Highlights - Dr. Charles D. Koven - Lead Author - IPCC Report - Earth System Scientist

Highlights - Dr. Charles D. Koven - Lead Author - IPCC Report - Earth System Scientist

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Earth System Scientist, Climate Sciences Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lead Author on the IPCC Report

Looking into the future, as a scientist, what I've learned how to do is hold multiple futures in my head at the same time because we just don't know. We don't know what the future holds. We need to fight for the futures that we want, and against the futures that we don't want. All I can really say is that it's up to us. It's up to us to fight and advocate for the future we want, and what does that look like, and how do we get there?

Dr. Charles D. Koven - Earth System Scientist - Lead Author on the IPCC Report

Dr. Charles D. Koven - Earth System Scientist - Lead Author on the IPCC Report

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Earth System Scientist, Climate Sciences Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lead Author on the IPCC Report

Looking into the future, as a scientist, what I've learned how to do is hold multiple futures in my head at the same time because we just don't know. We don't know what the future holds. We need to fight for the futures that we want, and against the futures that we don't want. All I can really say is that it's up to us. It's up to us to fight and advocate for the future we want, and what does that look like, and how do we get there?

Highlights - Neil Grimmer - Brand Pres. - SOURCE Global - Drinking Water Made from Sunlight and Air

Highlights - Neil Grimmer - Brand Pres. - SOURCE Global - Drinking Water Made from Sunlight and Air

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Brand President of SOURCE Global · Innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel
Drinking Water Made from Sunlight and Air

Water insecurity and water scarcity is affecting all people in almost every part of the world. At this point, by 2025, we expect 1.8 billion people to suffer from water scarcity, which means they have no access to clean, safe drinking water within a 30-minute walk of their home. You fast forward to 2050, we expect 6 billion people will have water scarcity. So the rate at which this problem is increasing is far greater than the current infrastructure that has supported water for humans. And that's where innovation and rapid deployment of technology at scale is really essential. And that's what we're in the business to do.

Neil Grimmer - Brand President - SOURCE Global - Innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel

Neil Grimmer - Brand President - SOURCE Global - Innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel

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Brand President of SOURCE Global · Innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel
Drinking Water Made from Sunlight and Air

Water insecurity and water scarcity is affecting all people in almost every part of the world. At this point, by 2025, we expect 1.8 billion people to suffer from water scarcity, which means they have no access to clean, safe drinking water within a 30-minute walk of their home. You fast forward to 2050, we expect 6 billion people will have water scarcity. So the rate at which this problem is increasing is far greater than the current infrastructure that has supported water for humans. And that's where innovation and rapid deployment of technology at scale is really essential. And that's what we're in the business to do.

Highlights - Roy Scranton - Author of “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene”

Highlights - Roy Scranton - Author of “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene”

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Author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene & We’re Doomed, Now What?
Director of the Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative

It seems irresponsible to me to downplay the possible consequences of climate change. It seems irresponsible to assume that we're going to fix it. And so I think it's absolutely a responsibility for the people who are talking about it and thinking about it, to look at the worst-case scenario and to look at the current trajectories, absent technologies for carbon scrubbers, to look at where we're actually headed, the worst-case scenarios, and address that and bring that to each other and to our children and to our students. When you really look at the situation, it's scary and terrifying, and it upends everything that we've been told to make sense of life.

Roy Scranton - Author of “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene” - “We’re Doomed, Now What?”

Roy Scranton - Author of “Learning to Die in the Anthropocene” - “We’re Doomed, Now What?”

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Author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene & We’re Doomed, Now What?
Director of the Notre Dame Environmental Humanities Initiative

It seems irresponsible to me to downplay the possible consequences of climate change. It seems irresponsible to assume that we're going to fix it. And so I think it's absolutely a responsibility for the people who are talking about it and thinking about it, to look at the worst-case scenario and to look at the current trajectories, absent technologies for carbon scrubbers, to look at where we're actually headed, the worst-case scenarios, and address that and bring that to each other and to our children and to our students. When you really look at the situation, it's scary and terrifying, and it upends everything that we've been told to make sense of life.

Highlights - KC Legacion on Degrowth, Technology and Social Media

Highlights - KC Legacion on Degrowth, Technology and Social Media

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Member of Web Collective degrowth.info
Master of Environmental Studies candidate, University of Pennsylvania

Degrowth as an idea has intellectual roots in the environmental critiques of the sixties and seventies found in landmark works like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, which was a seminal piece of economic theory that applied the laws of thermodynamics to the economy and was very influential for ecological economics, which is intertwined with degrowth. Degrowth was first formulated in 1972 by French philosopher André Gorz in a public debate where he used the term décroissance to question whether planetary stability was compatible with capitalism.

