A Future We Can Love: How We Can Reverse the Climate Crisis

How can compassion, wonder, and our awareness of interdependence create a more sustainable world? Join us for a panel conversation that explores this question for the launch of the new book, A Future We Can Love: How We Can Reverse the Climate Crisis with the Power of Our Hearts & Minds, by Susan Bauer-Wu, President of the Mind & Life Institute.

Panelists include The New York Times Climate desk correspondent David Gelles, Buddhist teacher and activist Kritee Kanko, and Indigenous scholar and teacher Yuria Celidwen, moderated by author and President of the Mind & Life Institute Susan Bauer-Wu. Opening Comments by Thupten Jinpa, Board Chair of the Mind & Life Institute and principal English translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Inspired by a conversation between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg, A Future We Can Love explores solutions to the climate crisis in the joining of science and spirituality.

Susan Bauer-Wu, Panelist & Author, A Future We Can Love

Susan Bauer-Wu is an organizational leader, clinical scientist, and mindfulness teacher, who since 2015 has served as the President of the Mind & Life Institute, an organization co-founded by the Dalai Lama to bring science and contemplative wisdom together to better understand the mind and create positive change in the world. At Mind & Life, she has championed “human-earth connection” as a priority focus area. In addition to A Future We Can Love, Susan is the author of Leaves Falling Gently.

David Gelles, Moderator & Reporter, New York TimesDavid Gelles is a correspondent on the Climate desk of the New York Times. He has written extensively about business, climate change, and mindfulness and meditation. His most recent book is The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy. His first book, Mindful Work: How Meditation is Changing Business From the Inside Out, was launched at the Rubin with a conversation with the neuroscientist Christopher Moore in 2015.

Kritee (Kanko), Panelist & Founder and Spiritual Director of Boundless in Motion

Kritee (dharma name Kanko) is a Zen Buddhist priest, climate scientist, and educator. She is the founding spiritual teacher of Boundless in Motion and a co-founder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. She has served as a scientist in the Climate Smart Agriculture program at Environmental Defense Fund for over a decade. Kanko believes in releasing our personal/ecological grief to unlock our innate courage and compassion; and is passionate about teaching at the interface of trauma healing and actions for climate and social justice.

Yuria Celidwen, Panelist; Indigenous scholar, educator, and activist

Yuria Celidwen, PhD, is from an Indigenous lineage of mystics, healers, and poets from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Her scholarship on Indigenous forms of contemplation examines self-transcendence and its embodiment in prosocial behavior (ethics, compassion, kindness, awe, love, and sacredness). She calls this work the Indigenous “Ethics of Belonging” toward planetary flourishing rooted in honoring Life. She is also a senior fellow at the Other & Belonging Institute of the University of California, Berkeley, where she leads research on Indigenous contemplative science.

With opening comments by Thupten Jinpa, Board Chair of the Mind & Life Institute and principal English translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.