ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2008 
 
 
 
Harbour at sunset   Culture, Consciousness and Nature--
A Context for Climate Change
   
Stanley Park

PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Presentations

Thursday, October 16

Pre-Conference Workshop
8:30 am – 4:30 pm

Conference - Opening Reception
6:30 pm

Dinner on your own


Friday, October 17

8:00 am
Buffet breakfast

9:15 - 10:00 am
Opening Keynote – Roderick Nash, Professor of History and the Environmental Studies Program, University of California Santa Barbara
Reflections on the importance of and ways to include ecological materials in the curricula of colleges and universities. Drawing on experiences teaching Environmental Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, Nash describes how the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of l969 motivated faculty to make changes in the organization of higher education. He argues that the humanities are just as vital as the sciences in solving the bottom-line problem of how we can live sustainably on Earth, illustrated by his own work in wilderness preservation and environmental ethics.

10:30 - 12:00
Concurrent Sessions


12:00 - 2:00 pm
Lunch on your own

2:00 - 3:00 pm
Keynote – Andrew Dobson, Professor of Politics, Keele University
Environmental Citizenship: A Route to Sustainability. When it comes to changing environment-related attitudes and behaviour, fiscal incentives and disincentives are the tools most often used by governments. Dobson will explore some of the drawbacks of this approach and discuss an alternative possibility – environmental citizenship. This new citizenship will be described and explained, and some recent empirical evidence that supports the citizenship approach to changing attitudes and behaviour will be discussed.

3:30 - 4:45 pm
Concurrent Sessions


Dinner on your own

Saturday, October 18

7:30 am
Buffet breakfast

8:30 - 9:30 am
Keynote – Carolyn Merchant, Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, & Ethics, University of California Berkeley
Merchant proposes a new kind of environmental ethic—a partnership ethic, based on the idea that people and nature are equally important. If both people and nature are acknowledged as actors, we have the possibility of a mutually beneficial situation. A partnership ethic holds that the greatest good for the human and nonhuman communities is in their mutual living interdependence. A partnership ethic entails a viable, sustainable relationship between a human community and a nonhuman community in a particular place, a place in which connections to the larger world are recognized through economic and ecological exchanges. It is an ethic in which humans act to fulfill both humanity's vital needs and nature's needs by restraining human hubris. As humans, we need to cultivate a new ability to hear nature's voice. Although, as partner, Nature's language differs from our own, we nevertheless have the possibility of working cooperatively with it. The result is a healthier, more sustainable environment for our own and future generations.

10:00 - 11:30 am
AGLSP Business Meeting

11:30 - 1:00
Lunch on your own

1:00 - 2:30 pm
Concurrent Sessions

3:00 - 4:30 pm
Concurrent Sessions

6:00 pm
Reception and Conference Banquet and Awards Presentation

Conference concludes.

 

 
Vancouver Island
 
Art Gallery
 
Ferry
 

  Contact us at info@aglsp.org or 919.684.1987
  Conference host: Simon Fraser University Vancouver