Nina Talks Cultivating Women’s Leadership

Nina Simons by Genevieve Russell

“I think the greatest underutilized resource we have in the world is women’s capacity once we are in authentic and aligned mutual relationships of support.” – Nina Simons

Nina made this insight when she was interviewed recently by Susan Santiago on her Pieces of Peace show, a weekly program on West Marin’s KWMR-FM. You can also find our radio program, Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature, on KWMR-FM on Monday mornings at 11.

Removing Limits on Women’s Leadership

During the interview, which you can listen to below, Nina talked about the Cultivating Women’s Leadership (CWL) trainings which she leads as part of her Everywoman’s Leadership (EL) program. The trainings are immersive experiences where diverse groups of women come together to strengthen their unique leadership.

When asked by Susan what inspired Nina to create the CWL trainings, she said, “We as women, because we are all products of a patriarchal culture, we carry self limiting stories, and beliefs and biases that actually tend to hold us back. And we carry them invisibly…and unless we make them conscious…they are going to keep holding us back.”

 

For more information on the trainings, of which there are two upcoming ones this year, check out the webinar where Nina and several CWL alumnae spoke in-depth on what you can gain from the experience. You can also apply for the trainings online.

You can follow Nina and the Everywoman’s Leadership program on Facebook and Twitter.

A Path Towards Zero-Net Energy Communities with The Rocky Mountain Institute

Bioneers Resilient Communities Network Webinar Series

“A Path Towards Zero-Net Energy Communities with The Rocky Mountain Institute”

April 8, 2015 from 12:30 – 2:00 PST

View the archived webinar »

Download the slideshow from this webinar (PDF) »

Project Overview

As the reality of climate change increasingly enters our day-to-day lives, communities around the country are working to ensure a resilient future for themselves and their surroundings.  One of the key challenges facing forward-thinking communities, both large and small, is how to transition to a reliable and clean energy supply.  Our colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), founded by frequent Bioneers speaker Amory Lovins, have become world class leaders in helping communities design and transform their energy systems.

As a direct result of partnering with RMI, the City of Fort Collins, CO recently announced their fast-track climate action plan, 20% emission reductions by 2020 and 80% by 2030 (relative to 2005 levels).   80% by 2030 is two decades sooner than most leading cities, representing a bold vision and leadership, which is very much needed today.  Fort Collins initially worked with RMI through their “eLab Accelerator” program.

This webinar will cover some of the leading edges of community energy policy and transformation, moving from business as usual to zero-net energy and beyond.  How did Ft. Collins get to where they are?  Are there other cities and projects that can serve as models for the rest of the country?  How can your community engage with the Rocky Mountain Institute and its networks to work towards these necessary goals?

Who should attend?

This webinar is for current members of the Bioneers Resilient Communities Network. For current members, please feel free to invite a selection of relevant leaders on energy issues in your community to participate. The presentation will not be wonky but will be at a high enough level that those versed in energy policy and activity will find it valuable.

Background Resources:

Bioneers Video: Amory Lovins Keynote Address

Bioneers Radio Show: Not Fate but Choice: Reinventing Fire for the Clean Energy Era

Bioneers Radio Show: Security by Design: Environmental Security is Homeland Security

The Rocky Mountain Institute

The City of Fort Collins Climate Action Announcement

RMI Research: Transforming How Communities Use Energy: Learning from Fort Collins

Community Voices: Rethinking School Lunch in Oakland & California

Welcome to Planet Water, where 70% of its surface area is water and where all the white vapor, crystalline liquid and the greenery of the plants are significantly made up of water. Planet Water is the only place in the known universe where life is endemic. 

I love this quote by the late Luna Leopold, emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley and son of Aldo Leopold: “The health of the waters is the principle measure of how we live on the land.”

Basically, the water cycle and the life cycle are the same cycle. People are carbon based life forms; it’s our central atom, but by volume we’re mostly water. The carbon cycle and the water cycle are the fundamental cycles needed to sustain life. The inputs to the photosynthetic cycle are CO2 and H2O. Sunlight enters into chlorophyll and produces oxygen and sugar. The photosynthetic cycle creates the energy that the planet runs on.

There is a global water cycle, but in the permaculture community, we talk a lot about restoring small water cycles. By thinking like a watershed, we’re trying to understand the relationship from the headwaters to the middle reaches down to the delta. How are we living within our basins of relations?  Where are tillage and rangeland agriculture happening? Where is forestry happening? Where are urbanization and human settlement happening in the watershed? And how is all of that in right relationship with the process of the small water cycle?

