The Stegner Center has a robust lineup of programs for the 2012-2013 academic year. The Center’s eighteenth annual symposium, to be held on April 12-13, 2013, will focus on the topic “Religion, Faith, and the Environment.” It has been nearly half a century since UCLA historian Lynn White named the Judeo-Christian tradition one of the “root” causes of “our ecological crisis.” Much has changed since then. Across the world, people of faith are stepping forward to explain why our spiritual connections to the earth demand environmental protection. At the same time, religion remains intertwined with some of the most vexing environmental problems. Our symposium aims to examine, and help untangle, the fascinating relationship between religion and environmental protection and degradation. In conjunction with the symposium, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, will deliver the Wallace Stegner Lecture on April 11.
On February 15, the Stegner Center will host a one-day academic conference with leading legal scholars on “The Future of Conservation Easements: What Were We Thinking and Where Do We Go from Here?” Noah Hall, Associate Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School, will be in residence on October 31 to November 1 as the Stegner Center’s 8th Annual Young Scholar. He will deliver his young scholar lecture on “Interstate Groundwater Law: Equitable Apportionment of Transboundary Resources and Implications for the Snake Valley Aquifer Dispute” and a downtown CLE on “The Law of the Great Lakes – Ninety Percent of North America’s Available Freshwater and Not a Drop for Utah.”
The Stegner Center hosts two speakers as part of our lecture series in the Fall. On September 12, Joe Riis, a National Geographic wildlife photographer, will deliver a noon hour photographic lecture on “Pronghorn Passage and Other Conservation Photography Stories from Around the World.” On November 7, the Stegner Center will be joined by Woody Tasch, the Founder and CEO of Slow Money, for a lecture and book signing on “Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered.”
The Stegner Center’s popular noon hour green bag series will feature a variety of speakers and topics this year including the following:
- September 18, “Energy Development on Utah’s BLM Lands,” Juan Palma, Utah State Director,
Bureau of Land Management - October 16, “Watershed Institutions in the U.S.: Emergence and Evolution,” Tony Arnold, Professor of Law, Affiliated Professor of Urban Planning, Chair of the Center for Land Use and Environmental Responsibiility, University of Louisville
- November 13, “Report Card on Environmental Dispute Resolution in Utah: Incomplete, but Showing Progress,” Michele Straube, Director of Environmental Dispute Resolution Program at the Wallace Stegner Center
- November 28, “Crime Victims’ Rights in Criminal Envrionmental Prosecutions,” Paul Cassell, Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah
- January 17, “Confronting the Challenge of Environmental Change on the Colorado Plateau,” Barry Baker, Director, Canyonlands Research Center, The Nature Conservancy
- January 24, “Utah’s Wasatch Range: Four Season Refuge ,” Book signing, Lecture and slide show with photographer and author Howie Garber
- February 7, “Because It’s There: The Alpine Route to Environmentalism,” Jeff McCarthy, Chair of Environmental Studies, Professor of English, Westminster College
- March 7, “Energy Development and Protecting Utah’s Red Rock Wilderness – Not Inherently Inconsistent Goals,” Steve Bloch, Energy Program Director and Attorney, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
For program details, including times and locations, see the Stegner Center online calendar >>