Voices for the Planet: Scientists, Activists, Farmers & Filmmakers Speak Out

Voices for the Planet: Scientists, Activists, Farmers & Filmmakers Speak Out

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Scientists, Activists, Farmers & Filmmakers Speak Out

PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk, Cave Diver Jill Heinerth, IPCC Lead Author Joëlle Gergis, Director of the European Commission’s DG for Energy Paula Pinho, Co-Founder of The Best Bees Company Noah Wilson-Rich, Ecologist Carl Safina, Founder of The Ocean Agency Richard Vevers, Founding Father of the Circular Economy Walter Stahel, Founder of Advocacy Group F Minus, CEO of Legacy Agripartners Colin Steen, President of Source Global Neil Grimmer

THOMAS CROWTHER - Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor

THOMAS CROWTHER - Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor

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Ecologist · Founder of Restor
Co-chair of the Board for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Global restoration really means finding and empowering the millions of local communities, indigenous populations, and farmers who are promoting biodiversity. Restor is a digital platform, sort of like Google Maps, but for restoration. So rather than seeing coffee shops and supermarkets, you will see conservation projects and Indigenous-led restoration initiatives. And that means you can find a currently on Restor - I think we have around 140, 000 - so you can go on there for free right now and find thousands and thousands of these amazing heroes of nature. And you can zoom in and you can see every single tree on the ground. You can see every bush and you can fund them or you can buy their coffee or you can go visit their projects and do ecotourism. There's a myriad of ways that we can all support their efforts by also improving our own lives. 

We need to be cutting our emissions so that we can allow nature to thrive and help us along the way. For far too long people have been squabbling about emissions. We should do this or we should do that. Climate change is way too big for us to be squabbling about things. We need to do everything now. When we grow the same crops every year, the soil gets more depleted and all the nutrients are lost. I've heard quotes that if we cannot find agricultural systems that rejuvenate the soil instead of depleting it, we are signing our death warrant. It's like we need to be promoting healthy soils if we're going to have any agriculture in the future.

Kristin Ohlson - Author of Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World

Kristin Ohlson - Author of Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World

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Author of Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World
The Soil Will Save Us

I think it's this story of cooperation is important in terms of the story that we tell ourselves about nature, and seeing as how we are part of nature, it's important that we see ourselves as possibly a partner instead of a destroyer. I think that we have held onto the perspective that nature is all about competition and conflict. And when we shift that, when we look at nature as this vast web of interconnection and cooperation, and of course competition and conflict in there obviously in some places. But when we look at this vast web of cooperation and collaboration, I think that it changes our view. It changes our view of what's possible.

Colin Steen - CEO of Legacy Agripartners - Pushing Farming Forward

Colin Steen - CEO of Legacy Agripartners - Pushing Farming Forward

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CEO of Legacy Agripartners

It's interesting, as I've gotten older, I've really started to reflect back on that early time growing up on a farm. And I'm fiercely, fiercely proud of where my roots are. And Weldon, Saskatchewan, it's a town of 160 people there today. And just being in a spot where every day you have cattle to feed, you've got a grain crop you're trying to grow, right? The things are subject to weather. The sort of ups and downs of farm life are so dependent on the 6 pm news and the weather forecast each night. It's at times very stressful, but most times incredibly rewarding, right? There's nothing like sitting in a combine at harvest time with all the fruits of your labors all coming in at the same time. It's a great experience. We had cattle, which is just a never-ending thing, right? You know, our vacations were tied around going to cattle shows, cattle sales, bull sales, cow sales, anything that revolved around the farm. And we had a ton of fun on our vacations going to these events and seeing sites in those areas where we went to. But at the end of the day, you know, your life revolves around the cattle on the farm. It revolves around the farm. There's no sort of, we'll take four months off and not worry about it, right? Those cows have to be fed twice a day and looked after. So it's a lot of responsibility, and it's a great way to get yourself ready for life as an adult.

Jay Famiglietti - Hydrologist, Exec. Director - Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast

Jay Famiglietti - Hydrologist, Exec. Director - Global Institute for Water Security, Host of "What About Water?" Podcast

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Hydrologist, Executive Director of the Global Institute for Water Security, U of Saskatchewan
Host of the Podcast What About Water?

I think water is taking a backseat and personally, I feel like water is the messenger that delivers the bad news of climate change to your front door. So in the work that I do, it's heavily intertwined, but it's taking a backseat. There are parts about water that are maybe separate from climate change, and that could be the quality discussions, the infrastructure discussions, although they are somewhat loosely related to climate change and they are impacted by climate change. That's sometimes part of the reason why it gets split off because it's thought of as maybe an infrastructure problem, but you know, the changing extremes, the aridification of the West, the increasing frequency, the increasing droughts, these broad global patterns that I've been talking about, that I've been looking at with my research – that's all climate change. Just 100% climate change, a hundred percent human-driven. And so it does need to be elevated in these climate change discussions.

David Montgomery - Co-author of “What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health”

David Montgomery - Co-author of “What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health”

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Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington · MacArthur Fellow ’08
Co-author of What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health · The Hidden Half of Nature

When you dig into the medical literature, 7 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in the United States are diet-related chronic diseases. And so one of the hopeful messages that I think comes out of The Hidden Half of Nature, Growing a Revolution, and What Your Food Ate is that what we do to the land, essentially we do to us. And what's good for the land is good for us. So if we think about farming differently, we can actually enjoy ripple effects that are not only beneficial to the farmers in terms of reduced costs for fertilizer, pesticides, and diesel, but it could also translate into better human health outcomes at a population level.

John Beaton - Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

John Beaton - Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

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Founder, Director & Co-Visionary of Fairhaven Farm

What's trending now with beginning farmers is that it is creating this kind of community connection. It's bringing people to the farm. It's connecting them to their food source. That creates community. It helps cultivate culture and connectivity, and so I think overall, it's like the landscape and agriculture as a whole is shifting towards a different direction.

PAUL SHAPIRO

PAUL SHAPIRO

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CEO of The Better Meat Co.
Author of Nat’l Bestseller Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World

If you go fill up your car with gas in the United States, chances are high that probably about 10% of your gas is not actually coming from fossil fuels. It's coming from ethanol.You don't even contemplate the fact that there's ethanol in your gas. And I think that meat maybe come like that, where people will obtain meat. But the norm will be for that meat not to be totally animal in its nature. And I think that people will just have a different view of what meat is, and it will be far more diverse than what it is today.

IBRAHIM ALHUSSEINI

IBRAHIM ALHUSSEINI

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Founder and CEO of FullCycle Fund

Is it okay that you benefit at the expense of everyone and everything else? Is that a way that you really feel like you are winning at life? If not, then reconsider what you’re doing and just realize that we all live in this inextricably connected closed sphere in the middle of space. Anything that harms one area harms every area. There is nobody who can escape dirty air, dirty water, dirty food, economic political disruptions, etc. We’re all in this together. So don’t fool yourself by thinking somehow you’re going to come out this unscathed and having ‘won’ while everybody else loses.

DIANA CHAPLIN

DIANA CHAPLIN

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Canopy Director of One Tree Planted

We planted over 10 million trees in 2020 alone. And it’s one tree planted for every dollar donated, so we make it as simple as possible, but when you add it all up together the impact is just tremendous and growing every day.”