25 Years of Bioneers: World Transits

by J.P. Harpignies, Associate Producer, Conference & Special Projects

At and around the time of the first Bioneers Conference in the fall of 1990:

  • The Berlin Wall had fallen a year before, and the Soviet Union would still exist for another year.
  • The first Gulf War had just begun that August.
  • E-mail was not in the lexicon and would not become mainstream for several more years.
  • James Hansen had testified before Congress about the risks of climate change in 1988, and Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature came out in 1989, but concepts of global warming or climate change were far from most people’s consciousness.
  • The concept of biomimicry was almost unheard of until Janine Benyus’ 1997 book, but Bioneers was strongly focused on bioremediation and other nature-emulating technologies and approaches from the get-go.
  • The Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound took place in March 1989. Some thought it would finally expose the folly of a fossil fuel-dependent economy, but like after many spills before, right up to 2010’s massive BP Deepwater Horizon debacle, business-as-usual has gone on.
  • The Clean Air Act was passed in 1990.
  • Robert Bullard’s seminal book Dumping in Dixie, published in 1990, was the first textbook on environmental justice, and built on previous work, including the first civil rights suit challenging the siting of a waste facility in 1979 and the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice’s groundbreaking 1987 report “Toxic Waste and Race in the United States.”
  • Rodney King beating: March 1991; LA riots: April 1992.
  • President Clinton signs NAFTA/GATT in 1993, accelerating globalization.
  • U.S. environmental justice movement progressed onto the global stage in 1995 when environmental justice delegates participated in the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing.
  • In 1996, environmental justice activist Carl Anthony spoke at Bioneers for the first time.
  • The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999 toward the end of Clinton’s term, contributing to the banking crisis nine years later.
  • Yugoslav/Balkan wars, 1991-1999. First major armed conflict in Europe since WWII.
  • Mass incarceration emerges as a major economic, racial and social justice issue: Between 1970 and 2000, while the general population rose by less than 40%, the number of people in prison and jail rose by more than 500%.
    • By comparison, between 1920 and 1970 overall population nearly doubled and the number of people in prison increased at just a slightly higher pace.
    • Number of prisoners per 100,000 population, 1925: 79
    • Number of prisoners per 100,000 population, 1980: 139
    • Number of prisoners per 100,000 population, 2000: 478
    • Number of prisoners and jail inmates per 100,000 population, 2000: 699
    • The crack cocaine “epidemic” that devastated inner cities in the 80s and early 90s began to ease somewhat by the mid to late 90s; crime rates began to fall; and gang violence began to decrease in many places. Incarceration rates have only fallen slightly even as crime rates have fallen dramatically.
  • 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization demonstrations and subsequent actions around the world put the anti-globalization movement firmly on the map. Jerry Mander first came to Bioneers in 1998 speaking on the topic, and Bioneers became an important focal point for discussions on the “dismantling of corporate power” with Richard Grossman, Andrew Kimbrell, et al.
  • 2000: collapse of the dot.com bubble, NASDAQ falls more than 50%.
  • Social media emerge:
    • Google founded in 1998
    • You Tube and Facebook founded in 2004
    • Twitter founded in 2006
    • Facebook, just to cite one, went from 1 million users at the end of 2004 to over 1 billion today.
  • Most of the successful independent socially conscious enterprises started in the 70s and 80s got absorbed into large multinationals in the later 90s and 2000s. For example:
    • Body Shop bought by L’Oreal in 2006.
    • Ben and Jerry’s bought by Unilever in 2000.
    • Cascadian Farms bought by General Mills in 2000
  • Stolen presidential election of 2000 in the U.S. Controversy among progressives over Ralph Nader’s run.
  • 9/11/2001 followed by the wars in Afghanistan (2001-?) and Iraq (2003-?). Immense shift of resources to the national security sector and enormous lasting expenses from the wars that will run into the trillions, contributing to national infrastructure eroding, cost of education rising, middle class shrinking and squeezed, leading in turn to political instability and paralysis.
  • 2005: Hurricane Katrina; the mess in New Orleans exposes structural racism and coming climate threats.
  • Financial crisis of 2007/2008.
  • 2009: Emergence of the Tea Party in the U.S., and right wing populist and anti-immigrant groups in Europe also continue to grow; political instability rises as middle classes are squeezed and desperation, poverty, war, and climate change generate ever more refugees.
  • 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill drives home once again the folly of fossil fuels.
  • 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United and subsequent decisions open the floodgates for money in politics.
  • 2011: Occupy Wall Street adds the 1% to the lexicon.
  • 2011: Hurricane Irene does major damage in New York and Vermont, among other places
  • 2012: Superstorm Sandy wallops New York and New Jersey. Climate change, sea level rise driven home.

