Speaker Profile: Dee Eggers

A professor at UNC Asheville in the Environmental Studies Department, Dee is the subject of a student-created Facebook page calling her the “real-life Captain Planet” and the next Aldo Leopold. A recent appointee to the North Carolina Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change, she taught at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and has held a variety of jobs in the environmental science field. Prior to joining UNCA A past chair of the Western North Carolina Alliance’s Steering Committee, last year she received the 23rd Esther Cunningham Award for outstanding community service in conserving natural resources.

TEDxAsheville Topic

The first question is, what is a person? In Environmental Management we usually focus on a legal form e.g., persons having standing in court or viewing corporations as “legal persons.” Then there is the philosophical definition – well, there isn’t just one because philosophers argue about everything.

In the west, until relatively recently, we used to think only humans were persons because we thought only humans could reason, act ethically, and so forth. Then we started asking whether anything else might have those characteristics…

Video

Soni Pitts, a TEDxAsheville Organizer

This event is not being organized by the TED conferences — this is an independently organized TED event.