JEAN WEINER

JEAN WEINER

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Goldman Environmental Prize Winner
Founder of Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversité Marine in Haiti

We’re coming out of one of the worst times for resource exploitation, waste and everything related to that waste of resources, so trying to set the example, especially for my kids, recycling, trying to be reasonable about purchasing things, about where things end up after you’re done using them, just in general being careful about what you do, what impacts there are down the line. Even for them already, they’re 18 and 20 now–What are you going to do to try to protect the planet for your kids? Already trying to put that mindset for them because it’s very difficult for our generation to change the way it has done things for so long, but trying to at least bring that change. Be responsible, be reasonable, think about the impacts.


GIULIO BOCCALETTI

GIULIO BOCCALETTI

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Author of Water, A Biography
Natural Resource Security & Environmental Sustainability Expert

The problem doesn’t really reside there. The problem is that people have gotten used to thinking about water as a technical issue that can be solved by somebody sitting in a room somewhere with a white coat. The reality is that the history of water shows that this is probably the most political and salient issue of society–How we share the resources that make it possible for us to live is a fundamentally political problem. And in nations that live together under a social contract is fundamentally a constitutional problem. So my hope is that we elevate water to a much higher level of political discourse.

ANTONELLA WILBY

ANTONELLA WILBY

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National Geographic Explorer
National Science Foundation Research Fellow · Contextual Robotics Institute, UCSD

I’m grateful for the fact that through my work I’ve had a lot of opportunities to go to places that a lot of people just simply won’t ever get a chance to go. I like having those opportunities to try to share with people what that’s like. I honestly had no idea I would ever be here. I’m from a working-class background, didn’t have a huge amount of opportunities but now I can and that’s one thing that I particularly enjoy.

McKENZIE FUNK

McKENZIE FUNK

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Journalist & PEN Literary Award-Winning Author of Windfall

As a parent and especially through all this reporting, what I’ve tried to do is think through these solutions and these fixes we have for everything and make sure that we’re not forgetting…that we’re thinking about other people. Capitalism won’t do it. Self-interest isn’t going to do this for us. As silly as it is to think that empathy will do or caring about your fellow humans will do it, I don’t know what else there is to hope for. I don’t believe that people do stuff purely out of rational self-interest, this libertarian idea that I was quietly pushing against the entire time in Windfall. That we do things just for ourselves or just to make money–that’s not been the reality of my lifetime.

KAREN PINKUS

KAREN PINKUS

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Author of Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary
Professor of Italian & Comparative Literature, Cornell University

For many years I wrote, taught, and published about climate change from a more philosophical, existential point of view, especially thinking about deep time, but I did come back to fuels with my Fuel book in part for the fact that so much of the press and so much of public discourse confuses fuel and energy, and it’s still happening today. I thought about this so long and the same themes, the same tropes are still being recycled.