal-mining industry has long been the economic backbone for families in a region hard-pressed for other job opportunities. But recently, a new type of mining has been introduced--"radical strip mining," also known as "mountaintop removal"--in which a team employing no more than ten men and some heavy machinery literally blast off the top of a mountain, dump it in the valley below, and scoop out the coal. 

Erik Reece chronicled the year he spent witnessing the systematic decimation of a single mountain, aptly named "Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness." A native Kentuckian and the son of a coal worker, Reece makes it clear that strip mining is neither a local concern nor a radical contention, but a mainstream crisis that encompasses every hot-button issue-from corporate hubris and government neglect, to class conflict and poisoned groundwater, to irrevocable species extinction and landscape destruction.

Date: 03.27.2007

David R. Keller is Director of the Center for the Study of Ethics at Utah Valley State College (UVSC), Associate Professor of Philosophy, and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program. After receiving a double-major baccalaureate degree in English and Philosophy from Franklin and Marshall College and a masters degree in Philosophy from Boston College, David earned a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Georgia. His dissertation, written under the direction of Frederick Ferré, addressed environmental philosophy. At Georgia, he also completed the interdisciplinary graduate Environmental Ethics Certificate Program. His first book, The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science to Synthesis (co-authored with ecologist Frank Golley), was published in 2000 by the University of Georgia Press, and earned him the Dean's Scholarship Award for the 2000-2001 academic year. Dr. Keller is presenting this seminar in memory of the late Frank Golley.

Date: 03.06.2007

In 2001, David McDuffie graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and an undergraduate minor in English. He returned to Georgia in the fall of 2004 and graduated in December 2006 with a Master's degree in Religion and a graduate certificate in Environmental Ethics. His primary areas of graduate research are in the areas of inter-religious dialogue between Christian and non-Christian traditions and the relationship between theology and science (particularly ecological science). Currently, David is finalizing application materials for admission into a Ph.D. program in Religious Studies to pursue more extensive examinations of the dialogue between religious and environmental studies. David is a recipient of the Margaret Shippen Kleiner Graduate Student Support Award and is show receiving his graduate certificate from donor Scott Kleiner.

Date: 02.20.2007

(co-sponsored with UGA History Dept.)

Brian Donahue is Associate Professor of American Environmental Studies on the Jack Meyerhoff Fund, and among the core faculty in the Brandeis Environmental Studies Program. He teaches courses on environmental issues, environmental history, and sustainable farming and forestry. He holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the Brandeis program in the History of American Civilization. He co-founded and for 12 years directed Land's Sake, a non-profit community farm in Weston, Massachusetts, and was Director of Education at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. He is the author of Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town (1999), which won the 2000 Book Prize from the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, and The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (2004), which won the 2004 Marsh Prize from the American Society for Environmental History, the 2005 Saloutos Prize from the Agricultural History Society, and the 2004 Best Book Prize from the New England Historical Association. His primary interest is the history and prospect of human engagement with the land. Brian also works as an environmental historian for Harvard Forest.

Date: 02.06.2007

The Honorable Lindsay Thomas
Senior Vice President, Governmental Relations, AGL Resources

Lindsay Thomas was named senior vice president, governmental relations, for AGL Resources in May 2002. In his role, Thomas manages the federal, state, and local governmental affairs for the company in six states where AGL Resources owns and operates natural gas utilities well as other energy and infrastructure holdings. Prior to joining AGL Resources, Thomas served for six years as president and chief executive officer of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. In 2001, Thomas' Georgia Chamber of Commerce efforts were rewarded when Georgia Trend magazine named Thomas the state's most respected CEO. Prior to his work for the chamber, Thomas represented the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games as the director of state governmental affairs. Thomas' professional career also includes service as U.S. Congressman from Georgia's first district from 1982 to 1993. In 1998, President Bill Clinton named Thomas as the Federal Commissioner of the Georgia, Florida, and Alabama Tri-State Water Compacts where he served in this role from June 1998 until October 2002.

Date: 01.23.2007

Chandra Brown, Riverkeeper and Executive Director, Ogeechee-Canoochee River Keeper.

Ever wanted to know what you can do with an Environmental Ethics Certificate other than frame it and hang it on the wall? Join us for our first "report from the field" with Certificate recipient Chandra Brown. Chandra Brown graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and an Environmental Ethics Certificate in 1998. She then attended Georgia Southern University in her hometown of Statesboro. There she conducted her thesis research on nitrogen pollution in the Canoochee River and received a Master of Technology degree in Environmental Studies. She presented the results of her research at the Geological Society of America Southeast Conference in 2001. As Riverkeeper, Ms. Brown actively monitors the rivers and streams for pollution, responds to citizen complaints, and works to educate people on the importance of river preservation.

