Speaker -- David Orr
The lack of authentically democracy in the U.S. has permitted corporate entities to pursue their own economic and political interests virtually unchecked. This includes plundering the earth and poisoning land, water and air - resulting in the climate crises. What inadequate regulations existed before the Trump regime are now being systemically eliminated.
The dual crises of democracy and climate change are not separate, but are one interrelated threat to the human future.
That’s the theme of Democracy in a Hotter Time, edited by David Orr, which calls for reforming democratic institutions as a prerequisite for avoiding climate chaos and adapting governance to how Earth works as a physical system.
To survive in the “long emergency” ahead, we must reform and strengthen democratic institutions, making them assets rather than liabilities. The collection of essays proposes a new political order that will not only help humanity survive but also enable us to thrive in the transition to a post–fossil fuel world.
Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics emeritus (1990-2017), Counselor to the President, Oberlin College 2007-2017, and a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University 2021-2025.
He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward (Yale, 2017), Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009), Design with Nature (Oxford, 2002), Earth in Mind (Island Press, 1994/2004), and co-editor of five others including Democracy Unchained (The New Press, 2020) and Democracy in a Hotter Time (MIT Press, 2023) and a regular columnist for Conservation Biology for twenty years. He has published over 250 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications.
He has served as a board member or adviser to eight foundations and on the Boards of the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, Bioneers, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and the Children and Nature Network.
He has been awarded nine honorary degrees and a dozen other awards including a Lyndhurst Prize, a National Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation, a “Visionary Leadership Award” from Second Nature, a National Leadership award from the U.S. Green Building Council, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education, the 2018 Leadership Award from the American Renewable Energy Institute, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Green Energy Ohio.
He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Hotel at Oberlin (Platinum rated), and the Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years;” . . . “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and selected as one of “52 game changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design + Construction Magazine (2016).[ https://bit.ly/3bx3C7m ] He was the co-founder of The Atlanta Environmental Symposium (1973-1975), the Meadowcreek Project (1979-1900), and the Oberlin Project 2007-2017.
Thursday, September 11, 5pm PT, 6pm MT, 7pm CT, 8pm ET
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