To today: a period of apparently ever-increasing instability with China’s rise, disruptive climate events, water shortages, cyclic economic crises, permanent structural shrinking of the living standard of developed world’s middle classes, political instability, increasing full-blown regional wars or low level guerilla conflicts all over the place (Congo, Sudan, Nigeria, Mali, Algeria, Libya, all over the Middle East, Ukraine and Chechnya/Ingushetia in Europe, Maoist rebellions in India, Uighur resistance in western China, long lasting rebellions in the Philippines, Burma, Thailand, among others) and immense refugee crises globally, spread of tropical and zoonotic diseases to temperate regions, etc.

What Will the Next 25 Years Bring?

The ways the world will change in the coming years hinge greatly on what we do at this once-in-a-civilization moment.

If you share our belief that the solutions to global challenges are largely present and we all need to step us as leaders to spread and scale them quickly in the face of urgent crises, please join us for the next 25 years of even more breakthroughs for environmental, economic, and social transformation.

Return to the digital edition of Seeing Around Corners »

Bioneers Inside Track: January 2015 Quarterly Donor Newsletter

Dear Bioneers Friends and Supporters!

Happy New Year! Thanks to your committed partnership, our 2014 was a milestone year and a celebration of our 25th Anniversary. We’re excited to share with you a sneak peek of what’s to come in 2015. Read on for more!

Watch Your (Snail)Mailbox

Your Limited Edition 25th Anniversary Yearbook Copy Coming Soon

We hope you enjoyed our year-end emails serializing chapters of our 25th anniversary yearbook, Seeing Around Corners: 25 Years of Visionary Leadership.

As a Bioneers supporter, you’ll be receiving a copy of the print edition as a token of our gratitude. Look for it in your mailbox in February. Savor and share it with friends and allies.

You can see the entire Yearbook right now as a digital download. Your feedback is most welcome. We love the back cover—what do you think?

Save the Dates

Kinship Circle Trip to Maui

May 22-26, 2015

Last year’s inaugural Kinship Circle expedition to Maui was an unforgettable journey into indigenous Hawai’i. It was inspiring, revitalizing and soulful, not least because so many of you got to meet each other and form lasting friendships.

Together with Board member Melissa Nelson’s Cultural Conservancy, we’re putting together a fresh program of teachers and guides for this expedition that will be equally inspiring. We’re in it for the long haul with our Hawaiian allies.

Among the high points of the 2014 trip:

  • A mind-blowing presentation by a global indigenous leader in reviving traditional canoe culture globally using the astonishing Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Polynesian star navigation.
  • A tour of Jeffrey Bronfman’s leading-edge Permaculture HAPI farm where we engaged with the ground-zero frontlines of Hawaii’s indigenous and multi-cultural resistance movement to stops GMOs in the research belly of the corporate beast. Later in the year a ballot initiative did indeed halt all GMO testing—for now.
  • Gorgeous outings to the Seven Sacred Pools, a traditional sunrise ocean ceremony, and daily swimming.
  • Deep dialogue and insight into Hawaiian Aloha cultural traditions with spiritual leaders such as the revered Auntie Pua and others, and cross-cultural comparisons with mainland native people’s beliefs led by the powerful Rose Van Thater.
  • Amazing food, even more amazing company, and slow time with magical Kinship Circle folks, Nina and Kenny, Melissa Nelson, Cara Romero (our Indigenous Knowledge program director) and executive director Joshua Fouts. As one Kinship member commented, it was the first such gathering she had ever participated in where she wanted to have dinner with every person there.

The Kinship Circle is a vibrant group of engaged higher donors ($25,000 and up) committed to the Bioneers vision and mission. If you’d like to join us on this second journey, please contact Maria Rotunda at 505.395.2801 or maria@bioneers.org. If you are not currently a member of the Kinship Circle but are able to consider the higher gift level, you are welcome to come.

Bioneers Donor Spotlight:

Seven and a Half Questions for Courageous Lauren Embrey

By Joshua Sheridan Fouts

In response to the economic downturn of 2008, many philanthropic institutions cut back on grants. Not Bioneers Kinship Circle member Lauren Embrey. Read on to learn about Lauren’s passionate approach to philanthropy, why she supports Bioneers, and her advice for young philanthropists.