Date: 11.14.2006

Dr. Todd Rasmussen
Warnell School of Forest Resources, UGA 

Social half-hour with refreshments 5:00-5:30 p.m., seminar follows at 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Date: 11.11.2006

Because of the distance of the drive, we have scheduled this Philosophers Walk for a Saturday (NOT a home football game day). Vans will be available for car-pooling. More details will follow.

Date: 11.01.2006

Eugene Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture
presented by
Dr. Carl Safina, Blue Ocean Institute 

Carl Safina has worked to put ocean fish conservation issues into the wildlife conservation mainstream. He helped lead campaigns to ban high-seas driftnets, re-write and reform federal fisheries law in the U. S., use international agreements toward restoring depleted populations of tunas, sharks, and other fishes, and achieve passage of a United Nations global fisheries treaty. 

Safina is author of more than a hundred scientific and popular publications on ecology and oceans, including a new Foreword to Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us. His first book, Song for the Blue Ocean, was chosen a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction selection, and a Library Journal Best Science Book selection; it won him the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. He is also author of Eye of the Albatross, which won the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing and was chosen by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine as the year's best book for communicating science.

Cosponsored with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
4 p.m., Student Learning Center Room 148; reception and book-signing to follow in the North Tower, 3d Floor, Student Learning Center.

Date: 10.24.2006

Mr. Ray Anderson, president of Interface, Inc., presents the keynote speech ?Sustainability? for the Academy of the Environment conference at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education. To accommodate high demand by faculty and students, admission will be free for Mr. Anderson?s speech which begins at 12:45 p.m., a regular class period. [If you wish to register for the entire conference or to attend the luncheon (11:45-12:45) prior to his speech, please contact Susan Varlamoff, varlamof@uga.edu or 706-542-2151].

Date: 10.10.2006

Craig Barrow III

Mr. Barrow is the current master of Wormsloe Plantation near Savannah, a place which has been in his family's hands for nearly 275 years. Wormsloe also played host to figures such as William Bartram and other early naturalists in the southeast. 

Reception to follow at 6:30 p.m., Student Learning Center, North Tower (3d Floor)

Date: 09.26.2006

Dr. John Bergstrom
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, UGA

Social half-hour with refreshments 5:00-5:30 p.m., seminar follows at 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Dr. John Bergstrom is a full Professor in the Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics of the University of Georgia, where he has been teaching and doing research since 1987. He also is a member of the EECP faculty. 

He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1986. Throughout his career, John has focused on research relating to the economic valuation of land, habitats, groundwater, wildlife and various other natural resources with consumptive and/or recreational uses. His research has received funding from many sources, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the University of Georgia and a number of U.S. state agencies. John has had more than 120 papers published as book chapters, edited proceedings and in journals. 

In addition to his research and publication efforts, John has been recognized for his teaching excellence at the University of Georgia and has received various awards including, most recently, the 2003 Senior Faculty Award, Gamma Sigma Delta Honor Society.

Date: 09.12.2006

Dr. Ann K. Buchholtz
Department of Management
Terry College of Business, UGA

Ann Buchholtz is a member of the strategic management faculty at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in strategic management from the Stern School of Business at New York University. Dr. Buchholtz, who joined the faculty in 1997, teaches courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including strategic management, business policy, managerial ethics, and management and organizational behavior. Her research interests center around corporate governance, specifically executive compensation, the top management team, the board of directors, and ethical issues. Her work has been published in a variety of outlets including the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of General Management, Business Horizons, and the Journal of Case Research. She is the co-author of the business textbook Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management.

For students and faculty interested in measuring corporate social performance are directed to the website "Socrates: The Corporate Social Ratings Monitor" available through Galileo at the UGa Libraries website.

OUTLINE OF REMARKS SEPTEMBER 12, 2006
Business and the Environment: The Controversies and Challenges
by Ann Buchholtz

1. Corporate Social Responsibility 
The concept of CSR began in the ?50s
-Prompted by the size and power of corporations
-Grew in the 60s and 70s as awareness of social problems increased
Debate rages
-To whom is the corporation responsible?
-To what extent is the corporation responsible?

2. Defining CSR
Defining CSR 
Economic Return (profit) the core or foundational activity, followed by Legal Requirements, Ethical Responsibilities, and Philanthropic Activities. Envisioned either as a series of concentric circles or as a pyramid, but in either case, profit is the fundamental concern from which all others emanate.

