Bioneers: Revolution From The Heart Of Nature | Bioneers Radio Series

“Our soils have a carbon debt. Our atmosphere is gushing with carbon. The carbon over our heads is literally in the wrong place.”… Rebecca Burgess The solution to climate change is under our feet. Rebecca Burgess, of the Fibershed Project, explains how drawing carbon from the atmosphere and capturing it in the soil can reverse climate change. Rebecca, who is developing climate friendly local clothing production and carbon farming certification for her suppliers, is joined, in this excerpt from a Bioneers workshop, by holistic grazers Ariel Greenwood and Guido Frosini who are managing livestock while regenerating natural ecosystems.

From nature’s viewpoint, people are one species. Categories such as race, class, nation, religion and even many gender roles are human constructs. Yet the world is riven by exploitation and violence driven by these perceived divisions at an epic moment of demographic change toward the U.S. becoming a majority minority nation. john a. powell, Director of U.C. Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, and Manuel Pastor, Director of the Program for Environmental and Regional Equity at University of Southern California, show how to build effective movements to overcome these divisions and come together to solve the planetary emergency that threatens our common home. Find out more about john a. powell and how you can engage with his campaigns and efforts by visiting the Berkeley Haas Institute. Find out more about Manuel Pastor and how you can engage with his campaigns and efforts by visiting the USC Dornslife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Hosted by Atossa Soltani, Founder and Executive Director of Amazon Watch, among the most effective groups in the world conserving the Amazon and its peoples. Learn about the struggles to preserve some of the last large-scale vibrant ecosystems on Earth, crucial to the diversity of life on our planet, the climate and to our own species’ survival. Kris Tompkins describes the remarkable work she and her husband Doug Tompkins, Co-Founder of Esprit, are doing as conservation philanthropists and practitioners to create national parks that protect and restore wildlands and biodiversity, inspire care for the natural world, and generate healthy economic opportunities for communities in Patagonia in Chile and Argentina. John Liu shows how understanding the true value of ecological functions including hydrological cycles, climate regulation and soil fertility reveals an astonishing cost-benefit ratio that points to both the ecological and economic imperative of large-scale ecological restoration worldwide, such as he ha

Activists, scientists and grassroots groups are leveraging new technology and collaborative networks to accurately monitor the quality of the environment, expose governmental and corporate abuses, and enable large-scale ecological research to understand the web of life in the age of climate disruption. Hosted by Teo Grossman, Bioneers Director of Strategic Network Initiatives. With: Severine v T Fleming, Farm Hack; Shannon Dosemagen, founder/President, New Orleans-based Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science; Brian Haggerty, co-designer, USA National Phenology Network, a multisectoral climate change research program using citizen scientists to monitor seasonal behavior of U.S. flora and fauna.

Four extraordinary women leaders share their perspectives on how to break through the stalemates that impede progress to build a world in which we can all thrive. They work in different spaces – from challenging governments and corporations to defending Indigenous people’s rights, education reform, movement building and investing in green businesses. With: Eriel Deranger, Communications Manager of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation; Adrianna Quintero, Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council and founder/Director of Voces Verdes; Annie Leonard, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA; Christiana Wyly, Executive Director of Food Choice Taskforce, Director of My Plate Planet initiative. Hosted by Osprey Orielle Lake, co-founder and Executive Director, Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN).

"A worldview that understands indigeneity is a paradigm of regeneration, a worldview rooted in enduring values in what we call our original instructions, common themes of reciprocity, of gratitude, of responsibility, of generosity, of forgiveness, of humility, of courage, of sacrifice, and of course love. But these values are not just words, we need to live them." We’re all indigenous to planet Earth, but we’ve not been acting that way. Cultural ecologist, indigenous scholar and activist Dr. Melissa K. Nelson reminds native and non-native peoples alike that we all need to re-indigenize ourselves by learning and practicing nature’s operating instructions and the Original Instructions for how to be a human being. At this unprecedented moment of globalized environmental breakdown, it’s going to take the best of Western science and the indigenous science of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to navigate this evolutionary keyhole.

On his deathbed Henry David Thoreau said his only regret was being too well behaved. Julia Butterfly Hill, Diane Wilson and Terri Swearingen, three of the most imaginative, inspiring and courageous direct action heroines of our era share their experiences and show us how courage and commitment can stop mountains from being moved.

Although powerful global corporations and their allies are trying to undermine progress toward sustainable and just food systems, unexpected collaborations among labor, women’s rights activists, family farmers and environmentalists are innovating strategies and alliances to assure a new course for our food systems. Hosted by Joann Lo, Executive Director, Food Chain Workers Alliance. With: Saru Jayaraman, Co-Director/founder, ROC United; Sriram Madhusoodanan, Value [the] Meal Director at Corporate Accountability International; Ben Burkett, President of the National Family Farm Coalition.

What if we stop perceiving power and privilege as limited commodities? How do we collaborate in ways that generate dynamic power and create win-win strategies? Join J. Miakoda Taylor, Founding Director of Fierce Allies, in this interactive exploration.

