The Illahee Lecture Series
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2.22.10 Power, Change and Energy - Richard Heinberg
3.15.10 Power, Change and Food - Wes Jackson
4.12.10 Power Change and Money - Jessica Jackley
4.26 10 The Nature of Power - Robert Greene
Special events:
3.27.10 Maude Barlow: Water Warrior
5.18.10 The Power of Nature - Gary Snyder, Jerry Franklin, Ursula Le Guin
Lectures are held at First Congregational Church (1126 SW Park, Portland). 7:30 PM (Doors open at 6:30).
More about the 2010 Illahee Lecture Series and Speakers:
Many of our economic, social and environmental problems have
solutions. Some of these solutions are obvious. But most of them are
difficult, or we would have already employed them. What’s stopping us?
Maybe it's as simple as this: Various economic, belief and affinity
groups are able to wield veto power on progress.
Cultural
change, like biological evolution, can be incremental. But it can also
be sudden and transformational. It appears we’re in the middle of
rapid environmental, political and cultural change. Change occurs when
one paradigm loses power, and another replaces it. But how does that
happen? And how do we participate in that process to bring about the
future we want?
Past Illahee speakers have touched upon the
subject of power and change in various ways. We’ve invited some of them
back, and have added some new faces, to focus on what appears to be
a rapid social transformation – what it is, where
we might be going, and what we can do - ten years into the 21st century.
• 2 February - Jonah Lehrer
The Power to Change Our Minds
Jonah Lehrer is a Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist. He graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He has written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. He is also a Contributing Editor at Scientific American Mind and National Public Radio's Radio Lab.
• 22 February - Richard Heinberg
Power, Change and Energy
Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute, Mr. Heinberg is best known as a leading educator on Peak Oil—the point at which we reach maximum global oil production—and the resulting, devastating impact it will have on our economic, food, and transportation systems. But his expertise is far ranging, covering critical issues including the current economic crisis, food and agriculture, community resilience, and global climate change. Heinberg is author of nine books, including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and the newly released Blackout.
• 15 March - Wes Jackson
Power, Change and Food
Wes Jackson is founder and President of The Land Institute. He is the author of several books including New Roots for Agriculture and Becoming Native to This Place and is widely recognized as a leader in the international movement for a more sustainable agriculture. He was a 1990 Pew Conservation Scholar, a 1992 MacArthur Fellow, and a 2000 Right Livelihood Award recipient. Jackson's focus is the development of natural systems agriculture and the transformation of our food systems.
• 12 April - Jessica Jackley
Power, Change and Money
Jessica Jackley is a co-founder of Kiva.org, the world’s first peer-to-peer online microlending website. Kiva lets Internet users lend as little as $25 to specific developing world entrepreneurs, providing affordable capital to help them start or expand a small business. Kiva has been one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history, connecting hundreds of thousands of people through lending across over 150 countries.
• 26 April - Robert Greene
The Nature of Power
Maybe it's time for sustainability advocates to toughen up, in which case they might want to talk with Robert Greene. He doesn't preach “random acts of kindness.” In fact the release of his book The 48 Laws of Power prompted New York Magazine to declare “Machiavelli has a new rival. Greene is a sought after management strategist and has consulted to businesses in the U.S and abroad about image-building and strategy. He has been invited to lecture by Google, Microsoft, and the US Olympic Governing Body among many others.
Special Events:
Water Warrior
See Confluences: Water & Justice
One can easily picture Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, outside the corporate headquarters of Suez or Veolia, all alone, bullhorn in hand, shouting to the executives on the 47th Floor, "Come out, I have you completely surrounded." But one can also picture hundreds of corporate executives coming out with their hands up. Because Barlow isn't alone, she has millions of people behind her.
• 18 May - Gary Snyder, Jerry Franklin, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Power of Nature: Mt. St. Helens, 1980 - 2010
For most people, the word "power" evokes images of captains of industry, leaders of nations, spiritual guides, and sometimes their own personal journeys and relationships. We often forget that the human enterprise is puny compared to nature writ large. A single thunderstorm releases more energy than a nuclear blast. And a volcanic eruption dwarfs both. On 18 May 2010 Illahee will join with the Mount St. Helens Institute, the Spring Creek Project, and the U.S. Forest Service to bring three profound environmental thinkers together to reflect on the power and change inherent in our close neighbor, Mount St. Helens, thirty years to the day after its historic eruption in 1980.
The Illahee Lecture Series began in 1999 and has hosted over 70 nationally and internationally known speakers. The lectures provide a forum for science-based, policy-relevant environmental inquiry. Please visit our archives page for more information about our past lectures.
