Paul Stamets: Solutions from the Underground

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.

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.

As Executive Director of 350.org, the groundbreaking grassroots international climate change campaign, May Boeve shares her eagle’s-eye perspectives on the current state of the climate struggle. She illustrates 350.org’s learnings and strategies moving forward, including ways of learning about and incorporating justice and equity. She illuminates pathways our species must take to keep 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground and radically accelerate the shift to 100% clean energy.

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.

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.