As Executive Director of 350.org, the groundbreaking grassroots international climate change campaign whose innovative organizing and mass mobilizations have uniquely helped generate a mass global sense of urgency and action, May Boeve will share her eagle’s-eye perspectives on the current state of the climate struggle. She’ll illustrate 350.org’s learnings and strategies moving forward, including ways of learning about and incorporating justice and equity. She’ll illuminate 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.

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’s showing 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. Combined with Google Earth’s new narrative storytelling tool, grassroots activists, communities and other environmental change-makers can now vividly show what’s at stake, and envision solutions in ways that can change hearts and minds, while guiding wiser decision-making to protect and restore our vast, fragile planet.

As ecological and economic justice movements hit the same hard limits of possibility, being realistic in our time in history means getting serious about what might have formerly been seen as impossible: actually replacing our broken corporate capitalist system. Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative and co-chair of its Next System Project, will show how we can begin to build together for the systemic change we need to save both democracy and the planet. As a political economist, author, former legislative director in the House and Senate, nonprofit innovator and scholar, Gar will share breakthrough models for community-based political-economic development and new institutions of community wealth ownership. He’ll highlight local, state and national policy approaches to community stability in the era of globalization that really work and can spread widely.

With contributions from scientists and partners around the world, One Earth, an initiative of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF), has developed a bold, new plan to avert a climate crisis and protect our biosphere. Justin Winters, LDF’s Executive Director, explains the three goals humanity needs to achieve by 2050: Transform our energy systems to 100% clean, renewable energy; Protect, connect and restore 50% of our lands and seas; and Shift to regenerative, carbon-negative agriculture globally. At the heart of this effort is a new map of the world called the Global Safety Net, which shows what the world could look like if we achieve these three goals. This vision of a world where both nature and humanity coexist and thrive can only be achieved if activists and communities around the world are connected and strengthened with the resources and solutions to make this global transformation a reality. One Earth is accelerating this transformation through innovative science, radical tools for collaboration, and creative storytelling that will inspire and galvanize our society into action.

Reports from local activists:
Charles Varni, Coalition to Protect SLO County – A Report on Measure G
Sharon Rippner, Citizen’s Climate Lobby – The Environmental Voter Project

Since our founding in 2010, Denise Dudley has been “the voice of the conference” and a constant source of support and energy. She volunteers her time for us and keeps everything running smoothly throughout the event. Thank you, Denise, from the Ecologistics board of directors!