1. How has your view and approach to philanthropy changed since you first started?

Wow…it has evolved, grown and blossomed. I didn’t know much, if anything, about philanthropy when I first started, so it was great to go into the work without any expectations or beliefs on the “right” way to do things. The first and most important learning was that of strategy, the importance of it, and how to develop it. I also learned very quickly that this was serious business and required great thought, care and heart to do it well.

So, my view has not necessarily changed since I first started, but developed. It has developed through my intense commitment to philanthropic education, my explorations surrounding cutting edge thinking and innovative initiatives and my experiences with those who came before and relationships with those doing the work in the world.

2. What was it that inspired you to spend-down your foundation’s corpus instead of only spending the interest as is the tradition in many foundations? Why?

I was inspired by a moment in history. The inspiration came during the economic downturn of 2008. It was a time when many philanthropic institutions and foundations of all sizes were cutting back on their grant dollars, they were concerned about the uncertainties of the economy. They needed to sit back and wait, watch and see what was going to happen. They had a fiduciary responsibility to their endowment and were not at liberty to continue spending down.

We had the latitude to react differently. I wanted the Embrey Family Foundation to be a role model for bigger and bolder giving, At a time when non-profit organizations and communities were in dire need of funds, people were suffering, I wanted to step out and say: “We are not going to hold back, we are going to seize this moment and give at a higher level than we ever have before, because our business is helping people, and there could not be a more important time to distribute funds in response to that need.”

I wanted to be a role model to shift the paradigm away from monetary accumulation and toward the universal wisdom of when we give we receive. I wanted to visibly and concretely express my faith in that wisdom. I wanted to harness the energy I felt was palpable in that moment to make change, I wanted to step into that energy, fully, with all the resources available to me, meaning dollars, networks, experiences and leadership. I knew the need for work in the area of systemic change, now was the time to take that on. I also knew I would learn so much from this experience if I just plunged in. And I did.

3. Has there been any response from other foundations? If so, how have they responded? 

There has not been a direct response from other foundations regarding our level of contribution, though when I speak about this and mention the percentage of our corpus we have contributed over the past few years people react in a very positive way. I have heard directly from others that we are respected and admired in the community for our strategic giving and the values we exhibit through our process.

4. What is your advice to other young philanthropists entering into this field?

Be open to all possibility. Be willing to step into your passion and therefore your power. Take the time to let your strategy develop, let it be a process of discovery…all does not need to be known immediately. Be flexible and nimble within your parameters. Stay true to what you care about and let that fuel you. Display pure intent and apply a willingness to learn, explore and experience. There are so many amazing people to learn from…network, listen and enjoy the ride. We are so blessed to be able to do this work. Revel in that blessing.

5. What specifically inspired you to support Bioneers among all the many good organizations that are in your universe?

The first year I went to Bioneers, I believe it was 2011, I was blown away by the innovative and cutting edge thinking that was presented at the Conference.

I was so invigorated and inspired by the way all the justice movements—environmental, social, women, indigenous—were woven together and intersected so beautifully. That is how I believed!! And it was so exciting to me to see this intersectionality executed with such precision and grace.

I felt Kenny and Nina, and all the speakers there were visionaries. Not only were they visionaries but they also brought in their constituencies, their communities into the conversation. All voices were heard, respected and appreciated. I wanted to help support that, and I wanted to support the experiential learning and the collectives that were nurtured and contained within the dialogue.

6. Bioneers co-founder Kenny Ausubel talks about how we are in an era that has moved from “urgency to emergency” in reference to our ability to react and respond and create meaningful change despite massive shifts caused by climate disruption. What do you think are the most pressing issues that philanthropy should be addressing in this time of “urgency to emergency?”

Violence and destruction and inequity: from violence against women to destruction of the earth to racial inequity. When I say that I mean it in all its forms. There is so much to do. We must tackle the principles and beliefs embedded in our institutions and our culture. We must uncover our unconscious and implicit biases to get to the root, the core. We must create balance, promote love. We must understand that violence produces violence, that if we don’t respect our women, how can we respect our earth. We must see how this is all interconnected. Ultimately, I believe, if people follow their passions and get involved in the issues they care about deeply and work for that….everything will be covered!!

7. Bioneers is about building bridges between cultures and generations. As you know, we have a big focus on youth leadership and youth scholarships to create this bridge. If you could time travel back to a 15-year-old Lauren, what words of advice would you give her about the world she is about to enter?

Don’t be afraid…don’t hold back…move forward as soon as you can, experience the world and all it has to offer, find your way, keep your eyes open and always stay positive. Believe in yourself and what your heart tells you. Ask for help, learn from others, stay humble and don’t close off. Use your voice, even when it’s really scary to do so. Network, find your tribe, and use your passion to fuel you. Don’t ever give up!

