• 25 May, 6:00 pm - Juliet Schor
Plentitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
The Haseltine Building
133 SW 2nd Ave

Purchase Tickets

Drawing on recent developments in economic theory, social analysis, and ecological design as well as evidence from the cutting-edge people and places putting these ideas into practice, Plenitude is a road map for the next two decades. In encouraging us to value our gifts—nature, community, intelligence, and time—Schor offers the opportunity to participate in creating a world of wealth and well-being.

Past events summary 2010: Power and Change

2.2.10       The Power to Change Our Minds - Jonah Lehrer
2.22.10     Power, Change and Energy - Richard Heinberg
3.15.10     Power, Change and Food - Wes Jackson

3.27.10     Maude Barlow: Water Warrior

4.12.10     Power Change and Money - Jessica Jackley
4.27 10     A Short History of Power - Ronald Wright

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.

PAST EVENTS DESCRIPTIONS:

• 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.

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.

• 27 March - Maude Barlow
Water Warrior
Univ of Portland, Chiles Center
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.

• 12 April - Jessica Jackley
Power, Change and Money
First Baptist Church
SW 12th and Taylor

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.

• 27 April - Ronald Wright
A Short History of Power
First Congregational Church
1126 SW Park

Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have unleashed but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment’s inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome. As we embark on the 21st century we have the opportunity to examine the consequences of past shifts in power, and look at scenarios in which power - political, economic, and social - contributes to human welfare.

• Tuesday 18 May, 7:30 pm
Gary Snyder, Jerry Franklin, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Power of Nature: Mt. St. Helens, 1980 - 2010
First Baptist Church
SW 12th & Taylor
 
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.