Paul Gilding has spent 35 years trying to change the world, doing everything he can think of that might help. He’s served in the Australian military, chased nuclear armed aircraft carriers in small inflatable boats, plugged up industrial waste discharge pipes, been global CEO of Greenpeace, taught at Cambridge University, started two successful companies and advised the CEOs of some the world’s largest companies. Despite the clear lack of progress on the issues he’s focused on, the unstoppable and flexible optimist is now an author and advocate, writing his widely acclaimed book “The Great Disruption” which prompted Tom Friedman to write in the NYT “Ignore Gilding at your peril”. He now travels the world alerting people to the global economic and ecological crisis now unfolding around us, as the world economy reaches and passes the limits to growth. He is confident we can get through what’s coming and in fact thinks we will rise to the occasion, with change on a scale and at a speed incomprehensible today. He tells us to get prepared for The Great Disruption and “the end of shopping”, as we reinvent the global economy and our model of social progress. He lives on a farm in southern Tasmania with his wife, where they grow blueberries and raise chickens, sheep and their children. His blog, The Cockatoo Chronicles, can be found at www.paulgilding.com