About the Founding Summit

Blue Planet Summit's (BPS) 2008 kickoff was a great success.  The 3-day Global Energy Summit gathered influential and informed world leaders, energy experts, environmentalists and artists. It was a facilitated conference of Hawaiian, National, and International luminaries (75 full participants) which explored where we are in changing our energy culture, where we need to go, how quickly, and how we should get there. It will be an annual collection of events that will celebrate achievements, and inspire people around the globe with the power of human imagination to solve our energy challenge. The Summit took place at the Ihilani Resort on Oahu on April 3-5 2008 - stay tuned for plans for the 2009 Summit.

The joint challenges of fossil fuels - GHG emissions leading to catastrophic climate change, and scarcity of supply leading to economic and geopolitical instability - demand a new and unprecedented global response, including an urgent bi-partisan approach to domestic issues. This will require cooperation across interest groups, industries and national boundaries, and a new vision of the way we generate, distribute and utilize energy in all sectors of our economy. We need a global commitment to change and to sharing the responsibility, costs and benefits. Most of all, this will require a new level of communication, understanding, tolerance and trust, and a belief in new possibilities.

Our Mission
To change our world's energy culture.

BPS's long-range goal is to use its unique setting, components and structure to create a different kind of conference designed to meet this new challenge. Our goal is to contribute to creating a future in which leaders focus more on our shared global challenges and possibilities, and our increasing need to cooperate for our mutual benefit. It is to help our participants find more powerful and cooperative ways to fulfill their commitments to clean energy. BPS will encourage open dialog rather than formal presentation, facilitate cooperation rather than debate, and focus on possibilities rather than problems. We are gathering a small but diverse group of leaders with a wide range of expertise to reach across traditional boundaries. BPS will be an example to the world, an opportunity to see what cooperation looks like; how a diverse group can come together to envision a future they would like to create for their children.

A defining signature of BPS is our strong focus on communication via mass media, highlighted by our two high-profile television shows for domestic and international audiences. Broadcase information is pending and will be posted soon.

The Summit itself was designed using a high engagement strategy for the 75 participants we assembled. The priority was on relationship building and on direct personal communication among as many participants as possible. BPS was a unique opportunity for people from different nations, disciplines and perspectives to meet, to establish connections, to hear the concerns of others, and to find common ground. It was focused on cooperation, collaboration, and envisioning a better future. It was about possibilities rather than problems, commonality rather than separate interests, connections rather than competition. To see the highlights of the 2008 summit, please check out our video page.