Dr. John Francis is an environmental educator, and former UN goodwill ambassador to the world’s grassroots communities. In 1971, he witnessed an oil spill in San Francisco Bay, stopped using motorized vehicles and began to walk. To learn to listen better, John took a 17-year vow of silence. He walked across the US receiving a PhD. He served as project manager and environmental analyst for the USCG OPA90 Staff, and authored Planetwalker: 17-Years of Silence, 22-Years of Walking, and The Ragged Edge of Silence, both published by the National Geographic Society. Speaking on Earth Day 1990, telling the crowd, “Environment is about how we treat each other.”