Episode 1 - David Orr

Sustainability Education Podcast

Biography David W. Orr

Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics emeritus (1990-2017), Counselor to the President, Oberlin College 2007-2017, and currently a Professor of Practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward (Yale, 2017), Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse (Oxford, 2009), Design with Nature (Oxford, 2002) and co-editor of five others including Democracy Unchained (The New Press, 2020) and Democracy in a Hotter Time (MIT Press, 2023). He was a regular columnist for Conservation biology for twenty years. He has also written over 250 articles, reviews, book chapters, and professional publications.

He has served as a board member or adviser to eight foundations and on the Boards of the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Aldo Leopold Foundation, Bioneers, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and the Children and Nature Network.

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, a “Visionary Leadership Award” from Second Nature, a National Leadership award from the U.S. Green Building Council, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education, the 2018 Leadership Award from the American Renewable Energy Institute, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Green Energy Ohio.

He has lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the U.S., Europe, 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;” . . . “one of thirty milestone buildings of the twentieth century” by the U.S. Department of Energy, and selected as one of “52 game changing buildings of the past 170 years” by the editors of Building Design + Construction Magazine (2016).

He was the co-founder of The Atlanta Environmental Symposium (1973-1975), the Meadowcreek Project (1979-1900), the Oberlin Project 2007-2017; and the Climate/DemocracyInitiative (2021-present).

Short Summary of the Interview

The interview with David Orr covers broad topics around sustainability education, the role of educational institutions, myths in sustainability education, and the need for cultural and educational change to address the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. Orr, an experienced academic and practitioner in the fields of environmental studies and policy, shares his insights and experiences on a wide range of issues. Orr's perspectives underscore the complexity and urgency of the challenges facing sustainability education and the need for cultural change driven by education, political engagement, and personal responsibility.

(Selected) References, Resources, and Persons Mentioned During the Episode

• David Orr: https://www.oberlin.edu/david-orr
• Oberlin Project: https://oberlinproject.org/
• Schumacher, E. F. (1998). This I believe: And other essays (Repr. with corrections). Green Books.
• Schumacher College: https://campus.dartington.org/schumacher-college/
• Scottish landscape architect Ian McHarg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_McHarg
• Sinsheimer, R. L. (1978). The Presumptions of Science. Daedalus, 107(2), 23–35. (Can there be forbidden knowledge?)
• McGilchrist, I. (2019). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world (New expanded edition). Yale University Press.
• Freire, P. (2012). Pedagogy of the oppressed (Repr). Bloomsbury.
• Francis Bacon: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon
• René Descartes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes
• Edward Bernays: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
• Carson, R., & Kelsh, N. (1998). The sense of wonder. HarperCollins Publishers.
• Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The Limits to growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind. Potomac Associates – Universe Books.
• Meadows, D. (1999). Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System. Hartland: The Sustainability Institute.

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