DAY 1- Friday, April 23, 2021, 11:00 a.m.   

1. Jean E Stevens: “Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Spirit” & The Doomsday Clock
2. Greta Zarro: Anti-War Organizing – Through an intersectional lens
3. John Reuwer: Nuclear Weapons – The current threat and what we can do about it
4. Kyle Tisdel: Campaign to End Fossil Fuel Exploitation on Public Lands – Bringing Justice to Impacted Communities & Addressing the Climate Crisis
5. Tony Robinson: The Need for Simultaneous Personal & Social Change  – Through a path of active nonviolence
6. George Basch: Global Warming – The Most Serious Problem Facing Humanity Today; The Success of the Himalayan Stove Project; and Champions of the Planet.
7. Runa Ray: Peace, Climate Change & The Oceans

Conference Panelist’s Information

Jean E. Stevens – Founding Director, Taos Environmental Film Festival
Jean is a world traveler, former adjunct professor of art history for over 25 years and a retired Taos 6^th grade teacher.  She is also a Climate Reality Corps Leader and an alumna of World Beyond War.   Jean is also an artist, filmmaker, screenwriter, songwriter and a member of the Sound Healers Association.  She holds a 200 Hour Yoga Certification. 

Greta Zarro – Organizing Director of World BEYOND War
Greta holds a summa cum laude degree in Sociology and Anthropology. Prior to her work with World BEYOND War, she worked as New York Organizer for Food & Water Watch on issues of fracking, pipelines, water privatization, and GMO labeling.

John Reuwer – Physicians for Social Responsibility  – Abolition of Nuclear Weapons
Committee Member. Dr. Reuwer, a retired emergency physician, has been learning and teaching about the medical effects of nuclear weapons since 1980. 

Kyle Tisdel – Western Environmental Law Center– Climate & Energy Program Director
Kyle, an attorney, works from WELC’s Taos, New Mexico office.  He represents the environmental community and tribal organizations in federal court and in “campaigns that seek to end fossil fuel exploitation on public lands, bring justice to impacted communities, and to address climate crisis issues at large.”

Tony Robinson – Life-long Humanist and Member World Without Wars and Violence Coordination Committee; Member Abolitions 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons and Co-director of Presenza International Press Agency.  He was the  Producer, Scriptwriter, Narrator, and Interviewer of The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons, the TEFF official festival selection 2021.

George Basch – Activist/ Founder The Himalayan Stove Project;  Founder Champions of the Planet
George is an Explorer, Adventurer, Photographer, Mechanical Engineer, and a Creative Entrepreneurial Businessman.  In 2009 he founded The Himalayan Stove Project as a Memoriam to his son, Paul.  By the end of 2019 HSP had transformed the lives of over 6,000 families in Nepal.  George is also a member of the Explorers Club, the American Alpine Club and Rotary International. He can also be found on Facebook via Champions of the Planet.  George is a recipient of TEFF –2021 Environmental Activist Award. 

Runa Ray – Director: Official Selection United Nations World Oceans Day
Runa is an Indian born Fashion Environmentalist and a Documentary Designer who uses Art as Activism to educate and advocate for policy change. She has worked extensively with the sustainable development goals and various projects with regards to Action with the United Nations.

DAY 1 – Friday, April 23, 2021, 12:00 p.m.   

1.  Jay Coghlan: Nuclear Weapons, Cleanup, 
2.  Cynthia Lazaroff: Russia Relations – Quest for Stability
3.  Elke Duerr: Staying Peaceful in a Changing World
4. Castille Aguilar: Climate & Environmental Justice
5.  Sari Jensen: How to Benefit the Local Climate and Your Yard
6.  Ray Matsumiya: Hiroshima, Resilience and Climate Change
7.  Phill Gittins: Peace, Education, and Youth
8. Roberta Salazar: Preservation of Public Lands

Conference Panelist’s Information

Jay Coghlan – Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Executive Director
Nuclear Watch(www.nukewatch.org), Santa Fe, is a group that tracks the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and related nuclear issues in the Southwest.  Over many years, Jay has worked successfully against radioactive incinerations at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); employing The Clean Air Act, The Freedom of Information Act and The National Environmental Policy Act in lawsuits against the Department of Energy.   Among other things, in 2006, he promoted an independent study group‘s conclusive findings that plutonium lasts at least a century … leading to congressional rejection of funding for newly designed nuclear weapons and it’s expanded plutonium pit production requirements.  

