An interdisciplinary group of international scholars convened at Colby College to discuss the nature of sustainability from different philosophical perspectives. Featuring keynote addresses by two of the best known environmental philosophers working in the US today, Holmes Rolston, III, and Karen J. Warren, the conference will include individual papers, panels, and author-meets-readers sessions with Bryan G. Norton and Joel Kovel.
This conference was organized by Professor Keith Peterson in the Philosophy Department and funded by the Goldfarb Center Faculty Sponsored Conference Grant. Read a feature article on the conference in the Colby Echo
Below you will find links to download mp3 audio files of each of the sessions held at the conference, including introductions and discussions. To listen to sessions without downloading click here. We would also like to thank Alex Smith at Radio EcoShock for the smaller, lo-fi versions of the sessions linked here.
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm, Diamond Building, Ostrove Auditorium
Welcome and Keynote Address, “Climate Change, Sustainable Development, Sustainable Biosphere,” featuring:
Holmes Rolston, III
Emeritus University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University
Reception immediately follows
Saturday, April 10, 2010 8:30 am - 10:00 am, Diamond Building, Room 122
Author-Meets-Readers Session One
Moderator: Jim Behuniak, Colby College
Bryan G. Norton, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy, Distinguished Professor
Commentator: Scott Lehmann, University of Connecticut, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy
10:10 am - 11:05 am, Diamond Building, Room 141 “Living Sustainably in New England,” John E. Carroll. University of New Hampshire, Professor of Natural Resources
11:15 am - 12:30 pm, Diamond Building, Room 123
Roundtable Discussion
John E. Carroll, Joel Kovel, Bryan G. Norton,
Holmes Rolston III, Karen Warren, and others
Moderator: Keith R. Peterson
1:45 - 3:15 pm, Diamond Building, Room 122
Author-Meets-Readers Session Two, Part 1 & Part 2
Moderator: Janette Bulkan, Colby College
Joel Kovel, Formerly Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism
Commentators: Keith Peterson, Colby College
Eddie Yuen, Urban Studies, San Francisco Art Institute
3:45 pm - 5:15 pm, Diamond Building, Room 122
Ecopolitics, Food, and Sustaining Intrinsic Value
“Geographic Indications and the Respect for Food Milieux”
Andrea Borghini, College of The Holy Cross
“Sustainable Instituting: Bruno Latour’s Deep Ecological Politics”
Kingsley Goodwin, University College Dublin, Ireland
“Some Problems for Sustaining Entities with Intrinsic Value”
Toby Svoboda, Pennsylvania State University
7:30 pm - 9:00 pm, Diamond Building, Ostrove Auditorium Keynote Address, “A Sustainable Curriculum: An Ecofeminist Philosopher’s Perspective on What Is It and Why It Matters,” featuring:
Karen J. Warren
Emeritus Professor, Macalester College
During Your Stay Conference attendees may wish to consult these documents of the local businesses and services in the Waterville area.
Speaker Bios
 Holmes Rolston III
Emeritus University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University
Holmes Rolston III is widely recognized as one of the leading environmental philosophers in the world. He began to publish essays in environmentalism as early as 1975, and many of his most influential ideas on environmental philosophy and ethics were published in the collection Philosophy Gone Wild (1986) and Environmental Ethics: Values in and Duties to the Natural World (1988). He is Associate Editor of the premier journal in environmental philosophy, Environmental Ethics, which he co-founded. Professor Rolston also delivered the University of Edinburgh’s 1997 Gifford Lectures, titled Genes, Genesis and God, on the role of transcendence in genetic science. He was awarded the Templeton Prize in Religion in 2003. Rolston argues that the natural world carries intrinsic values that human beings should recognize. The existence of such values means that humans have duties toward the natural world, including duties to protect species and ecosystems from destruction. He remarks that “sustainable development is impossible without a sustainable biosphere.”Read an excerpt from "The Future of Enivronmental Philosophy." From section 4. of Holmes Rolston, III, “The Future of Environmental Philosophy,” in Environmental Ethics: The Big Questions, David R. Keller, ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 566-568.
