Paul Stamets: Solutions from the Underground

Deep Ecology extends an inalienable right to life to all beings. A systems theorist, author and lifelong activist, Joanna Macy describes how healing the world and healing your heart and soul go hand in hand.

Does my dog really love me? Carl Safina, the world-renowned ecologist, author and expert on animal consciousness, reveals that we’re discovering many non-human minds are far more similar to ours than previously thought.

According to journalist, blogger, “creative commons” advocate, Electronic Frontier Foundation Fellow, and award-winning science fiction author Cory Doctorow, the fight for a free, fair and open Internet isn’t the most important fight on the planet, but you can t win any of the other major battles without it.

Ericka Huggins, the renowned former Black Panther, political prisoner, human rights activist — and educator, poet, and professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Merritt College in Oakland — has, for 35 years, advocated for "restorative justice" and the role of spiritual practice in sustaining activism and promoting social change. Grounded in her belief in the greatness of the human heart, Ericka says each one of us has the ability to look there for the answers to questions about the future of our world.

The executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, Tom Goldtooth, invokes indigenous peoples asking the world to reevaluate our relationship to Mother Earth. We can turn away from destroying, privatizing and commodifying nature, and instead to “indigenuity” to fashion sustainable solutions by re-sacralizing our relationship with Mother Earth. 
 

The renowned “anthropologist under Amazonian influence” and indigenous rights activist Jeremy Narby, author of such classics as "The Cosmic Serpent" and "Intelligence in Nature," considers the intelligence of living beings and wrestles with his own culture’s anthropocentric concepts. In his view, constantly affirming the centrality of humans gets in the way of respectful living in the biosphere.

The most influential climate activist of our era, Bill McKibben, a founder of the extraordinarily effective 350.org grassroots campaign, describes the immense groundswell of global citizen engagement rising to challenge the "dirty" energy industry. Find out where we are scientifically and politically in the transformation to end our reliance on fossil fuels, while lighting the pathways toward a clean-energy future.

Before the election, workers were already rising up all over the country and have continued to do so even more now, joining the campaign for “One Fair Wage,” demanding higher wages and the elimination of lower wages for tipped workers. The movement helped torpedo Trump’s first Secretary of Labor nominee and is ramping up the fight for a $15/hour national minimum wage. Innovative, award-winning labor leader Saru Jayaraman says that, if we join together, we can end economic inequality in America.

Mark Plotkin, groundbreaking ethnobotanist and author of seminal books including "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice," works closely with Indigenous peoples and uncontacted tribes in the northwest Amazon. As co-founder of the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) in 1995, he depicts ACT's work partnering with over 30 South American tribes, including the Kogi, to map, manage and protect over 70 million acres of ancestral forests.

Bioneers Co-Founder Nina Simons and her keynote address at the 2017 Bioneers Conference.

Revolution is on the horizon, and youth are rising with the oceans to lead the movements that will shape our future, says Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, a 16-year old Indigenous rapper, environmental activist (since age 6!). He's the award-winning Youth Director or Earth Guardians, a rapidly growing international organization of young activists, artists and musicians committed to protecting water, air, land and atmosphere. He organized many rallies, actions, demonstrations and events.