Spirituality & Mindfulness · The Creative Process The Creative Process

“I still do workshops on oppression generally, but at this point, I've been focusing mostly on a workshop that's called Reclaiming Nature Writing, which has been a workshop that takes the idea of nature writing, which at least in the US has always been seen as a predominantly white male field and looks at writers that have existed for hundreds of years that have always been writing about nature but have maybe not been considered nature writers by the field generally."

Amanda E. Machado is a writer, public speaker and facilitator whose work explores how race, gender, sexuality, and power affect the way we travel and experience the outdoors. She has written and facilitated on topics of social justice and adventure and lived in Cape Town, Havana, Mexico City, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities. She has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, New York Times, NPR, and other publications. She is also the founder of Reclaiming Nature Writing, a multi-week online workshop that expands how we tell stories about nature in a way that considers ancestry, colonization, migration trauma, and other issues.

“The Singularity reminds me - of course aware of lots and lots of differences - but it's a tendency which is as old as Gnosticism. I think, and a dream that people have had. It's a peculiar dream, in my mind because it's sort of saying that life is something like being in prison, and what we need to do, the future that we ought to want for ourselves, is to get out of jail. And so this is a profound denial of life. I guess that's what it is, we seem to be having a view that technology can free us from problems that we have."

Harold P. Sjursen is an educator and administrator having served on the faculty of both a liberal arts college and school of engineering. His background is in the history of philosophy, but since childhood has sustained an interest in science and technology. His current research interests focus on the philosophy of technology, global philosophy, and technological ethics. His engineering education projects address issues related to the internationalization of higher education, the integration of the liberal arts and engineering and ethics beyond the codes for engineers.

“People sometimes ask me if I'm optimistic, and sometimes they ask me if I've got hope. And I think there is a difference between the two. I mean, optimism is the kind of feeling that the probability is it's all going to be fine. And hope is the feeling that there's still a good chance that things could work out well. And I think I'm more at the kind of hope that the optimism that, you know, we have so much knowledge within our grasp. And we have so much technology that we could use. But it isn't just about technology, it's also about values. What kind of values, and what kind of society do we want to live in? What kind of values do we have collectively as a community, and as a society? And that's a much more contested field. I do think that we do need to really raise that as an issue in society. What kind of society do we want to live in? And what kind of future do we want for ourselves? But also for those that will come after us? And I think that's a crucial debate that we should be having now. I think this big issue is what are the values that drive our society? What kind of a future do we want? And I'd like to see much more of a debate in public discussion about that.”

Andy Haines was formerly a family doctor and Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL. He developed an interest in climate change and health in the 1990’s and was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the 2nd and 3rd assessment exercises and review editor for the health chapter in the 5th assessment. He was Director (formerly Dean) of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 2001- October 2010. He chaired the Scientific Advisory Panel for the 2013 WHO World Health Report, the Rockefeller /Lancet Commission on Planetary Health (2014-15) and the European Academies Science Advisory Council working group on climate change and health (2018-19). He currently co-chairs the InterAcademy Partnership (140 science academies worldwide) working group on climate change and health and is also co-chairing the Lancet Pathfinder Commission on health in the zero-carbon economy.  He has published many papers on topics such as the effects of environmental change on health and the health co-benefits of low carbon policies. His current research focuses on climate change mitigation, sustainable healthy food systems and complex urban systems for sustainability. He was awarded the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2022.