Ethics, Values, and the Environment

March 18, 2006

A conference co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions and the Harvard University Center for the Environment.

The scientific, political, and economic policy debates about the global environmental crisis have tended to ignore its historical, ethical, religious, and aesthetic dimensions. The purpose of the conference is to redress this balance by highlighting the integral nature of these humanistic components to the fabric of our ecological understanding and, consequentially, as essential ingredients in a broad, multidisciplinary approach to environmental studies and public policy initiatives.

To view video presentations from this conference, please click on the presentation title:

Conference welcome and introduction
Daniel Schrag, director, Harvard University Center for the Environment
Donald Swearer, director, Center for the Study of World Religions

Literature as Environmental(ist) Thought Experiment?
Lawrence Buell
Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature, Harvard University

Nature, Liberty, and Equality
Donald Worster
Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Professor of History, University of Kansas

Touching the Depth of Things: Cultivating Nature in East Asia
Mary Evelyn Tucker
co-director, Forum on Religion and Ecology

A Walk on the Wild Side: The Idea of Nature Revisited
Michael D. Jackson
Distinguished Visiting Professor in World Religions, Harvard Divinity School

From the Ground Up: Growing a Green Future for Religion and Ethics
Bron Taylor
Samuel S. Hill Professor of Religion and Environmental Ethics, University of Florida

Interiority Regained: Integral Ecology and Environmental Ethics
Michael Zimmerman
Chair and Professor of Philosophy, Tulane University

Panel discussion with all six presenters