Cuba developed, out of necessity, the most organic, sustainable agricultural system of any country. Is that model replicable in other parts of the world, or is it now likely to be overrun by industrial farming as ironically the easing of tensions with the U.S. opens the island up to the influx of capital and multinational corporate plutocrats? What can we learn from Cuba’s food system, and what are the risks to Cuban food security and sovereignty as its economic isolation ends? With: Kevin Danaher, co-founder of Global Exchange and FairTradeUSA; Greg Watson, former Massachusetts Secretary of Agriculture; Anuradha Mittal, founder and Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

Garbage in, garbage out, as the early computer innovators remarked about information. A vital free press is the single most important feedback loop in a democracy. New media including especially the Internet have challenged the supremacy of corporate media concentration and junk news. A brave new wave of activists such as Brad Friedman, John Stauber and Joan Blades are using digital media to restore the democratic lifeblood of a people’s media. They’re giving voice to the voiceless, checking and balancing corruption, and providing liberty and access for all.

Leading women designers gathered by the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) explore the principles of participatory design—inclusion, cooperation, community, regeneration—and how we can design a human world that meets everyone’s needs without harming the bio- sphere. Hosted by Elizabeth Thompson, BFI Executive Director. With: Erin Meezan, VP of Sustainability, Interface, Inc.; Jane Harrison, co-founder, PITCHAfrica/Waterbank Schools; Dawn Danby, Senior Sustainable Design Program Manager, Autodesk, Inc.

To have any chance of success, highly creative, collaborative uses of new forms of digital media must be a cornerstone of any strategy for progressive social and environmental movements. Four leading innovators in this domain share their insights. Hosted by Matthew Monahan, Namaste Foundation. With: Ben Knight, co-founder of Loomio; Edward West, co-founder of Impact Hub Oakland and Hylo social network; Ingrid Sanders, founder of PopExpert, a crowd-sourced, community-driven platform.

As lion populations crash in Africa, baboon numbers explode. Associate Professor of Ecology and Conservation Justin Brashares illuminates how to stem the cascading harms of nature out of balance. Visionary author Mary Ellen Hannibal recounts inspiring stories of citizen scientists restoring health to “the spine of the continent” from Alaska to Mexico by connecting nature back to itself.

The world has entered a period of radical creative destruction — of breakdown and breakthrough. The very fate of human civilization hangs in the balance. Where have we gone so wrong? Could it be our cosmology itself, our view of our place in the natural and cosmic order? As author Richard Tarnas observes, “World views create worlds.” Is a fundamental transformation of our civilization’s world view the gateway to our survival and flourishing as a species? In this Bioneers audio special, we take an experiential journey into cosmology, consciousness and change, with: Chief Oren Lyons, Native American leader from the Onondaga Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy; Richard Tarnas, the author of Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View; and featuring music from Shaman’s Dream and Blue Tech.

What does governance look like when it aligns with the ground truths of nature? How does culture change? What models exist? Hosted by Kirsten Schwind, co-founder/Director of Bay Localize. With: Jessie Lerner, Executive Director, Sustain Dane in Madison, Wiscon- sin, a state with eco-municipalities based on Sweden’s model; Trathen Heckman, Board President, Transition U.S., founder of Daily Acts.

John Todd, an ecological designer in the field of biomimicry, imitates nature's evolutionary genius to serve human ends harmlessly, using nature's processes as the design for buildings, technologies and practical solutions to environmental devastation. Educator David Orr suggests that true ecological design can take place only in a society willing to ask, "How would nature do it?"

How do we align political governance with ecological realities rooted in watersheds, foodsheds, culturesheds and regional economies? Hosted by: Kirsten Schwind, Bay Localize. With: David Orr, Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College; Louise Bedsworth, Deputy Director, California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.

Connect with kindred educators in an emerging community of practice in this participatory session offering frameworks and tools for designing an effective Education for Sustainability (EfS) initiative in your community and/or school. Hosted by Kirk Bergstrom, filmmaker, educator, social entrepreneur, founder and Executive Director of WorldLink. With: Jaimie Cloud, President, Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education; Linda Booth Sweeney, award-winning author and systems educator.

Environmental literacy and social justice are inextricably linked, and recent changes in California’s curricula fully encourage pedagogical exploration of this linkage. Three new academic content frameworks (in Science, History-Social Science, and Health) promote challenge-based learning, in which student inquiry leads to student action in local communities. Students are also discovering nature-inspired design, i.e. Biomimicry, as part of this process. In this session, a school district representative, a teacher, and a student, share their perspectives about this intersection of environmental literacy and social justice. The panel also leads hands-on immersion into the Biomimicry design process with a focus on ways to apply these methods in our own schools and communities. With: Beth Rattner, Biomimicry Institute; Juanita Chan, Rialto Unified School District; Kavita Gupta, Freemont Union High School District. Moderated by Emily Schell, Executive Director, California Global Education Project; Caleb Jordan-McDa