7.5. What words of advice do you have for the youth leaders attending Bioneers this year?

In addition to the above….drink up this experience…meet as many people as possible and share your thoughts, your ideas, your passions. Enjoy to the fullest, always believing in yourself!

The Sting:

Scamming Philanthropy

By Kenny Ausubel

As the saying goes, “Money is like manure. When you pile it up, it stinks. When you spread it around, it does a lot of good.”

As wealth has continued to concentrate at the tippy top and reached Gilded Age extremes, a whole lot of dough is piling up. Close behind are the big dogs of the financial services industry sniffing for tax breaks to hold on to it and make more. Enter the latest philanthropic sting—donor-advised funds.

Hold your nose when you read the recent New York Times exposé. As my grandmother used to say, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”

Huge clots of “philanthropic” dollars are now tied up in “donor-advised funds” that defy the bounds of ethics and intent by using legal loopholes that do not actually require them to give away any money!

People set up accounts at these giant firms and then in theory advise on which charities get how much. But these giant financial services companies are using these donor-advised funds as private investment vehicles to keep making the piles—and their fees—bigger. They have no intention of making grants, often for as long as 10 years forward, if at all. They can just pass it on to their heirs, too. Meanwhile donors reap the immediate annual tax benefits of their annual nonprofit “gifts.”

The overall result is that huge piles of “philanthropic” dollars never reach grantees. The situation is diminishing even further the receding pool of nonprofit funding that already contracted radically with the Great Recession beginning in 2008.

The funding environment for nonprofits since the Great Recession has been a bloodbath. Thousands if not tens of thousands of worthy groups (and conferences) have gone out of business. Virtually all the rest of us have had to cut back, often radically, just when our work is needed ever more in a society that privatizes profits and socializes costs.

Now the usual suspects are financializing philanthropy and reaping ever more windfall profits for themselves, while starving the nonprofit sector. Party on, Wall Street.

Please speak out about this, and join the growing movement to rein in this latest sting.

First 2015 Bioneers Conference Speakers Confirmed

Mark your calendars for the next Bioneers Summit Conference, October 16-18, 2015, in San Rafael, California. Planning is already well underway and we’re thrilled to announce our first three confirmed keynote speakers:

  • Jensine Larsen, founder of World Pulse, on the growing influence of the grassroots women’s leadership in media and citizen journalism.
  • Tom Hayden, activist, author and former CA Senator, on California’s game-changing role as a global leader in climate change policy, economics and practices.
  • Rinku Sen, Indian-American author and activist and president and executive director of the racial justice organization Race Forward and publisher of Colorlines.com, on racial justice innovations and initiatives.

We’re also convening a second follow-up Climate Leadership one-day intensive with Tom Hayden, and taking it global in scope.

Watch this space for more sneak peeks of this year’s conference as well as early-bird registration announcements!

Bioneers Youth Leadership: Blossoming at Bioneers

Youth at Bioneers 2014 exceeded all expectations

The desire to be part of the Bioneers experience among youth has surpassed our wildest dreams! We provided a record 357 scholarships in 2014 and still had an additional 300 applicants. We did not even have the staff capacity to address the record flood of applicants.

  • Fully 20% of all conference participants were youth! We consider this a huge signal of the health of Bioneers.
  • A majority were youth of color and the Youth of Color Caucus had 89 youth.
  • Over 65 indigenous youth participated too, many from the Bay Area (over 100 Indian Nations were represented in total, including adults).

Minds blown? Ours are.

This year we are aching to provide ever more places for these young representatives of the future we all want to see. We’ll soon be launching a campaign to ensure that we provide a pathway for as many youths as we can afford. It costs about $500 for a local youth, and $1,000 for long-distance.

If you are like us, when you hear the stories of the young people touched in life-changing ways, you know we’ve got to step up to support them.

“During a dinner for businessmen at the conference, I chose to sit in the back as the president of the American Sustainable Business Council gave a talk about the importance of aligning American policy with the goals of sustainable businesses. During the talk, he relayed that part of his strategy for influencing policy was to hold a conference at the White House to sway policymakers.

