April 22nd marks Earth Day, and this year’s theme is ” Planet vs. Plastics.” As the world turns to climate action, consider these speakers who discuss environmental issues and sustainability with powerful clarity and offer concrete suggestions for creating a viable planet.
Edward Humes: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash—and the Way Back
Waste is the biggest thing America makes today, our greatest legacy, product, and export. But Ed Humes shares the good news: there is a way back. Families, businesses, and communities are finding inspiring and ingenious ways to offset this damaging legacy. Humes inspires audiences to get behind the one big environmental and social problem that just about anyone can do something meaningful to change.
Jane Fonda: The Path from Climate Despair to Action
Daunted by the looming disaster of climate change and inspired by climate strikers, Jane Fonda asked herself one question: What can I do? So many of us recognize the urgency in stemming the tide of climate change but aren’t sure where to start. Our window of opportunity to act is quickly closing. And it isn’t only Earth’s life-support systems that are unraveling, so too is our social fabric. In this talk, she addresses the todo list for saving the planet: an all-out war on drilling, fracking, deregulation, racism, misogyny, colonialism, and despair—all at the same time.
Suzanne Simard: Lessons of Environmental Cooperation for the Workplace
Suzanne Simard posits that, “In ecosystems, there is no bigotry. There is only reciprocity, only mutual respect.” Through her experience studying trees and understanding their behaviors, she argues that we have much to learn from the ways natural life interacts and coexists. In a lecture aimed toward corporate audiences, Simard draws powerful connections between the coordination and competition present in natural ecosystems and the ways we cooperate and compete at work. She helps organizations come to a better understanding of what it means to foster a network of trust, collaboration, and engagement, to the mutual benefit of members across the entire organization.
Bren Smith: Ocean Farming and the Fight for Equality in a Changing World
Rising temperatures and sea levels bring rising inequality as climate change depletes our resources. In this talk, Bren Smith explains how ocean farming is not only sustainable for the planet, but as a career, and how this new industry represents an exciting opportunity to build a uniquely diverse workforce with a regenerative economy.
Jon Gertner: Saving The Ice at the End of the World
The Arctic is the most important climate change story of our current era. Building on his book on Greenland and recent New York Times Magazine stories, Jon Gertner explains in captivating detail how science and technology have helped us understand climate change, and how they might help us mitigate its future effects. As temperatures rise around the world, the profound changes in Greenland and the Arctic may soon translate into threatened ecosystems and natural calamities—but also in increased geopolitical tensions and dramatic competition for economic development.
David Allen Sibley: Birds, Birding, and the Biodiversity Crisis
From UV vision to deep diving, navigation, balance, super-efficient breathing, and more, birds have some amazing “superpowers”, and at the same time nearly every aspect of their anatomy, physiology, and behavior has been shaped in some way by the demands of their ultimate superpower—flight. Using a selection of illustrations and information from his new book, What It’s Like to be a Bird, David Allen Sibley talks about some of the incredible things birds are able to do, and the adaptations that make those things possible. Sibley also discusses the effects of the biodiversity crisis on birds and how bird-building collisions and cats impact bird populations.
Dr. Joshua Bennett: The Hidden History of Black Environmentalism and Thought
From Fredrick Douglass to Lucille Clifton, Dr. Joshua Bennett shares the often-overlooked history of African American writers’ contributions to environmental thought. In this educational and moving talk he explores the speeches, sermons, poems, plays, and songs of Black writers from the 19th century to the present, underlining how they act as calls-to-action for planetary stewardship. In what he’s termed “Black ecological consciousness,” Bennett unpacks how these forms are rooted in an intimacy with the living environment.
Lauren Redniss: Environmental Justice
The climate crisis is the great global challenge of our time. The threat of warming temperatures, rising sea levels, and collapsing ecosystems poses urgent questions with which we all must grapple, whether we are a head of state or merely a head of household. What are the threads of connection that tie our individual consumer choices to the actions and industries that imperil the planet? Why are some places and communities sacrificed in the name of progress, and how, in an age of climate change, are the effects spilling over to impact all of us? What is the efficacy, what is the morality, of grand-scale “geoengineering” interventions in the world’s weather systems to reverse climatic catastrophe? In this presentation, Lauren Redniss wrestles with these stark moral and political dilemmas, and reflects on the beauty and wonder of the natural systems, the landscapes, the ways of life that we are compelled to protect and preserve.
Jenny Odell: Saving Time
Jenny Odell combines research spanning sociology, ecology, geology, economics, and cultural history in order to explain the dominant ways in which we perceive time. But this research is also inflected through deeply personal experience, questioning, and a desire to find hope. In this talk, Odell tells the story of how these strands came together, and what they taught her about time and our environment.
Oliver Jeffers: Here We Are
Oliver Jeffers is one of the rare artists that has gained household recognition with parents, kids, and teachers while also maintaining his work as an innovative thinker beyond the books. His critically acclaimed picture books have sold over 14 million copies worldwide. Jeffers is an important voice on climate change, with much of his latest work focused on the planet and humanity. He speaks about power of storytelling, the value of community, and inspires audiences with his innovative art and creativity.
Rachel Ignotofsky: What’s Inside a Flower
Get budding backyard scientists exploring their environment with this stunning introduction to the natural world. In this hands-on talk, Rachel Ignotofsky teaches audiences how flowers grow from seeds to roots to blooms – engaging children (and adults!) with distinctive art on large blown-up diagrams, coloring sheets, and pipe cleaner bee craft.