Free Market Environmentalism Conference

Florida Gulf Coast University - April 2nd, 2016

This conference aims to educate students on environmental issues relating to individual liberty and property rights, provide a voice for libertarian thought in Florida Gulf Coast University’s larger environmental conversation, and create a forum where students can contribute ideas towards solving real problems.

The conference will feature lectures on free-market and property-based environmentalism and discussion about current environmental issues and their possible solutions in Florida. There will also be a Socratic seminar where students will have the opportunity to break off into groups to discuss the lecture and come up with questions for the speakers.

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Ari Bargil Ari Bargil is an attorney with the Institute for Justice Florida office (IJ-FL). He joined the Institute in September 2012 and litigates cutting-edge constitutional cases protecting property rights, economic liberty, and other individual rights in federal and state courts. Prior to joining IJ-FL, Ari practiced civil litigation with Cole, Scott & Kissane, P.A. in their West Palm Beach office. Before entering private practice, Ari worked as a trial court law clerk in Florida’s Fifteenth Judicial Circuit.

Daniel Peterson

Daniel Peterson is the Director of the Center for Property Rights of the James Madison Institute., a non-profit free-market think tank based in Tallahassee, Florida. He is the former executive director of the Coalition for Property Rights. He has worked in both the Florida Senate and the Florida House as a Legislative Assistant. Prior to that, he was a Public Affairs Manager for SPRINT. His responsibilities included lobbying, community affairs, and serving on numerous boards. Before moving to Orlando in 1998, Dan served as Campus Crusade’s Director of Affairs for Eurasia (the former Soviet Union). During his 14 years of residency in Moscow, Russia, Dan traveled extensively as a seminar leader and conference speaker. Dan is also a former recording artist with SSS International Records. You can hear him on You Tube by putting I Need You by The Geers into the search engine. He still plays as a solo artist at various venues around central Florida performing light rock/pop/hits from the 60s on. He can be found on FB at Danielplaysmusic. Ronald Bailey Ronald Bailey is the award-winning science correspondent for Reason magazine and Reason.com, where he writes a weekly science and technology column. Bailey is the author of the book The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century (July 2015) and Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution (Prometheus, 2005), and his work was featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004. In 2006, Bailey was shortlisted by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as one of the personalities who have made the "most significant contributions" to biotechnology in the last 10 years. In 2004, Bailey testified before a congressional committee on "The Impact of Science on Public Policy." He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Group Travel Scholarships are available, click here to apply!