“The World We Want and How to Get There” is the theme for the fifth annual Central Coast Bioneers Conference, hosted by Ecologistics Inc., to be held Oct. 24-25 at the SLO Grange Hall in San Luis Obispo.

Central Coast Bioneers is a member of the Bioneers Network, and the regional conference site for Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties.

Keynote speakers Dr. John Foran and Ph.D. candidates Corrie Ellis and Summer Gray from UC Santa Barbara will provide information and stories on the climate justice front and the youth climate justice movement that is mobilizing across the world.

Dr. Foran and his students travel around the world attending the United Nations Climate Change Conferences and will screen their new film, Not Yet the End of the World.

Plenary lectures from the National Bioneers Conference will be shown, including presentations by Eve Ensler, Paul Stamets, Naomi Klein, Terry Tempest Williams, John Warner, Manuel Pastor and many others. Local presenters include Charming Evelyn of the Sierra Club on the “Gay-Delta Giant Tunnels,” Serra Hoagland on Native American forest management, Slow Money’s Marco Vangelisti on “Investing for the World We Want” and Ken Haggard and a panel of visionaries on “Dreaming a Sustainable SLO County.”

A bi-county panel addressing creation of a unified Salinas River Watershed will be the offering this year for the “Dreaming the Salinas” program.

Field trips this year will address the future of farming — dry farming in Paso Robles in this time of drought, and a tour of Tierra Nueva Co-Housing for those interested in life in an intentional community.

The popular pre-conference field trip will be Thursday, Oct. 23 to the Hi Mountain Condor Lookout, where attendees will try their hand tracking condors with the telemetry equipment, learn about the latest efforts in the condor recovery program, and enjoy lunch at 3,200 feet in the Santa Lucia Mountains.

New this year is a World Café, led by David Shaw, co-founder of the Common Ground Center at UC Santa Cruz. The popular Green Marketplace, Volumes of Pleasure Conference Bookstore and seed history talk will return.

Early bird reduced rates for conference passes through Aug. 15, with ticket prices starting at $30 for the Friday afternoon plenary session. Click here to register or for more information.

— Stacey Hunt represents Central Coast Bioneers.