John Fullerton

Founder and President, Capital Institute

At a time when institutions of business and government continue to fail society, two of our leading academic institutions missed the opportunity to provide essential moral leadership on the most pressing challenge ever faced in the history of human civilization.

Kathy Stevens

Founder and director, Catskill Animal Sanctuary

A planet that desperately needs all of us to go vegan, the torture and suffering of animals who want their lives as much as we want ours, and contests with prizes such as your weight in chocolate: The reasons to try a vegan diet during November, World Vegan Month, range from the ethically compelling to the downright silly.

Kristin Wartman

Journalist

Make it a priority to avoid all antibacterial products -- including that antibacterial soap you thought would keep you and your kids from getting the flu. Good old fashioned soap and water works just fine.

Peter H. Gleick

President, Pacific Institute

California precipitation has, on average, been declining, from an average of around 23 inches per year to around 21 inches per year -- a nearly 10 percent decline in the past 117 years.

Cindy Shogan

Executive director, Alaska Wilderness League

The Arctic Refuge and its Coastal Plain -- the Refuge's "biological heart" -- are home to polar bears, grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines, muskoxen and more than 130 species of migratory birds.

Jeffrey Flocken

North American Regional Director, International Fund for Animal Welfare

With as few as 32,000 lions remaining in the wild, the once ubiquitous animals are rapidly disappearing from the African landscape.

Jamie Henn

Co-founder and Communications Director, 350.org

Cameras clicked and whirred as Yeb Sano, the soft-spoken lead negotiator from the Philippines stood before the world's media at the UN Climate Talks in Warsaw this afternoon.

Iliana Salazar-Dodge

Sophomore, Columbia University

Once again, Columbia University has the opportunity to be a leader in tackling the most pressing issue of our time: climate change.

Jigar Shah

Partner, Inerjys; Founder, SunEdison, author of "Creating Climate Wealth"

The Climate Change conversation needs to change the conversation from "who pays," to "who invests for growth."

Pénélope Bagieu

If this mass deforestation took place on land, it would be a devastating sight. (FYI, it would destroy Paris in a day and a half.)

Gabe Elsner

Executive Director, Energy & Policy Institute

On Thursday, the Arizona Corporate Commission (ACC), the state entity responsible for regulating utilities, voted to charge ratepayers a monthly fee of 70 cents per kilowatt of solar energy installed on their roof.

Linda Watson

Founder, Cook for Good

Would you make a special effort to buy food raised by veterans?

Jeff Biggers

Author of 'State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream'

As central and southern Illinois folks pick up the pieces from a horrific series of tornadoes, environmentalists and citizens groups are scurrying to respond to the unmitigated disaster of the state's newly released fracking rules.

Human Rights Watch

Defending human rights world wide

The water and sanitation crisis in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, places millions of residents at risk of waterborne disease. Five years after cholera killed over 4,000 people and sickened 100,000 more, the conditions that allowed the epidemic to flourish persist in Harare's high-density suburbs.

Keith Peterman

Professor of Chemistry, York College

Right now, leaders from around the globe are gathered in Warsaw. Over these two weeks they hope to forge agreements that will confront the repressive, civilization-challenging issue of climate change.

Kyle Ash

Senior Legislative Representative, Greenpeace

I'm not asking Obama to be as brave as the Arctic 30. But if Obama had truly internalized what he says in his climate speeches, I believe he would be activist about his legal abilities to do something about it.

Bill Chameides

Dean, Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment

The debate has been raging for years. Can biofuels, fuels derived from recently alive plant materials (or manure), serve as the fuel of choice to power our nation's huge fleet of automobiles and trucks and power plants without adding to our climate change woes?