“After his talk, afraid that I might be overstepping my role as a youth at this conference brimming with professionals, I approached the ASBC president. After discussing how valuable and insightful his vision was, I pushed past my personal comfort and forced myself to ask, ‘You know what your White House conference is missing?’ He looked over at me, adjusting his initially reproachful expression to flash me a face of eager anticipation, for this had been the standard of behavior as people began to offer advice to one another at the conference. Before he could respond or shift his attention, I said, ‘Youth representation.’ He laughed off my hopeful smile, gave me his card, told me to email him, and quickly turned to talk to the next person awaiting a chance for conversation.

“Without much hope, I shot him a quick email a few days after the conference. Two weeks later, I received an invitation from the American Sustainable Business Council to attend its summit at the White House as a youth representative, waiving the fee to the conference.”         

—Jack Kornack, Bioneers Youth Scholar

It’s your love and support that makes this possible. We’ve got dozens of such stories.

Our larger goal is to expand the Youth Leadership program into year-round, perennial leadership development for young social justice activists and environmental leaders. Stay tuned for details in the next couple of months.

Support Bioneers Youth Leadership Scholarships »

California Climate Report:

Bioneers positioned to inform global climate conversation in unique ways

Thanks to a key contribution from one savvy and generous donor, we’re in production on an e-book on California’s Game-Changing Climate Leadership.

Edited from talks at the special one-day intensive at the 2014 Bioneers conference, this streamlined digital book will illuminate the emerging climate policy templates and breakthrough initiatives being developed in California that are already spreading nationally and globally. This little book will be really important right now as an educational and organizing tool to help spread the word about how “sub-national” governments are doing end-runs around federal inaction or insufficient action.

CA Gov. Brown has now upped the ante to 50% renewables by 2030, and continues to build both a national and global Green Bloc. This trend will become much more visible and powerful in the Paris 2015 global climate talks. Bioneers is positioned to significantly help advance awareness, make strategic connections and inform the conversation in unique ways.

The super-timely and strategic e-book will be available in digital format (PDF) as well as a more interactive online e-book. Once it’s ready, we invite you to help spread the word!

Until then, you can watch and share videos from the 2014 California Climate Leadership Forum on our website. Tom Hayden’s closing was remarkable—dropping wisdom on movement building with the long view of a wise elder and relentless campaigner. Goose bumps…

Bioneers Partners with Dutch Consulate on California-Netherlands Sustainability Summit

February 16-17, 2015 | San Francisco, CA

Another opportunity inspired by our 2014 California Climate Leadership Forum is a partnership with the San Francisco Consulate General of the Netherlands to convene a California-Netherlands Sustainability Summit.

On February 16 and 17, Dutch and US key players in business, government, and knowledge institutions will gather in San Francisco’s Presidio to build partnerships and economic opportunities between California and the Netherlands around the topics of Energy, Water, Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation, Sustainable Transport, and Smart Cities.

Among the speakers will be Henk Ovink, the Dutch visionary now doing New York City’s climate mitigation water strategies modeled on Holland’s advanced green and “soft” infrastructure.

We’re honored to be part of this convening focused on real, realistic, realized and integrated sustainable development solutions. It’s a vital part of our mission to bring leading-edge thinkers and solutions into the mainstream where they can shift paradigms and benefit us all.

Don’t Miss: Othering and Belonging Conference

April 24-26, 2015 | Berkeley, CA

Bioneers is truly honored to help support john a. powell’s April conference on “Othering and Belonging,” produced by UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society that john leads.

As john so eloquently described in his 2014 Bioneers keynote, this is a historic moment where we are called upon to reach out across our differences to create “beloved community” in recognition of our oneness as a species and our interdependence with the web of life. If we don’t, well, let’s not even go there…

Here’s some info about the conference:

“Belonging or being fully human means more than having access. It means having a meaningful voice, and being afforded the opportunity to participate in the design of social and cultural structures. Belonging entails being respected at a basic level that includes the right to both contribute and make demands upon society and political institutions.

“The conference will bring together scholars, researchers, advocates, and organizers to examine the issue of “othering,” a set of processes that engender marginality across any of the full range of human differences, such as race, socioeconomic status, gender, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, skin tone, and more. It will feature a multi-disciplinary, intersectional examination of the forms of othering in order to craft transformative solutions that promote belonging. The goal of the conference is to discern possibilities and develop practices for generating more inclusive structures, narratives, and identities that prohibit othering and promote belonging.”

If you’re interested in participating, visit the Othering & Belonging conference website or call 510-642-3342.

Join the Revolution from the Heart of Nature

Let’s Do This!

Maximize the impact of your dollars by investing
in the Bioneers network: Indigenous,
women and youth leaders,
resilient communities and innovative solutions.

