Sustainability in Crisis

Today I received advanced notice of a conference being organised by my friend Colin Bell from the Kirby Lang Institute for Christian Ethics (KLICE). The conference, titled Sustainability in Crisis is to be held in Cambridge on 26th-28th September. Below is the blurb and full details can be found here.

Sustainability in Crisis is a three-day cross-disciplinary consultation being held in Cambridge in September 2011, aimed at thought-leaders, academics, campaigners and policy-makers, representing a variety of religious perspectives or none. It will serve as a forum for informed and honest conversation about the challenges we all face and the distinctive contribution religions might make to addressing them.

Confirmed keynote speakers include:

• Andy Atkins is Executive Director of Friends of the Earth and heads up the organisation's focus on tackling climate change and the loss of our planet's natural diversity. He has worked in a wide range of international development charities and has a strong track record of campaigning on environmental and social justice issues.
• Paul Chambers is a UK government Civil Servant. (Further details to follow.)
• Juliet Davenport is founder and Chief Executive of Good Energy, the UK's leading renewable electricity supplier, which has 26,000 customers and supports over 1,500 independent green generators. Its goal is to help the UK to a 100% renewable future. Both Good Energy and Juliet have won several awards for their work, including Juliet being named PLUS Markets CEO of the year 2009 and 2010.
• Paul Ekins is Professor of Energy and Environment Policy at the UCL Energy Institute. He was also Founder and Associate Director of Forum for the Future, and has extensive experience consulting for business, government and international organisations. His academic work focuses on the conditions and policies for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy.
• Bill McKibben is an American author, environmentalist, and activist. His books include The End of Nature (1989), the first book for a common audience about global warming, and Deep Economy (2007), addressing what the author sees as shortcomings of the growth economy and envisions a transition to more local-scale enterprise. He is the co-founder of 350.org, an international climate campaign that organized 10/10/10, the most widespread day of action on global warming in history.
• (to be confirmed) Ann Pettifor is executive director of Advocacy International Ltd and a fellow of the new economics foundation (nef). She is an experienced international speaker and commentator on macro-economics: amongst her publications is The Coming First World Debt Crisis (2006) in which she predicted the global debt-deflationary crisis. From 1994-2001 Ann led the international campaign Jubilee 2000 that resulted in the cancellation of more than $100 billion of debt for 50+ low income countries.