“Engineers turn dreams into reality” – Hayao Miyazaki.

Dear Fellow Engineers,

We stand at a pivotal moment in history. Our planet is in crisis. Seven of Earth’s critical life-support systems have been breached, and the cascading consequences of ecological breakdown threaten the foundations of life on this planet. The Arctic is melting and we face a stark choice of either undergoing a whole systems transformation to heal the planet and refreeze the Arctic OR launching a nuclear world war to determine who controls the sea routes as the Arctic continues to melt.

William Gibson pointed out that when you want to know how things really work, study them when they are coming apart. That’s what I have been doing for the past two decades as the Earth’s life-support systems break down and human civilization unravels.

Here are a few of my findings.

It’s all connected. There is a logical line connecting the US threats to annex Canada and Greenland, the White House launching of the inverted food pyramid to promote the consumption of animal foods and the White House ceremony extolling whole milk in schools. These are all symptoms of the industrial systems in our civilization desperately regressing to remain relevant.

Just as lifestyle-related diseases in the human body mainly stem from misaligned habits, our planetary pathology and the unraveling of civilization mainly stem from industrial systems designed for exploitation and unsustainable consumption, disconnected from ecological realities. Modern engineering is founded on the false assumption of an infinite source for resources and an infinite sink for toxic waste in the form of Planet Earth.

This falsehood is now becoming glaringly obvious.

We engineers have contributed a lot to the well-being of our human family. Thanks to our creations, almost everything about human life is better today, but at the expense of the environment.

As for the environment, we engineers designed the football field wide nets for bottom trawling that squeeze life out of the ocean, the tree-pulling bulldozers that raze down forests, and the body part disassembly lines to separate a cow into skin, organs, bones and flesh. These technologies are now literally destroying the life-support systems of our fragile planet.

However, we engineers are also uniquely equipped to respond to this planetary emergency. Our discipline teaches us how to analyze complex systems, identify root causes, and synthesize innovative solutions. Now, more than ever, the world needs that expertise.

Enter Planet B.

Planet B is not a destination elsewhere, but a vision for re-engineering this world. It is a call to redesign the systems that are pushing our planet beyond safe boundaries, and to align human activity with the ecological principles that sustain life. Just as Lifestyle Medicine treats the underlying causes of disease rather than masking symptoms, Planet B applies this ethos to the biosphere by healing the planet through thoughtful design, prevention, and regeneration.

I invite you to lend your skills, creativity, and courage to this mission. Whether your background is in civil, mechanical, electrical, software, or systems engineering, your insights are critical to building a sustainable, just, and thriving future. The transformation ahead will require re-imagining our food systems, energy infrastructures, transportation networks, supply chains, living environments and digital technologies. It will demand interdisciplinary collaboration, bold experimentation, and a shared commitment to ethical engineering in service of all life.

The world doesn’t need more extractive technologies or short-term fixes. It needs engineers who understand the stakes, who lead with compassion, and who recognize that technical brilliance must be matched by moral clarity. Planet B offers a framework, a platform, and a community for making that vision real.

Please reach out to me via email at srao@climatehealers.org to contribute to this greatest transformation in human history.

Help heal the Earth. Help create Planet B.

With a nod to 10 Things I Hate About You (from Mother Earth)

“I hate the way you poison skies,
And drain my seas while whispering lies.
I hate the way you cut my trees,
Ignoring birds, and bees, and breeze.

I hate the way you hack away,
Chasing profit, come what may.
I hate your thirst for oil and gold,
Ignoring stories I’ve long told.

I hate the pain you cause for gain,
The fields you flood, the forests slain.
I hate the ties that bind you blind
To suffering of every kind.

I hate your hunger, never filled,
The lands you raze, the lives you’ve killed.
I hate the way you hide your heart,
Forget you’re of me, not apart.

I hate your silence when I cry,
The warming world, the species die.
But most of all,
I hate that I don’t hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not at all.

Here’s the truth that pulls me through:
I love the spark that still burns in you.
I see the light, I feel the fight,
The urge to make the wrong things right.

So rise, my child, begin anew.
Heal me, and you will heal you too.
Let’s get to work, and together we
Will create the world of Planet B!”

With faith and urgency,

Sailesh Krishna Rao
B.Tech (Electronics) @ IITM, Chennai, India (1981)
MS (Electrical Engineering) @ SUNY, Stony Brook, NY, USA (1982)
Ph. D. @ Information Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, CA, USA (1986)
Inventor, 1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet Protocol (1999)
Intel Principal Engineer Award (2003)
Founder, Climate Healers (2007)
Karmaveer Puraskaar Global Indian Award (2008)
Carbon Dharma: The Occupation of Butterflies (2011)
Executive Producer, The Human Experiment (2013)
Distinguished Alumnus Award of IITM (2013)
Executive Producer, Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014)
Carbon Yoga: The Vegan Metamorphosis (2016)
Executive Producer, What the Health (2017)
Executive Producer, A Prayer for Compassion (2019)
Inaugural Homo Ahimsa Award (2020)
Shining World Award for Earth Protection (2020)
Animal Agriculture is the Leading Cause of Climate Change (2021)
Winsome Constance Kindness Medal (2022)
Designated Climate Hero by the Guardian Newspaper (2023)
The Pinky Promise (2023)
There IS a Planet B (2025)
Planet B: A Systems Engineering Framework for World Peace and Planetary Health (2025)
Planet B: Lifestyle Medicine for Healing Planet Earth (to be published, 2026).
climatehealers.org
planetb.now