Cynthia Lazaroff – Founder Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy

an NuclearWakeUpCall.Earth.

Cynthia is engaged in Track II diplomacy with Russia – working in founding ground breaking U.S.-Russian Exchange Initiatives since the early 1980s.  She is also an award winning documentary filmmaker and author of Dawn of a New Armageddon.  Films include:  My Awakening to Today’s Nuclear Threat, The Hawaii False Alarm and The Role of Women.  She is the Executive Producer of Mourning Armageddon, an official selection of the TEFF Film Festival – 2021.  

Elke Duerr  – Founder Web of Life Foundation (WOLF)
Elke is a bi-national interspecies communicator, filmmaker, author, visual and oral storyteller, photographer and workshop presenter. Her work has been screened and exhibited internationally. She spends half of the year camped out in the wilderness with the animals and wild nature and has many stories to share. Her approach is reciprocity: reciprocal relationships with all life on the planet.

Castille Aguilar – Campaign Organizer for YUCCA: Youth United for Climate Crisis Action
Castille has been doing social and environmental justice work for nearly a decade.  She went to school to dedicate her career to advocating and organizing around climate justice and learning how to best center the voices of our most impacted communities.

Sari Jensen – Climate Reality Corps Leader of Northern NM along with being an environmental journalist and a retired school teacher of gifted students.

Ray Matsumiya – Director Oleander Initiative based in Cambridge, MA.
Over the past twenty years Ray has supervised peace building institutes for over 3000 participants in the US, Spain, Japan and nine Middle Eastern countries. These programs have been featured in the New York Times, Boston Globe, USA Today and PBS via NHK World. Ray has been an invited speaker at TEDx, the Massachusetts State House, the Dayton International Peace Museum, the US embassy of Tunis and universities such as the Sloan School at M.I.T and the Fletcher School at Tufts University.  With a mother from Hiroshima, Ray is deeply committed to official and unofficial diplomacy, cross-cultural exchanges and peace building.  

Phill Gittins, PhD – Executive Director World BEYOND War 

Phill is Education Director Nuclear Watch New Mexico, a Santa Fe based group that tracks the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and related nuclear issues in the Southwest.  Phill has over 15 years of leadership, analysis and programming experience in the areas of peace, education, and youth.

Roberta Salazar ­­­­­­­­– Founder and Executive Director Rivers & Birds
Roberta is an educator and wildlife biologist.  Rivers and Birds, with Roberta at the helm, has led campaigns that have added permanent conservation protections for over three hundred thousand acres of public lands in Taos County. Rivers & Birds has also taken over seven thousand public school students on guided nature trips throughout Northern New Mexico.

DAY 2- Saturday, April 24, 2021, 11:00 a.m.

1. Julia Ying: My Personal Climate Narrative
2. Bill Brown: Creating Our Clean Energy Future
3. Alicia Sander Zakra: ICAN Policy & Research
4. Rivera Sun: War is Obsolete – Let’s Abolish It, Save the Planet, and Live Peacefully
5. Ann Frish: Nuclear Weapons Abolition – Why it Matters to People and the Planet  Unarmed Civilian Protection
6. Pete Heald:  Reducing Home Energy Use
7. Sandra West: A Water-Wise Future  

Conference Panelist’s Information

Julia Ying – General Medical Practitioner, retired, from Sydney, Australia
Julia is a Climate Reality Leader, and Co-founder and Co-Chair of Climate Reality Northern New Mexico Chapter. She is a member of the Zero Waste Los Alamos team, and when she is in Los Angeles, she helps out as a Speaker at Beach Cleanups for Heal the Bay.  She is also a happy grandmother to 6 grandchildren.

Bill Brown –Climate Reality Project Leadership Corp Leader since January 2007
Bill is a career Earth Scientist with national and global experience. His current research focuses on the current climate crisis, electrifying everything, education of political leaders & the interconnectedness of solar, wind and battery storage.

Alicia Sanders-Zakra–ICAN – International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons –  Policy and Research Coordinator
Alicia directs and coordinates research on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and general nuclear weapons policy.

