Bill McKibben is a journalist and activist who founded the environmental organisation 350.org. The author of fifteen books, including the bestsellers The End of Nature, Eaarth and Deep Economy, he is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and the winner of the Gandhi Prize, the Thomas Merton Prize and the Right Livelihood Prize. He lives in Vermont.

Dahr Jamail, a Truthout staff reporter, is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.

Jamail has reported from the Middle East over the last ten years, and he has won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. He lives in Washington State.

Michael T. Klare is the author of fifteen books, including Resource Wars and Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet. A contributor to Current History, Foreign Affairs, and the Los Angeles Times, he is the defense correspondent for The Nation and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Mike has 16 years of experience as a bike journalist and has worked on a variety of cycling magazines.

His speciality is mountain biking and he has worked on Mountain Biking UK, What Mountain Bike, Total Bike, Mountain Bike World and Bikemagic.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs.

His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

Noam Chomsky was recently named the world's number-one public intellectual in a poll by Prospect magazine. He is the author of numerous bestselling political works, including Hegemony or Survival, Imperial Ambitions and Failed States, all of which are published by Hamish Hamilton and Penguin.

Noam Chomsky is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, and is widely credited with having revolutionized modern linguistics.

Rebecca Solnit is author of, among other books, Men Explain Things To Me, Wanderlust, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, the NBCC award-winning River of Shadows and A Paradise Built in Hell.

A contributing editor to Harper's, she writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times. She lives in San Francisco.

Steve Fraser is a historian, writer, and editor. He is the author of The Age of Acquiescence, Every Man a Speculator and Wall Street, among other books, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and The Nation. He lives in New York City.