James Howard Kunstler, Urban Planning Expert, Social Critic, Author, Journalist - Opening Keynote

“The future will require us to build better places, or the future will belong to other people in other societies.” 

—James Howard Kunstler

The well-known author of The Geography of Nowhere (Simon & Schuster, 1993) and Home from Nowhere (Simon & Schuster, 1996), James Howard Kunstler, has long been recognized as a fierce critic of suburban sprawl and the high costs associated with an automobile-centric culture. Now training his eye on the permanent global oil crisis, Kunstler’s book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (2005), expands on his past critiques of suburbia by exploring the sweeping economic, political and social changes that will result from the end of access to cheap fossil fuels and the impact this will have on the way we live, work, farm and build. In spring 2008 the Atlantic Monthly Press published Kunstler's tenth novel, World Made By Hand, a story set in America's post-oil future.

Mr. Kunstler has lectured extensively about urban design, energy issues and new economies for the TED Conference, the American Institute of Architects, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the International Council of Shopping Centers, the National Association of Science and Technology and other professional organizations as well as at numerous colleges and universities, including Yale, MIT, Harvard, Cornell, University of Illinois, DePaul, Texas A & M, West Point, and Rutgers University among many others.  A seasoned journalist, he continues to write for The Atlantic Monthly, Slate.com, The New York Times Sunday Magazine and the Op-Ed page where he covers issues related to the environment, urban planning and the economy.

Kunstler, like George Orwell, understands that being honest about the past and present is the only way to prepare ourselves for an uncertain future.  —David Ehrenfeld (Professor of Biology, Rutgers University), American Scientist

A wonderfully entertaining useful and provocative account of the ravaging of the American environment by the auto, suburban developers, purblind zoning and corporate pirates.  —Robert Taylor, The Boston Globe

Jason F. McLennan, CEO of Cascadia -Thursday Morning Keynote

Jason McLennan serves as the CEO of the Cascadia Green Building Council, the Pacific Northwest’s leading organization in the field of green building and sustainable development.  Cascadia is a chapter of both the US Green Building Council and the Canadian Green Building Council.  Jason is the author of the Living Building Challenge an international green building program and co-creator of Pharos, the most advanced building material rating system in North America. Jason is known as an international thought leader in the green architecture movement and has lectured on sustainability across the US and Canada. His work in the sustainable design field has been published or reviewed in dozens of journals, magazines conference proceedings and books including Architecture, Architectural Record, Dwell, Plenty, Metropolis, NY Times, The Globe and Mail, The World and I, Ecostructure and Environmental Design and Construction Magazine. He is the author of three books; The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, The Dumb Architect’s Guide to Glazing Selection, and the Ecological Engineer.  The Philosophy of Sustainable Design is currently used as a textbook in over 40 universities and colleges and is distributed widely throughout Europe and North America.

He is a former Principal at BNIM Architects, one of the founders of the green design movement in the United States, where he worked on many of the leading high performance projects in the country including LEED Platinum, Gold and zero energy projects.  At BNIM he created the building science team known as Elements, which set new standards for energy and resource efficiency on many of its projects in various building types.  Jason is also the founder and CEO of Ecotone Publishing, the only dedicated green building publisher in North America.  Jason was recently named one of the top 40 under 40 most influential individuals in the design and construction field by Building Design and Construction magazine.

Pliny Fisk, Co-Director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems -Big Bang Dinner Keynote

Pliny co-founded the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems in 1975, and currently serves as Co-Director. The Center is recognized as the oldest sustainable design and planning 501C3 non-profit in the United States. In addition, Pliny also serves as Fellow in Sustainable Urbanism and Fellow in Health Systems Design at Texas A & M University where he holds a joint position as signature faculty in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Planning.

In 2002, Pliny was awarded the U.S. Green Building Council’s first Sacred Tree Award in the public sector category.  He is also recipient of the Passive Solar Pioneer Award from the American Solar Energy Society, the Herrin Distinguished Fellow from Mississippi State University, the Presidential Team Award for the sustainable relocation of towns displaced by the Mississippi Flood, and the National Center for Appropriate Technology’s 15th Year Distinguished Appropriate Technology Award, recognizing significant work in the field of environmental protection.

Pliny’s special contributions in the research field have been principally in materials and methods; from low-cost building systems development referred to as open building, to wide ranging material development that includes low carbon and carbon balanced cements, and many other low impact materials.  He was instrumental in developing the first input/output life cycle assessment model for material flow in the U.S. and connecting this to a Geographic Information System, so that human activities can be placed into the context of natural systems on a national scale. The model represents greenhouse gases, criteria air pollutants and toxic releases of over 12,500,000 businesses.  He has also developed an alternative land planning and design methodology referred to as Eco- Balance Design and Planning.

Pliny received B.Arch., M.Arch., and M.L.Arch. Degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.  His graduate studies focused on ecological land planning under the guidance of Professor Ian McHarg. His work has also been influenced substantially by Russell Ackoff in various disciplines associated with the systems sciences.

John Francis, PhD., Founder & Director of Planetwalk - Friday Morning Keynote

 John Francis was in his twenties when a 1971 oil spill in San Francisco Bay jarred his comfortable life. Even as he joined the volunteers who scrubbed the beaches and fought to save birds and sea creatures poisoned by petroleum, he felt the need to make a deeper, more personal commitment. As an affirmation of his responsibility to our planet, he chose to stop using motorized vehicles and began walking wherever he went. His decision was greeted with surprise, disbelief, and even mockery – but it was only the start of a much deeper transformation. A few months later he took a vow of silence that would last seventeen years.

Planetwalker, the book that John wrote, is the story of a man who, on foot and in silence, has rediscovered rhythms in nature that most of us have forgotten, and learned to communicate his understanding and empathy without speaking a word. He walked across the Pacific Northwest, crossed the Sierra and Rocky Mountains, and traversed America from coast to coast. Along the way – and without a word – he earned undergraduate and Masters degrees in science and environmental studies and a PhD in land resources.

Illustrated by John’s sketches and complemented by practical wisdom on how we too can follow the trail that he has blazed, Planetwalker chronicles positive experiences and challenging times, bears witness to the beauty of our world and the vivid characters who inhabit it, and shares the insights of a pilgrim philosopher who has truly earned his wisdom step by step by step.