David W. Orr will present a Lecture on "Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic and Confronting Climate Change on April 9, 2009 at 2 p.m. in the George Pearl Hall at the School of Architecture & Planning. The street address is 2401 Central Ave. NE. Orr's lecture is part of the Regents Lecturer Series. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College and a James Marsh Professor at the University of Vermont.
His career as a scholar, teacher, writer, speaker, and entrepreneur spans fields as diverse as environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change.
He is the author of five books and co-editor of three others. Ecological Literacy (SUNY, 1992), described as a “true classic” by Garrett Hardin, is widely read and used in hundreds of colleges and universities. A second book, Earth in Mind (1994/2004) is praised by people as diverse as biologist E. O. Wilson and writer, poet, and farmer, Wendell Berry.
Orr is the recipient of four Honorary degrees and other awards including The Millennium Leadership Award from Global Green, the Bioneers Award, the National Wildlife Federation Leadership Award, and a Lyndhurst Prize.
He has lectured at universities throughout the U.S. and Europe. He serves as a Trustee for several organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.
In 1987 he organized studies of energy, water, and materials use on several college campuses that helped to launch the green campus movement. In 1989 Orr organized the first conference, co-sponsored by then Governor Bill Clinton, on the effects of impending climate change on the banking industry.
In 1996 he organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center was named by the U.S. Department of Energy as “One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century,” and by The New York Times as the most interesting of a new generation of college and university buildings.
The Lewis Center purifies all of its wastewater and is the first college building in the U.S. powered entirely by sunlight. It became a laboratory in sustainability that is training some of the nation’s brightest and most dedicated students.
The story is told in two books, The Nature of Design (Oxford, 2002), that Fritjof Capra called “brilliant,” and a second, Design on the Edge (MIT, 2006), that architect Sim van der Ryn describes as “powerful and inspiring.”