Rivera Sun –World Beyond War – Advisory Board Member
Rivera is Programs Coordinator for Pace e Bene;  the Editor of Nonviolence News; and is a nation wide nonviolence trainer.  Her books and novels include The Dandelion Insurrection and the award-winning Ari Ara Series. As an author/activist, she lives, writes, and works from Taos, NM. www.riverasun.com

Ann Frish – Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Dr. Frisch is Chair of the Rotary Action Group for Peace Subcommittee on Nuclear Weapons Education, and Senior Adviser Nonviolent Peaceforce.  She served as Unarmed Civilian Protection for Nonviolent Peaceforce in Guatemala where human rights workers were under siege. 

Pete Heald – Climate Reality Leader and Climate Reality Project Northern New Mexico, Co-chair
Founded and chaired by former US Vice President, Al Gore, Climate Reality Project’s primary mission is to engage leaders and citizens to take urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions world-wide.  Pete is also the co-host of the Resilient New Mexico Podcast, which focuses on climate change and environmental issues in New Mexico.

Sandra West – Climate Reality Leader and Resilient, New Mexico, Co-host
Sandra co-hosts a podcast dedicated to sharing climate-related stories that highlight commonalities and capabilities for building a sustainable and socially just future.  She has worked on sustainability from a variety of perspectives, including climate science, community building, marketing, environment and ecosystems studies.  Sandra is dedicated to illuminating and supporting our ability to create a more resilient future. 

DAY 2- Saturday, April 24, 2021, 12:00 p.m.

1.  Sharon Tennison: Creating Constructive Relations between the two top Nuclearized Nations in the World – the US and Russia.  Russia is cooperating and the US is not.
2.  Jay Coghlan: LANL: Nuclear Weapons, Cleanup 
3. Jody Benson: Growing up with the Bomb, with Human Error and the Bomb as Business – And telling leadership, locally and federally, that we want to spend those $731B (+) on Protecting the Climate.
4. Debra Denker: Positive and Possible Solutions to the Climate Crisis: From Soil to Sea Grass
5.  Erin Sanborn: Design and Management of Public, Private, and Collaborative Processes & Integrating Organizational Development and International Conflict Resolution.
6. Peter Walker: Watersheds – Getting Destroyed and the Privatization of Water; Learning from the Acequias – Tradition & Community Involvement in Stewardship of the Water
7.  Paul Biderman: The Work of 350 Santa Fe in Education, Advocacy and Public Policy on the Climate

Conference Panelist’s Information

Sharon Tennison – Center for Citizen Initiative, Director
Sharon has been involved in USA-Russian relations for peace since 1983.  She is a part-time residence of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Jay Coghlan – Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Executive Director
Nuclear Watch(www.nukewatch.org), Santa Fe, is a group that tracks the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and related nuclear issues in the Southwest.  Over many years, Jayhas worked successfully against radioactive incinerations at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL); employing The Clean Air Act, The Freedom of Information Act and The National Environmental Policy Act in lawsuits against the Department of Energy.   Among other things, in 2006, he promoted an independent study group‘s conclusive findings that plutonium lasts at least a century … leading to congressional rejection of funding for newly designed nuclear weapons and it’s expanded plutonium pit production requirements.  

Jody Benson – Growing up with the Bomb
Jody’s family moved to Los Alamos, NM, just after the “gates” to the once secret city opened up in 1957.  She grew up with the bomb, but also up in the wild mountains and down in the steep canyons found right outside the kitchen door. She odd-jobbed and traveled the world for a couple decades before returning to Los Alamos in 1988 to work at Los Alamos National Lab.

Debra Denker – Editor, Director, Author
Debra is Senior Editor of Voices for Biodiversity; Project director of Global Diversity Film Project; and author of the cli-fi novel Weather Menders.

Erin Sanborn – Organizational Development and Conflict Resolution
Ms. Sanborn is an Executive Director, Consultant, Leadership Coach, Trainer, Program Manager, Conference Organizer, Public Speaker, Facilitator and Mediator who has assisted organizations and groups to tackle complex, systemic challenges. Ms. Sanborn’s clients have developed multi-stakeholder engagements in areas such as sustainable development, impact investing, renewable energy, education, healthcare and transportation.

Peter Walker – UNM-Taos Digital Media Arts, Program Coordinator
Peter is a media maker and educator. He grew up as a young creator in Taos, New Mexico hanging around his father’s woodworking shop making sawdust. He studied outdoor pursuits and earned an Undergraduate and Masters Degree in Education from the University of Oregonand a Film Director’s Certificate from the Asian Academy of Film and Television in New Delhi, India.

