Author and environmental ethicist Christopher Stone examines some of the underlying moral issues involved with global ecological problems such as climate change, loss of biodiversity and depletion of natural resources in a Lawrence University convocation.
Stone, the J. Thomas McCarthy Trustee Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Law School, presents “Mending the Earth: Ethical Issues in Healing the Global Environment” Tuesday, Oct. 4 at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. He also will conduct a question-and-answer session in Riverview Lounge at 2 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.
A widely published author on topics ranging from ocean policy and U.S. alternate energy policy to corporate crime and trade law, Stone helped fuel the country’s emerging environmental movement with his 1974 book “Should Trees Have Standing?,” arguing for the “legal standing” of nature’s voiceless elements, such as endangered species and threatened forests. The book was reprinted in 1996 as “Should Trees Have Standing?: And Other Essays on Law, Morals and the Environment.”
Stone has addressed other ecological issues in the books “The Gnat is Older Than Man: Global Environment and Human Agenda” and “Earth and Other Ethics: The Case for Moral Pluralism” and has written frequently for such publications as Ecology Law Quarterly, the American Journal of International Law, The New York Times and Harper’s Magazine.
In addition to his writing, Stone, 67, has served as a principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Energy in a variety of projects related to geothermal resource development. He also has served as a member of the Commission on Environmental Law for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (World Conservation Union), the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development in London and is on the Board of Advisors of the Animals and Culture Foundation.
A member of the USC law school faculty since 1965, Stone was appointed in 1999 to the McCarthy Trustees’ Chair, one of the most generously funded faculty positions in American legal education. He earned a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude in philosophy from Harvard College in 1959 and a law degree from Yale University School of Law in 1962.
