Jill Stein, a physician and 2012 presidential candidate for the Green Party, will serve as one of the keynote speakers for the 2014 Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon.
This year's conference, "Running Into Running Out," will run from Feb. 27 to March 2. Stein will speak on Sunday, March 2.
Stein, a pioneering environmental health advocate, has been on the front lines of battles for social, economic and environmental justice. She has fought to end foreclosures and student debt, and for health care and education as human rights. She has proposed an end to dangerous fossil fuel and nuclear power, and creating 25 million healthy, community-based green jobs instead.
Human rights anthropologist Stephen Corry and environmental and natural resources lawyer Patrick Parenteau will also serve as keynote speakers for this year's conference.
Corry became projects director in 1972 and director general in 1984 of the human rights organization Survival International. He served as chairman of the Free Tibet Campaign from 1993 to 2009, and remains on its board.
Parenteau is a professor and senior counsel to the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Vermont Law School. His previous positions include vice president for conservation with the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, D.C. (1976-1984); regional counsel to the New England regional office of the EPA in Boston (1984-1987); commissioner of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (1987-1989); and senior counsel with the Perkins Coie law firm in Portland (1989-1993).
Stein was trained as a clinical doctor and served for decades as an instructor of internal medicine at Harvard Medical School. She began to advocate for the environment as a human health issue in 1998, when revelations of pervasive human breast milk contamination and toxic pollution of the fetal environment first emerged.
Stein co-authored two widely-praised scientific reports, "In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development," published in 2000; and "Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging," published in 2009.
Students from the UO School of Law organize the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, which attracts more than 3,000 attendees each year. Last year’s event featured more than 130 panels, workshops and events.
Previous conferences have hosted keynote speakers that include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ralph Nader, David Brower, Terry Tempest Williams and Winona LaDuke.
The 2014 conference, “Running Into Running Out,” conveys a sense of urgency that as a community, we must take greater action to prevent running out of the resources necessary for survival.
- from the UO School of Law