Environmental destruction leads to scarcity and scarcity leads to conflict, so restoring the environment is key to peace. Yet those working for the environment and those working for social justice have not linked arms until recently. Van Jones invites us to bring down the social walls that we ourselves have built, and work together to counter the timeworn strategy of divide and conquer that benefits ruling elites.
The Wonders of Gaia: Nature is Symbiotic | Lynn Margulis, Wade Davis & Paul Stamets
“Why plant a garden when you can put plants to work for you in your own body?” This is one of the mind bending questions Lynn Margulis, one of the greatest cross-disciplinary scientific thinkers and educators of our epoch, asks. Margulis, ethnobotanist Wade Davis and mycologist Paul Stamets weave tales of amazing plant intelligence like the “Hat Thrower Mushroom” and animals that eat light.
Forest Lifeboat: From Spirit Bears to Victoria’s Dirty Secret | Tzeporah Berman
How do you go from being a passionate tree-hugger to a business-suited change-maker on behalf of the forests? Enter ForestEthics Program Director Tzeporah Berman. With a string of conservation successes, including the “Amazon of the North,” her inspiring story shows how innovative market-based strategies, strange bedfellows, and public embarrassment are powerful tools to preserve the wild places that provide our essential ecosystem services.
You Are Where You Eat: Trans-farming Urban Food and Growing Community | Ladonna Redmond…
LaDonna Redmond and Wil Bullock live in communities where 12-year-olds suffer heart attacks, and where it’s easier to buy a semi-automatic weapon than an organic tomato. But they are changing that reality, providing access to fresh, healthy foods, and re-establishing the connections between food and community.
The Art of Relationships: From Ecology to Healing | Fritjof Capra, Jeannette Armstrong, and Jeanne Achterberg
Ecology is the superb art of interdependent relationships. Author and physicist Fritjof Capra, Native American educator Jeannette Armstrong, and medical researcher Jeanne Achterberg describe the complex and interconnected relationships inherent in living systems that can help heal our environment, our societies, and us.
Aligning Business with Biology: Breakthrough Eco-nomics | Amory Lovins & Jason Clay
Bioneers are successfully employing the economics of nature to demonstrate how we can solve two of our most intractable environmental challenges: energy and agriculture. In a few decades, the U.S. can get completely off oil, as physicist Amory Lovins convincingly shows. Economist and anthropologist Jason Clay presents profitable examples of modeling nature’s economics, from clean shrimp farms in Asia to healthy potatoes in Wisconsin.
How Close Does It Have to Get? The Open Space of Democracy | Terry Tempest Williams
In her writing and her life, Terry Tempest Williams expresses something better and higher in each of us. Here she wrestles with the question: “What are you willing to die for?” She weaves stories of personal loss and triumph that illuminate the idea that, perhaps, in the end, democracy is about listening – deeply, openly, even with a broken heart. Because, she says, the heart is the first home of democracy.
Terry Tempest Williams is a best-selling author, conservationist and activist. A native of Utah, her writing is rooted in the American West and ranges from issues of wilderness conservation, to women’s health, to exploring our relationship to culture and our natural landscape. To learn more about her work, visit her website: http://www.coyoteclan.com/
The End of Sustainability: The Environment as a Human Right | Paul Hawken
A healthy environment is not just a biological issue, but also a fundamental human right. Acclaimed social entrepreneur and author Paul Hawken proposes that we need to go far beyond “sustainability” as a guiding principle and dare to create a restorative economic system founded in social equity and power for all.
To find out more about what Paul Hawken is doing, visit his website.
Connecting the Drops: Restoring Ecology and Social Ecology in Los Angeles | Andy Lipkis
Could Los Angeles stop draining water from the Colorado River and the Sacramento Delta to become self-sufficient? That’s a question that Andy Lipkis and his organization Tree People are tackling in an unprecedented alliance with public works agencies. Their work proves that the more we learn about how ecosystems operate, the more sustainably we can design our cities.
War, Earth and the Soul: The Warrior’s Path of Redemption | Edward Tick
Is high-tech war that can annihilate human civilization and nature on a global scale really a viable response to conflict in the 21st century? The traumatic wounding of war is so deep that it calls for more than antidepressants or stress management. Dr. Edward Tick’s heart-rending experience shows us that transforming the demons of war can lead to a redemptive path of healing and reverence for life.
Daughters of Thoreau: Not Too Well Behaved | Julia Butterfly Hill, Diane Wilson, and Terri Swearingen
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.
True Biotechnologies: Nature’s Best Climate Change Solutions | Janine Benyus, Stephan Dewar, David Orr and Jay Harman
Some of the best minds on the planet are busy cataloguing possible solutions to the crisis of climate chaos. Scientists, entrepreneurs and educators on technology’s cutting edge offer a broad array of bio-based solutions that are already working to transition us to a truly sustainable civilization. Biomimics Janine Benyus, Stephan Dewar, David Orr and Jay Harman offer a smorgasbord of startling solutions based on nature’s genius.