Obi Kaufmann delivers a presentation, “Ecological Philosophy and California’s Past and Future History,” at the 2024 Sierra Writers Conference.

In-person event at Nevada County Campus, Grass Valley, Room N-12. CLICK HERE for a general admission ticket to all in-person events.

In his artful yet analytical books, Obi Kaufmann explores the transformation of California’s resource landscape from its ancient origins through its modern challenges to its future possibilities. Through the parsing of what he calls Ecological Philosophy, Obi employs literature and poetry, the history of the physical sciences, and indigenous-traditional ecological knowledge to present the rhetorical and epistemological theories of Consilience (the marriage of science and art), Aesthetics (the transmission of meaning through media), and Complexity (the functional description of emergent phenomena). Heightened with lyrical prose and backed by up-to-the-minute, well-sourced science, the result is a continuance, in effect, of the award-winning, best-selling story he explores in his California Field Atlas series. By addressing the profound changes our unique landscape has undergone and continues to go through, Obi explores what it might mean for the future of humanity in this most beautiful and perilous of all places, our lovely California.

Obi Kaufmann is an award-winning author of many best-selling books on California’s ecology and geography, including the California Field Atlas, The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource, and the epic California Lands Trilogy which includes: The Forests of California, The Coasts of California and The Deserts of California. A lifelong resident of California, Obi Kaufmann makes his home base in Oakland and is currently working on his sixth book: The State of Fire, Understanding Where, How and Why California Burns which will be published by Heyday in the Fall of 2024.