Utah law professor presents next Sorensen seminar

Robin Craig, professor of law at the University of Utah, will speak at the next Thomas C. Sorensen Policy Seminar at 4 p.m. April 13 in the Hardin Hall Auditorium. The talk is titled “Learning to Live with The Trickster: Resilience Theory and Environmental Law in the Anthropocene.”

Environmental and natural resources law in the United States assume that natural systems operate within limited ranges of variability and can always be restored to their proper “balance” – and hence, that it is possible, even easy, to assess and regulate sustainable use of natural resources.

Modern ecological studies in general and resilience theory in particular called these assumptions into doubt even before climate change was recognized. But, climate change has propelled everyone into a world of continually changing ecosystems and baseline conditions.

This talk, based on Melinda Harm Benson and Craig’s forthcoming book, “The End of Sustainability,” explores how American culture and law can better adapt, prepare for and respond to the trickster of the Anthropocene.

This seminar is co-sponsored by the Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Natural Resources, Department of English, the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center, and the College of Arts and Sciences through the Thomas C. Sorensen Endowment.

For more information, contact Tarik Abdel-Monem at 402-472-3147 or tabdelmonem2@unl.edu.