To Whom is Business Responsible?
Shareholders?
-Prevailed prior to 1950
-Still widely held (particularly by economists
-Termed the ?Classical View?
-Belief that the primary responsibility of business is to increase profits
-Most well-known advocate is Milton Friedman

Stakeholders?
-Entered public consciousness with the concept of CSR
-Expectation that corporations will go beyond their economic and legal responsibilities to assume social responsibilities
Termed the ?Stakeholder view
-Most well-known advocate is Edward Freeman

3. The Classical View
Milton Friedman is famous for saying:
-the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits. 
-For example, corporations should not make investments in reducing pollution beyond those that are in the corporation?s best interests (includes obeying law and reducing negative externalities)
Arguments in support of this view
-Shareholders provide capital and bear the residual risk 
This gives them a claim on management?s allegiance
Resulting in fiduciary duty of management to operate the corporation in their best interests (maximizing shareholder wealth)
-Corporations would be spending someone else?s money (in effect, they become civil servants with the ability to tax)
-Going beyond economics may increase business?s power and influence in society
-Business is not prepared to deal with societal needs
-Proponents of this view still expect corporations to be honest, ethical and responsible - to not do harm


4. The Stakeholder View
Stakeholder view can be descriptive, instrumental or normative
Business has power and influence over society, with power comes responsibility
Shareholder primacy can invite actions that impose costs on other stakeholders (e.g., pollution, subsidiaries in countries with lesser regulations)
The explicit contract with shareholders does not obviate the implicit contract that firms hold with other stakeholders
Shareholders are not alone in bearing risk
-Highly skilled employees develop firm-specific capital
-Communities entrust their resources
-Society is at risk (e.g., Enron)

5. Pressures on Managers
Hypercompetitive environments
-Constant pressure to increase profits
Increase revenues or
Cut costs
-Competitors will cut corners
Then they offer products and services at a better price
Customers then flock to them
Pressure to keep stock price up
-Boards of directors are expected to show improvements in the stock price
-Money managers are judged on short term results
Cognitive limitations of all parties involved
-Availability heuristic 
?Certain? short term consequences can?t compete with uncertain long term consequences in our minds
-Self-serving Bias
The short term benefits and costs impact managers most directly


6. What to do?
Treat recalcitrant business like a child in terms of moral development
-How will the business benefit by being environmentally responsible?
-How might the business lose if it isn?t
Does it matter if business?s interest in the environment is genuine? Yes and No
-Yes because insincere efforts carry costs
Danger of greenwashing
Time and effort expended to make sure it isn?t greenwashing could be better spent elsewhere.
-Philip Morris spend $60M on philanthropy and $108M advertising it.
-ExxonMobil gave $100M to Global Climate project at Stanford - that?s .0028% of their profit last year
-No because the most important thing is that the environment be respected and, if they actually do that, it matters far less why

Date: 01.30.2006
Availability: DVDand VHS available for loan from the EECP Library, Founders House

Laura Kissel is a media artist who works in film and the electronic and digital arts. She is co-founder of the Orphan Film Symposium at the University of South Carolina, where she is Associate Professor of Media Arts. Kissel's documentary work explores social and political issues surrounding landscape and land use, the representation of place and history, and the use of orphan films.

"Cabin Field" explores a mile-long stretch of land in Crisp County, Georgia through the memories of landowners, farmers, and agricultural laborers past and present. On the surface of this landscape, there is profound evidence of collective history and a revealing portrait of our current values.

Date: 04.20.2005

This conference, the second installment of the Southern Nature Project, combined major lectures from the fields of art history, environmental history, conservation biology, and film criticism to yield an exciting and fascinating exploration of the Chattooga River in all its manifestations.

On the evening of Thursday, April 21, at the Seney-Stovall Chapel, noted environmental historian Jack Temple Kirby offered the keynote address "Wilderness and the Southern Mind." A nationally recognized scholar, Dr. Kirby's books include Media-Made Dixie: The South in the American Imagination (1978); Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920-1960 (1987); Poquosin: A Study of Rural Landscape and Society (1987); and The Countercultural South (1995).

The conference continued the following day at The Tate Student Center with the opening lecture "Wildness and the Portrayal of Southern Landscape," delivered by UGA art historian Janice Simon. Buzz Williams of the Chattooga Conservancy and conservationist Butch Clay discussed the current environmental challenges the river faces. After lunch we moved from the real Chattooga to the imagined Chattooga with a screening of the movie Deliverance. The film was followed by Dickey scholar Bernie Dunlap and historian Annie ingram who analyzed shifting concepts of the importance of wild nature in the lives of men and women.

Friday's events culminated at the Seney-Stovall Chapel with "Reading the River," which brought together a quartet of Southern nature writers and poets to read from their works inspired by the Chattooga. The evening featured poet John Lane, essayist Christopher Camuto, novelist Ron Rash, and poet Thorpe Moeckel. These readings were complemented with interludes of traditional music by the renowned banjo player Art Rosenbaum with Nat Gardiner. WUGA-FM, the National Public Radio affiliate in Athens, broadcast the Friday evening reading live. 

Simultaneous with the conference, photographer Jay Kuhr had a one-man show of his large-format, black-and-white photos of the Chattooga on exhibit in the Gallery at the Tate Student Center on campus.