Paul Biderman – Co-facilitator: 350 Santa Fe and Santa Fe Chapter of Citizen’s Climate Lobby
Paul is a semi-retired public interest lawyer who was admitted to the New Mexico Bar in 1971.  He served as the state’s Secretary of Energy and Minerals under Governor Toney Anaya from 1983-1986, where he promoted renewable energy and conservation. 

DAY 3- Sunday, April 25, 2021, 11:00 a.m.

1. Tamara Lorincz: The Military’s impact on The Environment & Climate Change – The Intersection of Security & Peace 
2. Nicholas Seet: Undesert – Turning Deserts into Forests
3. Judith Rane: The 1986 Great Peace March – for Nuclear Disarmament & Social Justice and International Peace Walk, US-Soviet Peace Walks in former USSR 
4. Bill Brown:  Creating Our Clean Energy Future
5. Joni Arends: WIPP & Toxic Clean-up at LANL
6. Debra Denker: Positive and Possible Solutions to the Climate Crisis – From Soil to Sea Grass
7. Ann Frisch: Nuclear Weapons Abolition – Why it Matters to People & the Planet and Unarmed Civilian Protection
8. Tony Robinson: The Need for Simultaneous Personal & Social Change– Through a path of active nonviolence

Conference Panelist’s Information

Tamara Lorincz – PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs
Tamara’s research interests are in the military’s impact in the following broad range of issues: environment and climate change; the intersection of security and peace; disarmament; Canadian defense and foreign policy; resistance to NATO; gender and international relations; feminism and military sexual violence.

Nicholas Seet – Climate Reality, Leader
Nik is a serial entrepreneur.  He founded and at times was CTO and CEO of Auditude, a company acquired by Adobe Systems in 2011.  Originally from Australia, Nik, the father of four, lives in Los Alamos, NM.  He is a Climate Reality Leader, trained by former US Vice President Al Gore and the Climate Reality Project. He is using his entrepreneurial skills to solve climate problems.

Judith Rane –Taos Environmental Film Festival, Assistant to the Director
Judith is an actor, writer, weaver, gallerist and peace activist with a computer science background beginning in the early 1950s.   A mother, grandmother, and great-grand of a gaggle and wife of the late Taos painter, Bill Rane.

Bill Brown:  Climate Reality Project Leadership Corps, Member since January 2007
Bill is a career Earth Scientist with national and global experience.  His current research focuses on the current climate crisis, the education of political leadership and the interconnectedness of solar, wind and battery storage.  His mantra is: “Electrify Everything”.

Joni Arends – Concerned Citizens For Nuclear Safety (CCNS), Executive Director
CCNS is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that was founded in 1988 in the aftermath of community concerns about nuclear waste transportation from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL, the nation’s oldest nuclear weapons production facility), to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP, the nation’s first nuclear weapons waste repository.

Debra Denker – Voices for Biodiversity, Senior Editor
Debra is also a film maker and an author working as Project Director of the Global Diversity Film Project, and author of the cli-fi novel Weather Menders.

Ann Frisch: “Nuclear Weapons Abolition: why it matters to people and the planet.” (or “Unarmed Civilian Protection”.

Dr. Ann Frisch is Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. She is Chair of the Rotary Action Group for Peace Subcommittee on nuclear weapons education, and Senior Adviser Nonviolent Peaceforce.  She served as Unarmed Civilian Protection for Nonviolent Peaceforce in Guatemala where human rights workers were under siege. 

Tony Robinson: “The need for simultaneous personal and social change through a path of active nonviolence.” BIO: Production, Script, Narration & Interviewer:  TEFF official selection, The Beginning of the End of Nuclear Weapons.  Tony Robinson is a life-long humanist, member of the organization “World Without Wars and Violence”, coordination committee member of the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, and co-director of Pressenza International Press Agency.

DAY 3 – Sunday, April 25, 2021, 12:00 p.m.

