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SPIRIT & NATURE
Presenter Bios
Michael Potts, Chief Executive Officer of Rocky Mountain Institute, is a former Managing Partner with Galway Investments, an investment firm focused on alternative public offering strategies for small-cap and mid-cap companies, and a consultant. Prior to Galway, he served as CEO for American Fundware and Vice President of Public Sector Solutions at Intuit. Potts currently serves on RMI's Board of Trustees, as well as the boards of the Business School at the University of Colorado in Denver, Denver's Curious Theater, and Kripalu Center, the nation's largest spiritual retreat center.
Randy Udall, director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE) in western Colorado, is one of the nation’s leading activists in promoting energy sustainability. CORE's partnerships with individuals, governments, and utilities have led to some remarkable accomplishments, including Colorado’s first solar energy incentive program, the world's first Renewable Energy Mitigation Program which has raised $6 million, the world's stiffest carbon tax, and some of the most progressive green power purchasing programs in the country. Udall wrote his first article on climate change in 1987. A solar retrofit of his home in Carbondale, Colorado will keep 300,000 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere during the next 20 years. Udall is also co-founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA, and speaks widely on why "energy is an IQ test Americans tend to fail."
The Rev. Sally Grover Bingham is a native of California. She is a Priest in the Diocese of California currently working as the Environmental Minister at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. She has been the chair of the Episcopal Diocesan Commission for the Environment for the last eight years. Sally has been active in the environmental community for twenty years and serves on the national board of Environmental Defense Fund. She is the founder and executive director of The Regeneration Project, a nonprofit ministry, at this time, focusing on a response to global climate change. This particular initiative is called Episcopal Power and Light. The Episcopal model has developed into an interfaith one in several states in the US and Canada. The mission is to mobilize the community of faith to lead by example in reducing green house gas emissions. In July 2001 Sally received the Green Power Leadership Pilot Award from the Center for Resource Solutions, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Dept of Energy. Episcopal Power and Light was recognized as a Sacred Gift to the Planet by the World Wildlife Fund in November 2000 at a ceremony in Kathmandu, Nepal. The Regeneration Project received international Global Energy Award 2002. This “energy oscar” was presented to Rev. Bingham in Austria by President Mikhail Gorbachev in March 2002.
Gary Gardner is the Director of Research for the Worldwatch Institute where he oversees the research staff at the Institute, providing both intellectual and administrative leadership. Before joining the Institute in 1994, Gary was project manager of the Soviet Nonproliferation Project, a research and training program run by the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. There he authored Nuclear Nonproliferation: A Primer, which is also published in Spanish and Russian. He has developed training materials for the World Bank and for the Millennium Institute in Arlington, VA. Gary holds Master's degrees in Politics from Brandeis University, and in Public Administration from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and a Bachelor's degree from Santa Clara University. His publications include: Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World, Worldwatch Paper 164, December 2002; Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge, W.W. Norton, 1999; author or co-author of six Worldwatch Papers and six chapters in State of the World. Gary has given talks to governmental, business, university, and NGO meetings, including major events such as the World Food Summit in Rome in 1996 and the International Society of Environmental Journalists in Bogota in 1999. He frequently does radio, television, and print interviews with worldwide media outlets including the BBC, CNN, and the Voice of America, in English and Spanish.
Ed Bastian, Ph.D. is President of the Spiritual Paths Institute. His Doctorate is in Buddhist Studies and Western Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bastian studied for nearly a decade with Buddhist Monks in monasteries in the U.S., India and the Himalayas. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied Indian philosophy at Banares Hindu University and translated Buddhist scriptures from Tibetan and Sanskrit sources. At the Smithsonian Institution, Bastian served as Director of programs on BioDiversity and Intellectual History, where he taught courses and moderated conferences on Buddhism, world religion, and Tibetan human rights. He has lectured, presented scholarly papers and his films in the U.S., England, Japan and India. Bastian is the Executive Producer of television programs on Asian religion for the BBC, PBS, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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