Paul Stamets: Solutions from the Underground

What lessons can we draw from three decades of struggles to address the existential threat of climate disruption? What do our failures reveal about the flaws of our political system and the economic nihilism of the fossil fuel industry? What strategies are most likely to lead to greater success to save our species from itself? Bill McKibben is perhaps our nation’s most influential environmental activist as well as one of our most brilliant thinkers and authors.

Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of The Democracy Collaborative and co-chair of its The Next System Project, shows how we can begin to build together for the systemic change we need to save both democracy and the planet.

In her new bestselling book, "The Apology," Eve Ensler has attempted to transform, with unflinching truthfulness and compassion, the horrific betrayal she suffered into an expansive vision for the future. She shares her story and explores how other survivors of abuse might be able to mobilize their imagination and inner strength to move from humiliation to revelation to find healing and inner freedom.

What’s a surefire way to make activism more effective? Make it intergenerational. What’s the biggest obstacle? An ageist culture that pits old against young and bombards us with messages that wrinkles are tragic and old people useless. Aging is not a problem to be “fixed” or a disease to be “cured. Debunking myth after myth about late life, author and activist Ashton Applewhite passionately urges us to come together at all ages – and dismantle ageism in the process.

Michael Pollan shares his luminous insights from what began as investigative reportage and became a very personal interior journey into the mystery of consciousness and the nature of spirituality at this perilous moment when only a shift in human consciousness can alter the deadly trajectory of our societies.

Wind, water and time are agents of erosion evident in the desert. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation from the Great Smokies to the Grand Canyon. But Terry Tempest Williams is also seeing another kind of erosion in America: erosion of democracy, erosion of science, decency, compassion and trust. She is one of this country’s most beloved authors and defenders of public lands and social and environmental justice. She writes, “Beauty is its own resistance. Water can crack stone.”

Google Earth Outreach founder and visionary engineer Rebecca Moore says the signs are all around us, telling us that our life-support systems are in critical condition, and only recently has it become possible to monitor the health of Earth’s life-sustaining resources in a manner both globally consistent and locally relevant. She shows how satellite data, cutting-edge science and powerful cloud computing technology such as Google Earth Engine allow us to achieve an unprecedented understanding of our changing environment and put this data into the hands of those who can take action.

The visionary goal of Project Drawdown, founded by Paul Hawken, is to actually reverse global warming by drawing carbon out of the atmosphere back down to pre-industrial levels. All the practices and technologies documented in Paul’s best-selling "Drawdown" book are already commonly available, economically viable, and scientifically valid. The true power of Drawdown is its holistic nature.

Elizabeth Dwoskin is the Washington Post’s Silicon Valley correspondent; covering the rise of data-hungry technology companies, online conspiracies, and Russian meddling on social media. She was part of the team that broke over a dozen stories on Russian operatives’ use of Facebook, Twitter, and Google to influence the 2016 presidential election. She shines a light on our growing awareness of the dark side of Silicon Valley, and how that awareness is reshaping public policy, our understanding of democracy, and the way tech is used and built.