1. Andrea Heckman: “Spirit & Activism in Film Award” & “Bon and the West”, anOfficial Selection of the TEFF.
2. Ken O’Neil: “Spirit & Activism in Film Award” “Bon and the West”, an Official Selection of the TEFF
3. Suzie Schwartz: Why Do We Have the Existential Threats of Catastrophic Climate Destruction and Global Pandemics?
4. Kat Haber: LIVING BRIGHTLY– Slow Transition from the Human Caused Climate Emergency & Help Create a Community of Climate Activators
5. George Basch: Global Warming – The Most Serious Problem Facing Humanity Today; The Success of the Himalayan Stove Project; and Champions of the Planet
6. Artemisio Romero y Carver: Climate Change and Social Justice
7. Jean E Stevens: “Earth, Wind, Fire, Water & Spirit” & Presentation of Film Awards

Conference Panelist’s Information

Andrea Heckman –  Author, Filmmaker, Photographer, Visual Anthropologist
Andrea has a PhD in Latin American Studies in Anthropology and Art History.  She was a Fulbright scholar to Peru in 1996.  Her book, Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals (UNM Press: 2003) won the John Collier Jr. Award for Excellence in Still Photography.  She has directed and co-produced 8 documentary films.  She serves on the Board of the Society for Visual Anthropology of the American Anthropology Association and the Board of Chamma Ling Colorado, an international Bon retreat center.

https://2021.taosenvironmentalfilmfestival.com/teff-awards/

Ken O’Neil ­– Artist, Author, Filmmaker, Entrepreneur
Ken is a communications engineer who was the founder of a publicly traded high-tech company in Silicon Valley.  When he retired from the high-tech world, he finished a degree in Fine Arts, studying in France and San Francisco Art Institute. His books include Behind the Paint and recently published C’MON IN: The Water’s Fine.  He has worked as second camera, production assistant, and editor on six award winning documentary films in seven countries from Greenland to Mexico.

https://2021.taosenvironmentalfilmfestival.com/teff-awards/

Suzie Schwartz – Nortenos for Peaceful and Sustainable Futures, Founder
Suzie has lived and worked in Taos County since 197.  She spearheaded a Taos based community organization opposed to nuclear weapons production at LANL, to take the initiative in informing and encouraging town commissioners to withdraw from the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities (RCLC).

Kat Haber – LIVING BRIGHTLY, CEO & Founder
Kat, a ferocious skier, works endlessly in calculating (and lessening) the climate’s carbon footprint through climate action pursuits in transitioning to an earth-balanced life:

– ACE: Accountability, Community of Activators and Enhanced Opportunities
– Board Director, WILD Foundation
– Board President & Elder’s Council Convenor: Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies ­­­
– Great Marcher for Climate Action from LA to DC: 2014, 3,500 miles, 8 months
 ­­­– Climate Reality Leader/Mentor
– Charter President, WE Rotary International Peace Club, creating a more peaceful world with No Nukes by planting second-generation-Hiroshima-atomic-bomb-survivor-trees across the globe with HEIWA Hiroshima PEACE TREES.
– Member of the 2nd class of women cadets – United States Air Force Academy, ’77-80.
–  Founder, TEDxVail 2009-present

George Basch:  Activist and Philanthropist , George Basch (aka Curious George and Explorer George) has circled the globe as an Explorer, Adventurer, Photographer and a Creative Entrepreneurial Businessman. Born in Vienna, George immigrated to the United States as a small child, ahead of Hitler’s Hordes, and holds dual US and EU citizenship. He grew up in Chicago and graduated from MIT in 1959 with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, and earned an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1961.  After two trips to Nepal and a chance encounter with a fellow trekker in Bhutan, who casually mentioned a very fuel-efficient stove, the concept of the Himalayan Stove Project was ignited. With the help of colleagues there and others from his life-long adventures and endeavors,created the Himalayan Stove Project in his son Paul’s memory.  By the end of 2019 HSP will have transformed the lives of over 6,000 families in Nepal, and, coupled with Earthquake Relief efforts in 2015 and 2016, will have impacted the lives of 50,000 people in Nepal.

https://2021.taosenvironmentalfilmfestival.com/teff-awards/

Artemisio Romero y Carver Youth Poet Laureate – 2020
Artemisio is an artist, poet, and organizer based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a Co-Founder, Steering Committee member, and Policy Director of Youth United For Climate Crisis Action (YUCCA), a youth lead nonprofit that advances climate justice, democracy, and civil rights.

Jean E Stevens: “Earth, Wind, Fire, Water & Spirt” and  Presentation of Film Awards
Jean is the founder and director of the Taos Environmental Film Festival and is a world traveler, former adjunct professor of art history of 25 years. She is also a retired Taos 6^th grade teacher, a Climate Reality Corps Leader, an alumna of World Beyond War.  She holds a 200 Hour Yoga Certification, is a filmmaker, songwriter, artist, screenwriter & a member of the Sound Healers Association.