Pandemics and Prejudice: How Can Democracy Survive in a Hotter Time?
Dr. David Orr, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College, will be presenting via GCPC’s Youtube Channel (“GCPC Video”) on Friday 7/10/2020 at 7pm a lecture about the Moral Imperative to Restore our Democracy as well as the urgency of Environmental Stewardship, regardless of any particular religious persuasion.
Dr. Orr writes: “The COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing crisis of race in America are both an indictment and a preview of what’s coming in a hotter, more divided world with vast economic inequities. Both are symptoms of the tragic failure of democratic institutions. Dr. Orr’s democracy initiative (stateofamericandemocracy.org) is working toward the repair and strengthening of democratic institutions beginning with restoring a moral vision of democracy.”
SAVE THE DATE for this timely presentation and interaction with Dr. Orr. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Orr will not present in person, but we will do this via livestream on Youtube. It is sponsored by the EARTH Team at Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church and Creation Care Alliance. Dr. Orr will be introduced by Marcia Mount Shoop who will facilitate the question and answer period after his presentation.
Dr. Orr is a Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies & Politics, Emeritus. He also served as “Counselor to the President” of Oberlin College for ten years. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change and the Long Emergency (Yale, 2016) and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009) and co-editor of four others including Democracy Unchained (2020). He has authored over 220 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications.
In the past twenty-five years he has served as a board member or adviser to ten foundations and on the Boards of many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute, Bioneers, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation. He is currently a Trustee of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, Children and Nature Network, and the WorldWatch Institute. 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, leadership awards from the U.S. Green Building Council (2014) and from Second Nature (2012), and lifetime achievement awards from Green Energy Ohio (2015) and the North American Association for Environmental Education (2018). He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build 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,” as “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and as one of “52 game-changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design +Construction in January, 2016. He was instrumental in the design and funding of the Platinum-rated Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center. He is the founder of the Oberlin Project and a founder of the journal Solutions. His current work is on the repair and strengthening American democracy that includes publication of a co-edited book Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People followed by public events in major cities across the U.S.