Re-imagine how to live on Earth with Bioneers media and programs

“A lot of the film subjects came from Kenny Ausubel [Bioneers founder] and the contacts that he had—the real innovators in the environmental movement.”
Leonardo DiCaprio, Stern magazine, Germany, regarding his 11th Hour film

Join Bioneers in accelerating the profound transformation already taking hold around the globe: the dawn of a human civilization that partners with the wisdom of nature’s design, grounded in values of justice, diversity, democracy and peaceful co-existence.

Whether you’re looking to radically transform your community, expand your personal leadership skills, or just want an inspiring video to share, Bioneers has you covered!

Bioneers gathers and cross-pollinates a unique network of networks through our multi-faceted programs:

  • Media Outreach, including an award-winning radio series and videos from our extensive archive
  • Annual Conference
  • Resilient Communities Network
  • Everywoman’s Leadership
  • Indigenous Knowledge
  • Youth Leadership

You’ll find people from many backgrounds and walks of life in the Bioneers community: professionals of all types, civil society groups, educators, entrepreneurs, public servants, the media, emerging and established leaders, and global citizens.

What Can We Create Together?

Since 1990, Bioneers has shown that the solutions to global challenges are largely present. The seed forms of the vibrant, life-giving world we want are here now—in the breakthrough, nature-inspired solutions, models and practices manifest throughout the Bioneers community.

Through our archives and network, you can discover a compelling vision, models and the “how” to:

  • Radically increase energy conservation and ramp up distributed renewable energy with off-the-shelf technologies to reach 100% clean energy.
  • Feed the world using ecological agriculture that sequesters carbon, restores natural capital and builds local economies and jobs.
  • Apply nature’s designs with biomimicry, green chemistry, cradle-to-cradle production, living buildings, smart growth and traditional indigenous knowledge in a next industrial revolution.
  • Use water wisely and fairly, and protect our watersheds.
  • Reinvent governance that challenges corporate constitutional rights and institutes rights for nature.
  • Create models of finance that democratize ownership and access.
  • Address racial and gender justice, supporting women’s leadership, and building beloved community in a culture of pluralism.
  • Cultivate a global wisdom culture and an expanded sense of kinship that embraces human diversity and celebrates the oneness of all life.

Let’s Do This!

As the state of the world has hurtled from urgency to emergency, we can still shift our course to re-imagine how to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations.

It’s bottom up and top down—all hands on deck to generate the biggest and fastest economic, industrial, political and cultural transformation in history. Together we can move the world from breakdown to breakthrough.

Join us! Make a donation today—whether $5 or $500, every gift is your investment in creating a just, resilient and joyful future.

Farming’s Future is Small: Big Farms and Big Data Don’t Feed People

Guest post by Kristen Loria and Severine von Tscharner Fleming

If you want to succeed in farming today, be prepared to spend your time not outside in the field, but behind a panel of computer screens. So says Quentin Hardy’s recent article in the New York Times (“Working the Land and the Data,” November 30, 2014).

Hardy claims that the future of our farms here in America lies in scaling up – that automation and data management technologies owned by the biggest agricultural corporations in the world (Monsanto, John Deere, DuPont Pioneer) make or break farmers today. He promotes a top-down, big-data argument that follows the logic of monopoly. Farmers must adopt the technology and methodology of the big players as the only pathway to success in a big-boy business with ever-tighter profit margins.

The implication is that only the biggest farms can afford to play, and only highly capitalized mega-scale operations will be viable in the future.  Hardy notes that these advancements make the once backbreaking work of farming much easier for the “modern day” farmer, who sits comfortably at a computer screen while his robotic tractors drive themselves. He barely mentions what is actually being grown by the farmers he profiles – that would be corn and soybeans, all of which will be used as raw material for animal feed, ethanol and highly processed junk food.  The logic of our agricultural production system (and its substantial government subsidies) tells farmers to grow crops that do little to healthfully feed people.

Hardy fails to discuss an alternative farm technology revolution quietly taking place – that of the small farmer. It is possible to “make farming easier” without imposing a food system that makes us sick, pollutes our water and land, and drives our neighbors out of business.

As small farmers with diverse farming systems, we choose new technology when it is appropriate and serves our needs, but also remember and respect time-tested farming knowledge and tools, as well as the efficiency and logic of natural systems. We might automate our rollup greenhouse vents with an arduino sensor to ensure that our seedlings don’t melt on a hot afternoon, shell our corn with a 100 year-old Black Hawk corn sheller, and spread compost made from cow poop on our soils and trust the earthworms and soil microorganisms to do the rest.

