Celebrating Good Stewards of Earth

One of my favorite aspects of participating with Clean Planet is that each week on our leadership calls, I get to learn from and collaborate with leaders in Canada, Mexico, the United States, and Colombia.

I am grateful for this weekly reminder, as there are times I admit I sometimes lose faith in humanity and get lost by focusing on evidence of our race’s disconnection from Earth.

If I am ever stuck here, our leadership call always brings me back to that this perspective is not the whole picture. Here are people doing what they can, devoting time as volunteers, sharing together a commitment for a clean and healthy planet.

In the same vein, here are seven people I have been inspired by in the last week, largely especially through conversations at the Climate Restoration Summit at the Earth X event in Dallas, Texas:

A young Episcopal pastor, who leads youth retreats in the forests of New England so that kids can experience and build a bond with nature.

• Jonathan Malone 

A pianist, singer and composer of music who created “Earth Story” to blend musical expression with storytelling, and respect and reverence for the natural world.

• Will Rand

A Finnish entrepreneur who started a YouTube channel showing live feeds from nature. Janne says that people are more likely to be conscious of how their actions and choices impact the nature if they first establish a connection with the wildlife they have the ability to help protect.

• Janne Neuvonen 

A physicist who understood that "Net zero" alone can't get us to a safe climate for our children and grandchildren, because we would also have to remove a trillion tons of "legacy" CO2 that's been accumulating since 1750. He created the field of Climate Restoration, which replicates the processes that nature has been using for millennia to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. 

• Peter Fiekowsky

A regenerative farmer and rancher who teaches farmers around the world about regenerative farming. She has proven that regenerative farming is not only more profitable for the farmers livelihood, it is better for the soil, serves as a climate restoration solution, is healthier for the animals who roam freely on the land, and ultimately produces healthier food for the community. 

• Hunter Lovins 

A husband and wife filmmaker team who quickly realized that just one documentary to share stories of people restoring the climate would be insufficient. They agreed to instead film FOUR one-hour documentaries, called The Climate Restorers. Their choice to undergo the effort to expand their project to share all these stories from people around the world is truly remarkable and reflects their courage to follow their hearts. 

• John Bowie and Dr. Phoebe Barnard 

The world is full of inspiring people working to clean up, protect, regenerate, and restore our planet. If you’ve read this far, I know you are one of them - thank you. Andy Bayon