Sunday Sept. 26th, 2010
11 AM - 6 PM
Columbia College
Student Commons
1001 Rogers Street
Columbia, MO
-A FREE event-
11 AM - 6 PM
Columbia College
Student Commons
1001 Rogers Street
Columbia, MO
-A FREE event-
Most people have been conditioned to accept the operation of the economy as an article of faith. Unlimited growth and wealth accumulation are seen as the “natural law” of the economy and nothing can be done to alter this fact – even if it means the integrity of Earth’s ecological and social systems are severely damaged in the process. This “inconvenient truth” is now a moral challenge. We are faced with a choice: bring the economy into right relationship with the planet and its inhabitants, or suffer the consequences -- the increasing destruction of Earth’s life support systems and social structures. Peter G. Brown will draw on the Quaker principle of “right relationship,” and present a proposal for bringing our economy, our ethics, and our environment into alignment.
Peter G. Brown is a professor in the School of Environment, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University. Before coming to McGill, he was Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland's graduate School of Public Affairs. While at the University of Maryland, he founded the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, the School of Public Policy itself, and established the School's Environmental Policy Programs. He is a graduate of Haverford College, holds a Master's Degree in the Philosophy of Religion from Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Columbia in Philosophy. He is the author of Restoring the Public Trust: A Fresh Vision for Progressive Government in America (Beacon Press, 1994), and Ethics, Economics and International Relations: Transparent Sovereignty in the Commonwealth of Life, Second Edition (Edinburgh University Press, 2008). It is published in North America as The Commonwealth of Life: Economics for a Flourishing Earth, Second Edition (Black Rose Books, 2008). (Click here to read a review of The Commonwealth of Life from the Journal of Sustainability.) Peter Brown is actively involved in conservation efforts in the James Bay and Southern regions of Quebec, and in Maryland. He operates tree farms in Maryland and Quebec and is a Certified Quebec Forest Producer, and in 1995 was Tree Farmer of the Year in Garrett County, Maryland. He is a member of the Religious Society of Friends.