SAMUEL MYERS MD, MPH

SAMUEL MYERS MD, MPH

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Founding Director of Planetary Health Alliance
Principal Research Scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

I think the environmental community has been guilty of a lot of catastrophism, a lot of statements like ‘Game Over for the Planet’, and we’ve painted a lot of very dark pictures about where we’re going, but when you look across these different sectors and all the solutions that are out there, there’s no reason to believe that our grandchildren couldn’t live in an incredibly exciting world.

JEAN WEINER

JEAN WEINER

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Goldman Environmental Prize Winner
Founder of Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversité Marine in Haiti

We’re coming out of one of the worst times for resource exploitation, waste and everything related to that waste of resources, so trying to set the example, especially for my kids, recycling, trying to be reasonable about purchasing things, about where things end up after you’re done using them, just in general being careful about what you do, what impacts there are down the line. Even for them already, they’re 18 and 20 now–What are you going to do to try to protect the planet for your kids? Already trying to put that mindset for them because it’s very difficult for our generation to change the way it has done things for so long, but trying to at least bring that change. Be responsible, be reasonable, think about the impacts.


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.”


JOHANNES STRIPPLE & HARRIET BULKELEY

JOHANNES STRIPPLE & HARRIET BULKELEY

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Carbon Ruins · Climate Futures · Climaginaries · Earth Systems Governance Project

Our starting point was that a lot of the stories we tell about future worlds are quite poor. It’s not stories that are meeting the world as it is now. It’s difficult for people to inhabit the kinds of worlds that we imagine through scenarios or modelling, so there is a kind of distance between where we are now and the life worlds of a decarbonized or a post-fossil world.

MELISSA CRISTINA MARQUEZ

MELISSA CRISTINA MARQUEZ

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Shark Scientist, Science Communicator, TV Presenter & Author

A lot of people when you think of sharks, you think of hammerheads, great white sharks, tiger sharks, but there’s so much more diversity than just that. There’s over 500 different species and on average we’re discovering new species every two weeks, not just of sharks, but also their cousins, the stingrays, skates and sometimes the chimeras as well. And so knowing that diversity exists, for me it’s really important to get that message out there.

PINA GERVASSI

PINA GERVASSI

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Pina Gervassi is the Climate Director of the Forest Stewardship Council

Since I was a child, most of my family were dedicated to nature, fishing and agricultural engineers, so I started to love nature since I was very little, and then when I realised how important the Amazon is for the world and that I was living in a country [Peru] that’s really important, not only because of forests but also for biodiversity, indigenous people…I decided that I wanted to do that and I knew that was the place I wanted to be.

SHIMON SCHWARZCHILD

SHIMON SCHWARZCHILD

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Environmental Activist
Founder Assisi Bird Campaign & Action for Nature

I witnessed being totally rejected and not only witnessed, I remembered as a ten-year old all the children would go to a class in eugenics that I was not allowed to go to. I remember the insults that children learned against Jews while I was still in Germany. And I’m one of the lucky Jews who managed to leave.”