Please join us for a talk by William Bryan, author of the book Nature and the New South. His book describes the caricatures of Southerners as so desperate for jobs that they have given little thought to protecting the region’s environment. Yet in the decades after the Civil War southern businesspeople and public officials became preoccupied with the idea that there could be “permanent” ways of using the region’s dwindling natural resources. Rather than embracing a get-rich-quick strategy based on exploiting natural resources to depletion, southerners debated the most “permanent” ways to use and conserve their resources so that they would be available indefinitely. This talk explores the successes and failures of the South's search for environmental permanence - one of the earliest attempts at sustainable development in the United States - and reflects on what this experience can tell us about the social and environmental aspects of sustainability today.
Co-Sponsors of this event are the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Busines, The Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain, and The School of History and Sociology.
The Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business was founded in 2013 to act as a catalyst and connector, bringing together students, research faculty, companies, and entrepreneurs to create an environment where business-driven solutions to sustainability challenges can take shape and thrive. In all, Scheller provides students unparalleled breadth in environmental sustainability, ethics, corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and values-based leadership.
The Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain (CSLS) is a unit in the Office of Undergraduate Education. The Center is leading the implementation of the 5-year Serve-Learn-Sustain Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), a campus-wide academic initiative working with all six colleges to offer students opportunities inside and outside the classroom to collaborate with diverse partners – across the community, non-profit, government, academic, and business sectors – on key sustainability challenges. Through SLS, students use the knowledge and skills they are acquiring at GT to help “create sustainable communities.”
]]>