Chris Watson grew up in an airline family and is passionate about flying but began taking personal responsibility for his aviation impact on the environment after learning that the industry increased emissions since the 1990 Earth Summit and has no plan to decarbonise aviation. He sees aviation as the defining issue in personal emissions management because it requires behaviour modification to achieve rapid decarbonisation (while most other activities can be achieved by efficient methods such as electric cars).
Chris Brazier started his journalistic career at the rock music weekly Melody Maker in the late 1970s. Since 1984 he has been a co-editor at New Internationalist Publications, working on its monthly magazine about global justice issues as well as on its books. He writes regularly for UNICEF's State of the World's Children report and has authored books on topics as wide-ranging as The No-Nonsense Guide to World History and Trigger Issues: Football.
Professor Kevin Anderson holds a Chair in Energy and Climate Change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester. From here he leads the Tyndall Centre's energy- and emissions related research. He is regularly called on to give advice to government and industry stakeholders, as well as to contribute to wider public and policy forums on climate change. Anderson completed an apprenticeship in the merchant navy and is now a chartered engineer and a fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). He has ten years' industrial experience, principally in the petrochemical industry. He is currently a non-executive director of Greenstone Carbon Management - a London-based company advising leading firms and public bodies on how to manage their carbon emissions - and is commissioner on the Welsh Assembly Government's Climate Change Committee.
Kate Andrews is co-founder of Loco2, a London-based start-up whose mission is to make booking a train in Europe as easy as booking a short-haul flight. She pledged to give up flying in 2005 and has since travelled around the world by land and sea. During a 26-month round-the world trip she visited 31 countries and travelled some 50,000 km by cargo ship, bus, yacht and train, taking just two short flights.
Tom Bennion is a lawyer specialising in environmental and public law, and indigenous land claim issues. Although he is active on many environmental issues, climate change only hit home at a personal level when he realised that he was reading books to his three young children about the wonders of coral reefs, but they would almost certainly live in a world without them. His immediate reaction was to dress as an elephant and walk the streets of New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, to remind people of the 'elephant in the room'. He has been networking and writing about the issue ever since.
Saci Lloyd is a children's writer and teacher. She was born in Manchester and raised in Anglesey, Wales. After leaving university for a life of glamour, she has worked at various times as a very bad cartoonist, toured the USA in a straightedge band, run an interactive media team at an advertising agency, co-founded a film company and finally wound up as head of media at a sixth form college in east London. Lloyd's first novels, the Carbon Diaries series, met with critical acclaim. Her book Momentum was released in 2011, and her latest book, Quantum Drop, was released in February 2013.
Ed Gillespie is co-founder of Futerra, one of the world's leading specialist sustainability communications agencies. In 2007-8 he circumnavigated the globe without flying. A former marine biologist, Ed is passionate about the sea and slow travel, and he loves a trans-oceanic crossing on a cargo ship. Ed writes regularly for various media on sustainability and sits on the London Sustainable Development Commission. He is director of, and an investor in, www.loco2.com, which pioneers European rail travel as an alternative to short-haul flights. He dices with death daily in London on his trusty Dutch bicycle.
Lowanna Doye's environmentalism began in her teens when she co-founded an eco club for students at her high school. A visual arts degree at Australia's Newcastle University saw her major in photography and video. Post-university her dual passions were unified in her work for Undercurrents, an Oxford-based environmental and social justice videozine. When she met fellow video activist Kev Doye, the bike2oz dream was born. They now live with their four children in an off-the-grid eco house in Bellingen, on the east coast of Australia, where they run a thriving organic grocery store focused on supporting local growers.
Dr Susan Krumdieck is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Director of the Advanced Energy and Materials System Lab, National President of Engineers for Social Responsibility, a member of the Royal Society of New Zealand Energy Panel in 2005 and head of the transition engineering firm, EAST Research Consultants Ltd. Dr Krumdieck's research group develops engineering analysis and modelling tools to help transport and power providers to reduce their fossil fuel demand greatly - in other words, for figuring out how to crash-land our carbon-based economy!
Nic Seton is a child of the eighties. Born in Australia, he grew up with mobile phones, the Internet and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. His interest in local environmental events led to a degree in environmental studies, and student life led to activism. As part of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition he travelled, by train and bus, to the 2008 UN Climate Change Conference in Poznań, Poland. After the conference, he migrated to the United Kingdom and has been campaigning on climate change ever since. He is now a digital campaigner at Greenpeace.
Adam Weymouth is a writer and sometimes walker. His work has appeared in various publications, including the Guardian, the New Internationalist and the Ecologist, and he has worked for a number of environmental organisations. He lives between Devon and Brittany, and he is currently writing a novel.