The film

Tony is a palaeontology researcher but also a Professor at the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He spent over thirty years analysing climatic changes at a global scale and their influence on species evolution, and above all synthesising what we can learn from the past. He coordinated and published many studies about ecology and biodiversity. One of the latest being : Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere, published in Nature in 2012 with Liz Hadly and 20 other scientists from all over the world.

CEO of the POCHECO company.

“ Ecological producing is more economical”.

This the motto of the Pocheco CEO, running a company in the north of France producing envelopes. For twenty years now,  he has applied “ecolonomical” principles to his activities, guided by the three pillars of sustainable development : environment protection, respect of the employees and of social justice and productivity gains. Clearly, he has become a master in the art of producing more while being greener. He reconciles economy, ecology, human resources and profitable activities. Emmanuel Druon is one of those bosses who makes you want to go to work. 

Architect, urbanist.

To understand what Jan Gehl is doing, just go to Copenhagen, capital city of Denmark. There, the whisper of the town is softer than anywhere else. With a good reason : more than a third of the daily transportations are being made on a bike saddle (fifty per cent in the town centre). By giving priority to the soft ways of transportation, the city authorities have reduced CO2 emissions by 90 000 tons each year ! Jan Gehl is one of the world specialists of the “Copenhagenization” : give the cities back to pedestrians, to bicycle riders and, more, to citizens. With his team, he has already operated in Moscow, in Shanghai, in New York City (Times Square given back to the pedestrians), Malmoe… He is the author of “Cities for People”. 

A researcher, she is working at the Department of Biology (Environmental Biology), Stanford University, California. She is a specialist in vertebrate evolution, especially mammals on the American Continent, in India and in Costa Rica. She studies vertebrate ecology under the influence of global warming.

Bec Hellouin farm. Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer were nowhere near becoming farmers. In 2004, Perrine, a former international law counsel, and Charles, an ex-sailor, set up camp on a small piece of land in Normandy they transformed into a market gardening farm. Travelling to Cuba, Japan, United States and in France too, they have combined many culture practices to harvest the fruits of natural abundance so that, nowadays, their farm is a seminal work for organic gardening. 

Teacher in permaculture.

Founder of the Transitions Towns movement. In 2006, the obvious fact that our simplest daily acts rely on oil set him in motion. To feed ourselves, to heat ourselves or to move, we use an energy that will inevitably disappear. How can we get rid of this oil addiction ? How can our communities become resilient to the double challenge of oil peak and climatic changes ? Rob Hopkins founded the Transitions Towns movement by trying to answer those questions.

Economist.

For more than 40 years now, Bernard Lietaer has been at the centre of the financial world attention. He is one the greatest promoters of complementary currency, and more so, local currency. He is also convinced of the link between the currency we use and the community and ecological environment we are part of. 

Michelle Long is the founder of one of the first BALLE networks and one of the most important (more than 700 entrepreneurs), considered as “the epicentre of new economic models” : Sustainable Connections in Bellingham, Washington State. Michelle is co-author of Local First : A How-To Guide and the author of The New Building a Community Of Businesses. The Sustainable Industries Journal names her as one of the United States West Coast “top 5 leading ladies of sustainability”. 

Principal of the Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo (Finland).

The school's philosophy is quite simple : teach the children how to learn, prepare them for life. If one method does not work with a student, that means that this method is not fit for him. In Kirkkojarvi, as in all Finnish schools, there is no standard test for the students nor for the teachers. No inspection by the state authorities, no test by the end of the year. The only standard test is the one sanctioning the end of high school. Before that, and starting in Year 6 (in England) or fifth grade (in the USA), students can participate in end of year exams if the teacher accepts the participation of his class, but it is more  from curiosity than from a competitive mindset, results staying unpublished. 

French farmer of Algerian ancestry, philosopher and writer. He stands up for a society which would be more respectful of the people and of the land ; he supports agroecology, farming methods which are respectful of the environment by preserving natural resources, especially in arid countries. Together with Cyril Dion and Isabelle Desplats among others, he is the founder of Colibris. 

Former mayor of Kuttambakkam (India).

In the village of  Kuttambakkam, in the Tamil Nadu state, a former chemical industry engineer changed the destiny of 5000 inhabitants. Being a place of violence, illegal liquor trade and pollution, it became in time a model for representative democracy. Since 1996, Elango Rangaswamy is the chairman of the Panchayat, the basic unit of local administration in India.

Spokesman for Recology, an employee-owned company created in 1921.

By working together with the City of San Francisco, Recology has been able to provide some of the most innovative and advanced waste reduction programs in the country, the goal being to be able to recycle 100% of waste in 2020. The challenge seems to be within reach : in a few years, San Francisco became able to redirect 80% of buried waste toward recycling, re-use and composting. 

American essayist, specialist in forward thinking (both economical and scientific). Founder and chairman of the Foundation on Economic Trends or FOET, Jeremy Rifkin is the main architect of the third industrial revolution, which he presented as a way to deal in the long term with the triple challenge of global economic crisis, energetic safety and climatic change. 

Engineer, energy specialist.

Co-founder of the Negawatt Institute, Thierry Salomon is a tireless promoter of energy savings. The mottos of his fight : energy conservation and efficiency. For the engineer, confronted by the climatic urge and the depletion of natural resources, unlimited flows of energy like the sun or the wind should prevail over the stock energies like gas, oil or uranium. Thierry Salomon contributed to widely spread the concept of the “negaWatt”, the watt you don't need to produce because you don't use it. 

Legal scholar. Professor of international human rights law.

Olivier de Schutter served for six years as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food. During this period, he never ceased to warn the UN about an unfit agricultural model which starves 800 million people on the planet and weakens about 2.5 billion individuals. Unabashed promoter of agroecology, a variety of agronomical techniques taking into consideration rural development, people's health or the upholding of family farms, Olivier de Schutter also denounces the power of farming and energy lobbies which are blocking any changes.

Writer, founder of Navdanya. The Indian activist, Vanda Shiva, is a figure in the global solidarity movement and the ecology galaxy. For more than thirty years now, she has dedicated herself to the fight for food sovereignty and for the preservation of the biodiversity in all its forms. She made herself known in France for having denounced the grip of biotechnologies – via GMO – on the fate of Indian farmers. 

Historian, writer.

As anyone can see, contemporary political life has reached an impasse. Voters are fewer and fewer, political parties lose members and electoral choices are often whimsical. To foil this “democratic exhaustion syndrome”, as he calls it, the Belgium historian and writer David Van Reybrouck promotes a principle which was used in Ancient Greece : the drawing of lots. Because adding a bit of random in our representative institutions could only revitalise democracy. 

For a long time,  Malik Yakini was executive director of Nsoroma Institute Public School Academy, one of Detroit’s leading African-centred schools. He is now the manager of D-Town Farms, a seven-acre farm near Rouge Park in Detroit. He is also a founder and executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, member of the Detroit Food Policy Council. He is among the 40 fellows of the BALLE movement, those local entrepreneurs able to call many others in their wake.