KC Legacion on Degrowth, Technology and Social Media

KC Legacion on Degrowth, Technology and Social Media

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Member of Web Collective degrowth.info
Master of Environmental Studies candidate, University of Pennsylvania

Degrowth as an idea has intellectual roots in the environmental critiques of the sixties and seventies found in landmark works like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, which was a seminal piece of economic theory that applied the laws of thermodynamics to the economy and was very influential for ecological economics, which is intertwined with degrowth. Degrowth was first formulated in 1972 by French philosopher André Gorz in a public debate where he used the term décroissance to question whether planetary stability was compatible with capitalism.

Highlights - Chris Funk - Dir., Climate Hazards Center - Author of “Drought, Flood, Fire…”

Highlights - Chris Funk - Dir., Climate Hazards Center - Author of “Drought, Flood, Fire…”

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Director of the Climate Hazards Center at UC Santa Barbara
Author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Catastrophes

The work that we're doing here at the Climate Hazards Center is trying to build out the science to cope with a two-degree world. And I think that we can do that. It's not going to be easy, but I think that's definitely within our capabilities, and it is already making human beings be smarter together in very empowering ways. And these are examples of people in Boulder, Colorado getting ready for the next big flood event and having conversations between the National Weather Service and local communities, or me on a zoom call at seven in the morning with my friends in East Africa as they're getting ready to cope with the next extreme. There are great examples of radio clubs in Niger who are working with their meteorological agencies and local farming communities that are pulling data that we're producing here in Santa Barbara, precipitation estimates, but then using them to decide whether they should fertilize their millet crops or not. And so there are ways that we can counter climate hazards and weather hazards by being smarter.

Chris Funk - Director, Climate Hazards Center - Author of “Drought, Flood, Fire…”

Chris Funk - Director, Climate Hazards Center - Author of “Drought, Flood, Fire…”

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Director of the Climate Hazards Center at UC Santa Barbara
Author of Drought, Flood, Fire: How Climate Change Contributes to Recent Catastrophes

The work that we're doing here at the Climate Hazards Center is trying to build out the science to cope with a two-degree world. And I think that we can do that. It's not going to be easy, but I think that's definitely within our capabilities, and it is already making human beings be smarter together in very empowering ways. And these are examples of people in Boulder, Colorado getting ready for the next big flood event and having conversations between the National Weather Service and local communities, or me on a zoom call at seven in the morning with my friends in East Africa as they're getting ready to cope with the next extreme. There are great examples of radio clubs in Niger who are working with their meteorological agencies and local farming communities that are pulling data that we're producing here in Santa Barbara, precipitation estimates, but then using them to decide whether they should fertilize their millet crops or not. And so there are ways that we can counter climate hazards and weather hazards by being smarter.

Highlights - Yee Lee - Chief of Growth at Terraformation

Highlights - Yee Lee - Chief of Growth at Terraformation

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Chief of Growth at Terraformation · Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

We're trying to help the world's forestry organizations collectively plant a trillion trees in the next decade and cover 3 billion acres of net new forest. That's a very, very large number. Some of the very largest tree-planting organizations in the world collectively plant something like half a billion to three-quarters of a billion trees per year. And even that number sounds large, too, but then you realize that's actually three full orders of magnitude smaller than the actual number we need to hit in the next decade. So we actually need to take all of the world's largest forestry organizations as a group and multiply by a thousand their efforts. So that's a very large undertaking, and I just can't underscore enough the scale at which we as a human species seeks to operate when we talk about tree-planting and forestry operations.

Yee Lee - Chief of Growth at Terraformation - Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

Yee Lee - Chief of Growth at Terraformation - Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

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Chief of Growth at Terraformation · Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

We're trying to help the world's forestry organizations collectively plant a trillion trees in the next decade and cover 3 billion acres of net new forest. That's a very, very large number. Some of the very largest tree-planting organizations in the world collectively plant something like half a billion to three-quarters of a billion trees per year. And even that number sounds large, too, but then you realize that's actually three full orders of magnitude smaller than the actual number we need to hit in the next decade. So we actually need to take all of the world's largest forestry organizations as a group and multiply by a thousand their efforts. So that's a very large undertaking, and I just can't underscore enough the scale at which we as a human species seeks to operate when we talk about tree-planting and forestry operations.

Derrick Emsley · Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel

Derrick Emsley · Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel

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Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel Co.

I think what's powerful about a tree is it's tangible and it's symbolic in a lot of ways. We as humans naturally have this emotional connection, I think, to trees, and so particularly when you think of our ability to take action within the climate crisis conversation, a tree is this really powerful symbol and vehicle because it's a lot easier to understand a tree than it is to understand a pound or two of CO2 that's floating in the air. So for us, tree planting is just the start of the communication, just the start of the impact. Really if all it was was to get a stick in the ground that wouldn't have the long-term impact, whether that be carbon, whether that be socioeconomic impact, and things like that. So really for us, veritree helps us collect all that data and create the operating system to pull in the data on everything from planting forms and field updates that are coming in, survivability analysis, and different updates on things like biodiversity. We're partnering with some groups to test underwater sensors in some of these planting sites. We're collecting socioeconomic surveys and things like that to try to attach the impact to the community and back to the planting that's happening.

