Every March, the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, the world’s oldest and largest gathering of environmentalists, unites more than 3,000 students, activists, attorneys, scientists and concerned citizens at the University.
“It’s definitely become an annual gathering for people in the public interest community,” said University law student Aaron Bals. “It’s like Christmas.”
Starting today and continuing through Sunday, March 26, PIELC includes more than 125 panels, workshops and presentations regarding issues such as reducing our carbon footprint through urban gardening, Native American treaty rights, industrial hemp’s potential to be a fiber alternative to trees, forests and climate change, and air and water pollution, among others.
“We try to get a broad range of subject matter,” said law student Kevin Parks, one of the conference’s five co-directors. “We try to keep it as ethnically and racially and sexually diverse as possible.”

Bals and Park are both members of Land Air Water, a group of students studying environmental law at the Knight Law School. Though LAW is largely responsible for putting PIELC together, the conference is so world-renowned that people send ideas for panels and speakers as much as a year in advance.
“There’s probably no less than 300 people integral to making this happen,” said Parks.
Bals is particularly looking forward to the panel about mountaintop removal, a form of coal mining in the Appalachian Mountains, particularly in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
“They started removing entire mountaintops and dumping them in the water,” he said. “I just think it’s a raw example of the wrong-headed direction of the environmental policy under the Bush administration. Basically, you’re taking this beautiful country that a lot of poor people live in and destroying it.”
He added that PIELC is not nearly as formal as the term “law conference” may suggest.
“It’s not your typical law convention; it definitely has the look and feel of an activist gathering,” he said.
Bals added, “Some of the lawyers walking the halls are literally barefoot.”
The conference also includes movies, hikes, photography exhibits and a trip to the Cascades Raptor Center, a non-profit nature center and wildlife hospital for birds of prey such as owls, hawks and falcons.
“You can get kind of tired of listening all day, so (the events) can keep people engaged in the conference,” said LAW treasurer Dawn Winalski, another conference co-director.
The theme of this year’s conference is Compelling a Climate of Change, referring to every person’s capacity to be part of the solution to climate change, or the long-term changes in regions’ temperature, precipitation and wind levels.
Parks said the conference, which has a comprehensive Web site rather than paper brochures and serves mostly local food to keep its carbon footprint at a minimum, is a good way for University students to become more informed about sustainability.
“It’s a great way to learn,” said University of Washington environmental law professor William Rodgers in a phone interview from Seattle. “It’s as if you go to class and have a really great lecturer on a particular topic – land exchange, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It’s tremendously educational.”
Rodgers, who has been attending PIELC from the beginning, is one of nine keynote speakers, along with former Green Party presidential nominee David Cobb; Carrie Dann, a Shoshone woman from Nevada who leads indigenous people to resist the destruction and pollution of their ancestral lands; New Mexico Wilderness Alliance founder Dave Foreman; and Jane Williams, the executive director of California Communities Against Toxics.
“It’s a real honor to be able to talk to such a large and diverse group on such important topics,” Rodgers said, referring to the conference as “an embarrassment of riches.”
“It’s so huge, you’ve got to decide,” he said. “Every time there’s a break, you’ve got to run over to another exciting panel. That’s what makes it so much fun.”
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