Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet
Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.
Environmentalists, Artists, Students & Teachers share their Love for the Planet
Today we’re streaming voices of environmentalists, artists, students, and teachers with music courtesy of composer Max Richter.
Filmmakers, poets, aviators, musicians, cave divers, environmentalists, writers, and artists explore what love means to them
Author of The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now · Basic Rights
Senior Research Fellow · Centre for International Studies · University of Oxford
We can tell from the science that we have to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050. And common sense tells you that bringing them down for the second 50% is going to be harder than the first 50%. So we have to take care of the first 50% by about 2030, and it's 2023 already. We literally must - if we're going to keep climate change from becoming even more dangerous than it is - is to do a very great deal in the next seven or eight years. And a huge amount between now and 2050. So it's not that this problem is the most important of all possible problems. There are other problems like preventing nuclear war, but this is a problem that either we get a grip on it now, or there's a real possibility that it will escape from our control.
Author of The Pivotal Generation: Why We Have a Moral Responsibility to Slow Climate Change Right Now · Basic Rights
Senior Research Fellow · Centre for International Studies · University of Oxford
We can tell from the science that we have to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050. And common sense tells you that bringing them down for the second 50% is going to be harder than the first 50%. So we have to take care of the first 50% by about 2030, and it's 2023 already. We literally must - if we're going to keep climate change from becoming even more dangerous than it is - is to do a very great deal in the next seven or eight years. And a huge amount between now and 2050. So it's not that this problem is the most important of all possible problems. There are other problems like preventing nuclear war, but this is a problem that either we get a grip on it now, or there's a real possibility that it will escape from our control.
Founder & CEO of Wildlife Conservation Film Festival
Cannes Lions Award-winning Producer
I've been fortunate over the last 13 years to meet some of the world's leading conservationists. Dr. Sylvia Earl, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, his Royal Highness Prince Khaled bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, who came to the film festival in 2014, where we showed some films from his foundation. And there have been a number of others, award-winning filmmakers, and a number of celebrities that have come to the film festival, Academy Award Winner James Cromwell. We've had other celebrities, from Paul Giamatti to Alec Baldwin to Sigourney Weaver, all of whom may have a passion for, if not saving wildlife, then for the environment. And I have found them very humble, very easy to speak to, and I'm immensely grateful that they took the time to come to WCFF from their busy schedule. And we hope to build more relationships.
Founder & CEO of Wildlife Conservation Film Festival
Cannes Lions Award-winning Producer
I've been fortunate over the last 13 years to meet some of the world's leading conservationists. Dr. Sylvia Earl, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, his Royal Highness Prince Khaled bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, who came to the film festival in 2014, where we showed some films from his foundation. And there have been a number of others, award-winning filmmakers, and a number of celebrities that have come to the film festival, Academy Award Winner James Cromwell. We've had other celebrities, from Paul Giamatti to Alec Baldwin to Sigourney Weaver, all of whom may have a passion for, if not saving wildlife, then for the environment. And I have found them very humble, very easy to speak to, and I'm immensely grateful that they took the time to come to WCFF from their busy schedule. And we hope to build more relationships.
Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement
Professor of Environmental Change & Public Health
Fmr. Chair of WHO World Health Report · Rockefeller /Lancet Commission on Planetary Health
In terms of the impacts of climate change on health when we started 30 years ago, because there was very little data then, so we made suggestions as to what we thought the health outcomes we thought would be affected like vector-borne diseases, crop failures, water availability, sea level rise, increasing disasters related to climatic extreme events, and obviously the effects of extreme heat on vulnerable populations. In particular, elderly people, but not just elderly people. So we suggested a whole range of different health impacts that could occur. And I think, in general, those ideas have stood the test of time, but of course, as the situation has moved on, we've also become much more preoccupied with what kind of action we need to take.
Tyler Prize Award-winner for Environmental Achievement
Professor of Environmental Change & Public Health
Fmr. Chair of WHO World Health Report · Rockefeller /Lancet Commission on Planetary Health
In terms of the impacts of climate change on health when we started 30 years ago, because there was very little data then, so we made suggestions as to what we thought the health outcomes we thought would be affected like vector-borne diseases, crop failures, water availability, sea level rise, increasing disasters related to climatic extreme events, and obviously the effects of extreme heat on vulnerable populations. In particular, elderly people, but not just elderly people. So we suggested a whole range of different health impacts that could occur. And I think, in general, those ideas have stood the test of time, but of course, as the situation has moved on, we've also become much more preoccupied with what kind of action we need to take.
Explorer · Presenter · Author of Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver
If I die, it will be in the most glorious place that nobody has ever seen. I can no longer feel the fingers in my left hand. The glacial Antarctic water to see through a tiny puncture in my formerly waterproof glove. If this water were one-tenth of a degree colder, the ocean will become solid. Finding the knife-edged freeze is depleting my strength, my blood vessels throbbing in a futile attempt to deliver warmth to my extremities. The archway of ice above our heads is furrowed like the surface of a golf ball, carved by the hand of the sea. Iridescent blue, Wedgewood, azure, cerulean, cobalt, and pastel robin’s egg meld with chalk and silvery alabaster. The ice is vibrant, right, and at the same time ghostly. The beauty contradicts the danger. We are the first people to cave dive inside an iceberg. And we may not live to tell the story.