(Highlights) Derrick Emsley · Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel Co.

(Highlights) Derrick Emsley · Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel Co.

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Co-founder & CEO of veritree - Data-driven Restorative Platform & tentree Apparel Co.

I think what's powerful about a tree is it's tangible and it's symbolic in a lot of ways. We as humans naturally have this emotional connection, I think, to trees, and so particularly when you think of our ability to take action within the climate crisis conversation, a tree is this really powerful symbol and vehicle because it's a lot easier to understand a tree than it is to understand a pound or two of CO2 that's floating in the air. So for us, tree planting is just the start of the communication, just the start of the impact. Really if all it was was to get a stick in the ground that wouldn't have the long-term impact, whether that be carbon, whether that be socioeconomic impact, and things like that. So really for us, veritree helps us collect all that data and create the operating system to pull in the data on everything from planting forms and field updates that are coming in, survivability analysis, and different updates on things like biodiversity. We're partnering with some groups to test underwater sensors in some of these planting sites. We're collecting socioeconomic surveys and things like that to try to attach the impact to the community and back to the planting that's happening.

Bill Novelli · Founder, Business for Impact Program, Georgetown · Co-founder Porter Novelli

Bill Novelli · Founder, Business for Impact Program, Georgetown · Co-founder Porter Novelli

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Founder Business for Impact Program at Georgetown University
Co-founder Porter Novelli Global PR Agency · Former CEO of AARP

This is one of the biggest problems that we have in this country. So, on the one hand, we know that we have to take personal responsibility for ourselves, our own health, our families – it's up to us. As some people like to say, you're on your own. And we have to balance that against the concept that we're all in this together. You know, the idea that it takes a village and both sides essentially disrespect the other side. They criticize the other side. No, we're not in this together. It's your own responsibility, and vice versa. If we're going to be good citizens, and we're going to make progress, we have to see both sides of that equation. That's not easy to do.

(Highlights) Noah Wilson-Rich · Co-founder/CEO, The Best Bees Co, Urban Beekeeping Driven by Science & Tech

(Highlights) Noah Wilson-Rich · Co-founder/CEO, The Best Bees Co, Urban Beekeeping Driven by Science & Tech

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Co-founder & CEO of The Best Bees Company
Largest Beekeeping service in the US

I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.

Noah Wilson-Rich · Co-founder/CEO, The Best Bees Co, Urban Beekeeping Driven by Science & Tech

Noah Wilson-Rich · Co-founder/CEO, The Best Bees Co, Urban Beekeeping Driven by Science & Tech

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Co-founder & CEO of The Best Bees Company
Largest Beekeeping service in the US

I was originally drawn to bees because they're social creatures. And as humans, I always wanted to know about ourselves and how we can be our healthiest selves and our healthiest society. Bees and wasps, and all of these organisms have been around for so long. Bees especially have been around for 100 million years.

(Highlights) WILLIAM McDONOUGH

(Highlights) WILLIAM McDONOUGH

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Leader in Sustainable Design & Development
Architect, Co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

I think believing in something is also part of the responsibility of the believer to sift through these things. So there are a lot of people saying I'm green because they do something less badly. So for me, it’s not green yet, it's just less bad. It's not really good yet. It's not really fabulous, but that just means there's an opportunity to keep going to share information and help each other because in the end, I think what we're dealing with now is the recognition that the world has a very serious issue with climate, that's very clear now. So how can we help each other? The question is no longer what is wrong with the way you're doing it. The real question now is how can I help you?

WILLIAM McDONOUGH

WILLIAM McDONOUGH

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Leader in Sustainable Design & Development
Architect, Co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

I think believing in something is also part of the responsibility of the believer to sift through these things. So there are a lot of people saying I'm green because they do something less badly. So for me, it’s not green yet, it's just less bad. It's not really good yet. It's not really fabulous, but that just means there's an opportunity to keep going to share information and help each other because in the end, I think what we're dealing with now is the recognition that the world has a very serious issue with climate, that's very clear now. So how can we help each other? The question is no longer what is wrong with the way you're doing it. The real question now is how can I help you?

(Highlights) DAVID SIMON

(Highlights) DAVID SIMON

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Editor of Rethinking Sustainable Cities · Professor of Development Geography & Director for External Engagement, School of Life Sciences & Environment, Royal Holloway, University of London

That principle, what is now called by Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, and being popularized more widely by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Network and others as the 15 or 20 Minute City. The idea underpinning it is that a higher proportion of the goods and services, the activities, the social interactions that we need are obtainable within a 1 1/2 to 2 km radius of one's home, which means a far higher proportion of one's individual trips or multiple purpose journeys can be done on foot and by bicycle, therefore, you use your vehicle if you have one more sparingly. You use the bus or minibusses to reach slightly more distant places, and then you have transport interchanges is where you connect with the metro system or the best rapid transit or the railway to reach other parts of large cities or indeed for inner-city journeys. And that is what is now becoming the new best practice in terms of urban planning redesign.