So this is the 23rd year for the Bioneers Conference at Marin Civic Center, this time, Fri-Sun. Oct. 19-21st., and it’s just as urgently needed as always! We’re looking at a planet literally on fire from fracking, with a growing number of nuclear bomb-owning nations, where a 14 year old is threatened with death for “liking” Obama and other “infractions”. All crazy-making. Yet there is always light through the bleak dark and the workers in the trenches of environmental health, local food, transition, show us what can be done when it seems there is nothing feasible to do. So Go. Cheerleaders for the environmental movement, I’ve said before. Now? That and more…a feast of healthy food, good ideas, courageous people.
Tickets at http://conference.bioneersgroup.com/notices/
“Occasionally a conference can, by the strength of its vision, create a whole new context within which to understand an issue. It can also build a network among people in related but separate fields of activity. The Bioneers Conference achieves all this, and more—being there changes the way one views the landscape of the environmental movement. Bioneers is central to the re-imagination of what it means to be human.”
– Paul Hawken, author and social entrepreneur
I’ve been a fan of Paul Hawken since I met him at my much-missed mentor, Henry Dakin’s 3220 Sacramento St., SF, meeting space as keynote for the Threshold Foundation – a fantastic group of visionaries seeking, annually, to find useful work in the world to support. Then, Paul spoke beautifully (as he always does) and we talked about Jerry Brown, (whose Fire House resided nearby and was a frequent visitor) early California Conservation Corps (Paul and Jerry co-created) and how then we MIGHT dig ourselves out of the holes we had already dug into on planet earth. This was 1992? Paul speaks at Bioneers often and is always there somewhere.
Absolutely am a fan of Bill McKibben, often a keynote at Bioneers. (Henry Dakin once told me McKibben was the speaker to follow one year at Bioneers and I have agreed ever since). This year, McKibben leads off Sat. am at 9:05 – 09:05 AM
Restoration Nation Theater | 9:05am, Sat – for this presentation”
The Climate Fight Gets Hotter
by Bill McKibben The award-winning environmental journalist, author, Co-Founder of 350.org, and leading global climate activist will survey the landscape of climate action, including the remarkable holding action by 350.org and others to suspend approval of the Keystone XL pipeline carrying Canadian “tar sands” oil, the “biggest carbon bomb” on the planet. Bill McKibben wrote The End of Nature in 1989, the first book for a general audience on climate change. He’s the author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with The End of Nature in 1989. The grassroots group 350.org has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. Time magazine called him ‘the planet’s best green journalist’ and the Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was “probably the country’s most important environmentalist.” As Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, he holds honorary degrees from a dozen colleges. In 2011 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Restoration Nation Theater | 9:05am, Sat (have to get up early and BE there!)
McKibben is at Bioneers again Sat. afternoon, 4:30p as a panelist on Resilient Communities II: Mobilizing and Equipping Local Citizen Action
Moderated by Asher Miller, Executive Director of the Post Carbon Institute.
With Bill McKibben, Co-Founder of 350.org; Kirsten Schwind, Program Director of BayLocalize; Carolyne Stayton, Executive Director of Transition U.S. Restoration Nation Theater | 4:30pm-6pm, Sat
Mushrooming numbers of communities are recognizing both the need and the desirability of becoming more self-reliant on basic systems and services such as food, energy and water, and building their local economies and jobs. The question is: How? This session will offer highly practical tools, resources and models for communities and citizens seeking to build ecological and economic resilience.
Back to present time, Petaluma: This year, my partner, Wayne Morgenthaler, formerly inventor of fun at Jungle Vibes Gift and Toy Emporium, now creating an architectural wonder which will be our House on the Hill at Oasis Community Farm just outside Petaluma, Wayne-the-Jungle-Guy is now Wayne the Farmer and we’re learning fast what it is to conquer (hopefully!) 2 1/2 acres planted with fruit and nut trees with our 37 laying chickens linking us to the outside world via our Egg Box by the driveway.
All the Transition info. I can gather is needed to fulfill our vision for the land.
So this year, Bioneers takes on new meaning. Having attended and written a bit for the Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa (Baker Creek Seed Bank in Petaluma, founder), we’ve come to realize that GMO (genetically modified crops) are so very much more dangerous than just “suspect”. Please watch Genetic Roulette the movie (free again this week) and hear the evidence yourself – then VOTE FOR GMO LABELING on your Nov. ballot. Some 1 million signers put this there. Urgent. “Safe” DDT killed my kitten when I was little; don’t want GMOs killing anyone at all, let alone future wonderful children.
Us and Bill McKibben, an inspiration for our Oasis Community Farm in that Bill’s 350 Garden Challenge #1 was inspiration to build an adobe outdoor “Lovin Oven,” featured in a great little YouTube by co-creator, Miguel Elliot of Living Earth Strutures. We’ve gathered people 3 years now when its 350 Garden Challenge time, planted a salsa garden, built an owl box, put up clothes line and kept our little community humming.
Bill McKibben is important now as ever in showing us how the oil industry’s nasty habit of Fracking just can’t go on – it’s dangerous and unnecessary, and the messy, dirty oil resulting will only clog our airways more. “…Building a Global Movement to Solve the Climate Crisis” – in 188 countries! Go to http://350.org