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, Sierraand 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.

Fridays events will be held at the Coverdell Center and Saturdays 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 to

http://www.uga-eecp.com/news_newsletter.php

and click on "Sand County on Campus" on the right hand column.




“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.

photo of bald eagle over Blackbeard Island, Georgia by James Holland

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.