WarrenWilsonELC
David W. Orr is the Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics and Special Assistant to the President of Oberlin College and a James Marsh Professor at the University of Vermont. He is the recipient of four honorary degrees and other awards including The Millennium Leadership Award from Global Green, the Bioneers Award, the National Wildlife Federation Leadership Award, a Lyndhurst Prize acknowledging "persons of exceptional moral character, vision, and energy." He serves as a Trustee for several organizations including the Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org) and the Aldo Leopold Foundation (www.aldoleopold.org). He is the author of six books and co-editor of three others including Ecological Literacy (SUNY, 1992) and Earth in Mind (1994/2004). In 1987 he organized studies of energy, water, and materials use on several college campuses that helped to launch the green campus movement. In 1996 he organized the effort to design the first substantially green building on a U.S. college campus. The Adam Joseph Lewis Center was later named by the U.S. Department of Energy as "One of Thirty Milestone Buildings in the 20th Century." The story of that building is told in two books: The Nature of Design (Oxford, 2002) and Design on the Edge (MIT, 2006). Recent projects include a two year, $2 million project to define a 100 day climate action plan for the Obama administration (www.climateactionproject.com ). He is also active in efforts to stop mountaintop removal in Appalachia and develop a new economy based on ecological restoration and wind energy. He is the author of forthcoming The Transforming Climate: Leadership in the Age of Consequences (2009).
