Our Seventh UU Principle calls on us to affirm and promote “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence,” and most of us are proudly all about ecology and environmental protection. At the same time, our Second Principle is “Justice, Equity and Compassion in Human Relations,” and most of us are equally proud of our UU heritage in this area. But have we always been faithful to both principles? Rich Wallace will present us with a confounding contradiction: the history of natural resource conservation and environmental protection is riddled with racism. The contradiction undermines goals of both justice and conservation. We are on the threshold, or perhaps the precipice, of both an opportunity and an urgent imperative to correct our course and set a path for the future in which both goals may be met. Rich Wallace is a former member of TPUUF and was founding chair of the Environmental Studies Department at Ursinus College. Today, Rich is a senior staff member of the Ecological Society of American where he is editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, a premier environmental science journal.