Explorer · Presenter · Author of Into The Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver
It's such a privilege swimming through these places. And I almost feel like I'm getting a secret peak into the body of the planet and that's a very precious and almost a sacred kind of collaboration where I get to experience this, I get to see this, but if I'm going to take these insanely challenging risks I need to make it worthwhile and share what I've seen so that other people have the benefit of understanding, a better conception of our connected planet. Both in the short term and in the long term scale as well. The sense of time can be warped by what's going on in my brain, so I do have this dance between left brain and right brain. Left brain pragmatic, right brain creative.
Author of Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local
Assistant Professor · International Relations · Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe)
Digital advocacy organizations are recognized as influential actors by the media, politicians, and some academics. In 2016, GetUp, an Australian digital advocacy organization, was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of the top ten actors with ‘covert power’ in Australia.1 Campact in Germany has powerfully mobilized public opinion against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. MoveOn was one of the ‘leading advocacy organizations’ mobilizing people against the Iraq War in the United States. Meanwhile, Leadnow, a digital advocacy organization in Canada, helped to unseat Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 Canadian federal election. This new model of advocacy organization has spread around the world. Nineteen digital advocacy organizations claim to have a total of over 20 million members. What drove the global spread of digital advocacy organizations?
Author of Transnational Advocacy in the Digital Era: Think Global, Act Local
Assistant Professor · International Relations · Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (Europe)
Digital advocacy organizations are recognized as influential actors by the media, politicians, and some academics. In 2016, GetUp, an Australian digital advocacy organization, was named by the Australian Financial Review as one of the top ten actors with ‘covert power’ in Australia.1 Campact in Germany has powerfully mobilized public opinion against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. MoveOn was one of the ‘leading advocacy organizations’ mobilizing people against the Iraq War in the United States. Meanwhile, Leadnow, a digital advocacy organization in Canada, helped to unseat Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the 2015 Canadian federal election. This new model of advocacy organization has spread around the world. Nineteen digital advocacy organizations claim to have a total of over 20 million members. What drove the global spread of digital advocacy organizations?
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.
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.
Co-author of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone
Cognitive Scientist · Co-Director of Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making, CU Boulder
The human mind is both genius and pathetic, brilliant and idiotic. People are capable of the most remarkable feats, achievements that defy the gods. We went from discovering the atomic nucleus in 1911 to megaton nuclear weapons in just over forty years. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and developed genetically modified tomatoes. And yet we are equally capable of the most remarkable demonstrations of hubris and foolhardiness. Each of us is error-prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant… How is it that people can simultaneously bowl us over with their ingenuity and disappoint us with their ignorance? How have we mastered so much despite how limited our understanding often is?
Co-author of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone
Cognitive Scientist · Co-Director of Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making, CU Boulder
The human mind is both genius and pathetic, brilliant and idiotic. People are capable of the most remarkable feats, achievements that defy the gods. We went from discovering the atomic nucleus in 1911 to megaton nuclear weapons in just over forty years. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and developed genetically modified tomatoes. And yet we are equally capable of the most remarkable demonstrations of hubris and foolhardiness. Each of us is error-prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant… How is it that people can simultaneously bowl us over with their ingenuity and disappoint us with their ignorance? How have we mastered so much despite how limited our understanding often is?
Ecologist, Founding President of Safina Center
NYTimes Bestselling Author of Becoming Wild · Song for the Blue Ocean · Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
So we tend to take living for granted. I think that might be the biggest limitation of human intelligence is to not understand with awe and reverence and love that we live in a miracle that we are part of and that we have the ability to either nurture or destroy. The living world is enormously enriching to human life. I just loved animals. They're always just totally fascinating. They're not here for us. They're just here like we're just here. They are of this world as much as we are of this world. They really have the same claim to life and death and the circle of being.
Ecologist, Founding President of Safina Center
NYTimes Bestselling Author of Becoming Wild · Song for the Blue Ocean · Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel
So we tend to take living for granted. I think that might be the biggest limitation of human intelligence is to not understand with awe and reverence and love that we live in a miracle that we are part of and that we have the ability to either nurture or destroy. The living world is enormously enriching to human life. I just loved animals. They're always just totally fascinating. They're not here for us. They're just here like we're just here. They are of this world as much as we are of this world. They really have the same claim to life and death and the circle of being.
Author of The Mind of a Bee
Founder of the Research Centre for Psychology, Queen Mary University of London
The world of bees is under threat, and that is not because bees are singled out, but because bees live in the environment that we all share and they are a kind of a canary in the coal mine for what's going on more largely in destroying our environment. And in a sense they are, I think, a useful sort of mascot and icon to highlight these troubles, but they are only a signpost of other things that are also under threat. We need the bee for our own food because they pollinate our crops, and they pollinate the flowers that we enjoy, but I think their utility for us is not the only reason to support them and their environment. I think the growing appreciation that the world that surrounds us is full of sophisticated and unique minds places on us a kind of onus and obligation to preserve the diversity of these minds that are out there and make sure that they continue to thrive.
