Thomas Berry Award

This award honors the legacy of one of Greensboro’s most influential authors. His philosophies have advanced a mutually enhancing human/earth relationship.

The Greensboro Public Library announces that Pricey Harrison was the recipient of the 2018 Thomas Berry Award. The Thomas Berry Award recognizes an individual or organization that has implemented sustainable and outstanding environmental programs or has engaged in re-imagining the human-earth relationship through scholarship, writing, poetry or the arts.

This award honors the legacy of one of Greensboro’s most influential authors, Thomas Berry. Berry was a Catholic priest, cultural historian, and “Earth scholar.”
He was the author of many books including The Great Work: Our Way into the Future. Among advocates of ecospirituality, he is famous for proposing that a deep understanding of the history and functioning of the evolving universe is a necessary inspiration for our own effective response as individuals and as a species.

Pricey Harrison has served Greensboro and Guilford County as a member of North Carolina House District 57 since 2004.  She has been a passionate environmental supporter, working to build and maintain a green economy in North Carolina.  Her efforts in supporting green and sustainable jobs have helped create 10,000 new jobs across the state.  She was largely responsible for the 2007 legislation that made North Carolina one of the few states with REPS provisions, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard.  This requires that public utilities generate a significant and increasing amount of retail customers’ energy needs via renewable resources (such as solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, and biomass).  Pricey Harrison continues to advocate for the natural environment, and writes weekly newsletters to maintain her constituents’ knowledge about legislation and legal issues.

The awards ceremony was held on Sunday, November 11th at 3:00 pm at the Kathleen Clay Edwards Family Branch Library, 1420 Price Park Road.  Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, Co-Directors of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University, were the keynote speakers. 

For more information about Thomas Berry, check out many of the books written by or about Thomas Berry at the Greensboro Public Library.