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NCS | Speakers

A Climate Action Plan & the Oberlin Project

Call Date: September 22, 2010

David Orr , Environmental Studies, Oberlin College

David Orr David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Special Assistant to the President of Oberlin College and a James Marsh Professor at the University of Vermont.  Throughout his career, Professor Orr has focused on issues of the environment and politics, environmental education, campus greening, green building, ecological design, and climate change. He is the author of six books including Ecological Literacy (SUNY, 1992) and Earth in Mind (1994/2004).

Professor Orr has organized studies of energy, water, and materials use on several college campuses that helped to launch the green campus movement.  He organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus.  With the proposed goal of carbon neutrality for colleges and universities, Professor Orr organized and funded an effort to define a carbon neutral plan for his own campus at Oberlin.  Seven years later hundreds of colleges and universities, including Oberlin, have made that pledge.  Recent projects include a two year $2.2 million collaborative project to define a 100 days climate action plan for the Obama administration (www.climateactionproject.com), and efforts to stop mountaintop removal in Appalachia and develop a new economy based on ecological restoration and wind energy.

Website: http://www.davidworr.com/



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