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 Karen J. Warren
Emeritus Professor, Macalester College
Karen Warren established “ecofeminism” as a distinctive approach in environmental philosophy. It is based on the idea that there are both conceptual and conventional links between the subjugation of women, people of color, children, the poor, and the colonized by men and the domination of nature by human beings. She is author or editor of several books, including Ecofeminist Philosophy: a Western Perspective on What it is and Why it Matters (2000), Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature (1997, ed.), and Ecological Feminist Philosophies (1996). She suggests that interconnections between women, environment, sustainable development, and education must be critically explored in order to gain a more adequate idea of what sustainability means. See also: Curriculum Vitae & Bio Read excerpts from "Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Education: An Eco-feminist Philosophical perspective on the Importance of Gender" Excerpts from Karen J. Warren, “Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Education: An Eco-feminist Philosophical perspective on the Importance of Gender,” in The Sustainability Curriculum: The Challenge for Higher Education, John Blewitt and Cedric Cullingford, eds. (London, Sterling, VA: Earthscan, 2004), 106-108, 118-123.
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 Bryan G. Norton
Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Public Policy Distinguished Professor
In 1991, Bryan Norton published Toward Unity among Environmentalists, which established him as a major voice in environmental philosophy. In it he argues that despite lack of consensus on questions of the origins, existence, and nature of value in the natural world, in practice most environmentalists will converge on the same goal: preservation of the natural world. He has acted as a Fellow of the Hastings Institute, a Gilbert White Fellow at Resources for the Future, and has served on the Board of Directors of Defenders of Wildlife. He has also served on the EPA’s Ecosystem Valuation Forum and The Risk Assessment Forum. While working for the EPA he co-authored the first-ever protocols for Ecological Risk Assessment. Dr. Norton is most recently the author of two substantial volumes on the theme of sustainability, entitled Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management (2005), and Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary Essays in the Philosophy of Conservation Biology (2003).
Read an excerpt from "Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management" From Chapter 9 of Bryan G. Norton, Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 356-365.
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 Joel Kovel
Formerly Professor of Social Studies at Bard College, current editor of the journal Capitalism Nature Socialism
Joel Kovel believes, along with an increasing number of thinking people, that the global economic system is unsustainable and inherently destructive of the environment. A former psychiatrist, Kovel has participated in various activist causes since the Vietnam War, including South American and Caribbean solidarity movements, and the antiwar and antinuclear movement. Since 1990 he has worked with the green party, running against Ralph Nader for their Presidential nomination in 2000. His book, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? (2002/2007), explores the relationships between ecological devastation and the expansive nature of capitalism. He offers “ecosocialism” as a program for ecological-political progress toward an integral view of human-in-nature and a sustainable future society. Read an excerpt from the "Introduction" to Part III, and and excerpt from "Ecocentric Production" from Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of
the World?, 2nd ed. (London, New York: Zed Books, 2007), 159-163,
234-241. |
 John E. Carroll
University of New Hampshire Professor of Environmental Conservation
John E. Carroll has directed and taught in the university’s undergraduate natural resources and environmental degree programs for many years, and has guided numerous graduate degree students in natural resources and environmental research focused on public policy, environmental diplomacy and ecological ethics and values, including the relationship between ecology and religious or spiritual values. His current research and teaching emphasis is in sustainability of agriculture and food systems, and the relationship of energy and food production, with particular reference to New England food security, as well as agricultural ethics and values. Prof. Carroll is the author of twelve books, including Pastures of Plenty: The Future of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Conservation in New England (2008), The Wisdom of Small Farms and Local Food: Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic and Sustainable Agriculture (2005), and Sustainability and Spirituality (SUNY Press, 2004), plus many articles and papers, and is a Kellogg Foundation National Fellow. Read an excerpt from /Sustainability and Spirituality/ (SUNY Press, 2004), pp. 1-5.
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