This movement is manifest in Farm Hack, a network and online platform for farmers to collaborate, share and build tools they need for success. Farm Hack supports technology development that is open-source; complete tool designs are shared freely by network members for use by others. It is non-competitive innovation, from something as simple as a wheel hoe to a mobile biodiesel processing trailer. This is technology built by independent farmers, engineers, hackers and fabricators, not by multi-national corporations that already control access to seeds, fertilizers and equipment, and whose sole motivations are their own bottom lines.

On our small farms we are not looking backwards with naïve nostalgia, nor are we left out of a Big Data-driven technological wave of the future. The already vertically integrated agribusiness sector should not control the destiny of our farms, our natural resources and our food supply.  Even the Farm Bureau, usually reliable as a mouthpiece and go-along partner of industrial agriculture, has cried out to protest that farmers’ harvest and other data would be ” owned” and accessible to Monsanto and other companies.

It matters which future we choose to pursue, and what percentage of our land comes under which kind of stewardship. A smaller number of farmers, data managers and chemical companies leave us more vulnerable, not less, to the uncertainties of a changing climate and changing economy.

As small farmers, we are creating our own tools for a better farming future. We believe in appropriate, resilient and farmer-driven invention to help make our farm businesses more successful. New technology should be created to fit the systems that work for us – not the other way around. Rather than drawing up non-binding privacy agreements with these corporations not to use our own data to exploit us later on, we are building resilient, healthful food systems and the technologies we need for a job done well, and done right.

More on the Small Farmer Movement from Bioneers 2014

About the Authors

Kristen Loria farms at Sparrowbush Farm, a mixed vegetable, livestock and grain operation on leased land in the Hudson Valley of New York. She attended Cornell Univeristy, and worked in Iowa in school garden and nutrition projects. For three years she managed publications and operations for Greenhorns, a grassroots organization that produces media and events for new agrarians. During that time she managed startup for Farm Hack, now its own 501c3 organization based in New Hampshire. Farm Hack is a social-mission platform for appropriate technology, and www.farmhack.net  currently has thousands of members who invent, document, share, and hack equipment suited to the needs of small and medium scale organic farmers, ranchers and foresters. 

Severine von Tscharner Fleming is a farmer, activist, and organizer based in the Champlain Valley of New York. She is director of Greenhorns, and co-founder of both Farm Hack and National Young Farmers Coalition, which now boasts 23 state and regional coalitions. She serves on the board of the Schumacher Center for New Economics, which hosts Agrarian Trust, her latest startup, focused on land access for beginning farmers, and permanent protection of affordable organic farmland. Severine attended Pomona College and University of California at Berkeley, where she graduated with a B.S. in Conservation/ Agroecology.

Explore more Farm Hack videos and press coverage.

It’s Official: Clean Energy Is Cheaper

In case you missed this little gem, tucked into the environment section of the New York Times last week, we wanted to share it again.  The big news?

“The cost of providing electricity from wind and solar power plants has plummeted over the last five years, so much so that in some markets renewable generation is now cheaper than coal or natural gas.”

This is a big deal.   For those who doubted the rise of solar and wind energy, the complaints have always been two fold: 1) It’s too expensive and 2) it’s not reliable (or, to use the tech jargon, issues with rapid deployability and intermittency).  #1 is officially gone as a roadblock.   The article goes on to point out that analysts expect this market competitiveness to continue even beyond the coming expiration of the various subsidies currently supporting the renewable energy industry – and there’s movement afoot to extend this support ongoing.   At this point, it’s simply about smoothing out supply & demand – how to ensure that the lights turn on even when the sun isn’t shining.  We’ll get there.

The race is on for solutions.  Major utilities are investing in energy storage solutions – Southern California Edison just signed papers to built the largest battery on earth.  On the flip side, distributed energy and energy efficiency are growing as fast as the price of solar is dropping.  As Billy Parish, founder of Mosaic, the crowd-funded distributed energy start-up, describes it on the Bioneers radio show below, “The transition to a world powered by 100% clean energy is inevitable.   The question is: How fast can we get there and who’s going to control the clean energy infrastructure we’re building?”

Meanwhile, as the industry matures, the value of a thriving renewables sector continues to prove itself.  At the 2014 Bioneers Conference, Bernadette del Chiaro, Executive Director of the California Solar Energy Industry Association, outlined what this impact looks like in California:

  • More solar installed in the past 18 months than in the past 18 years combined
  • More people employed in the California solar industry than in traditional fossil fuel dependent utilities.
  • On track to hit 2 million solar roofs by 2020.

World leaders are gathering in Lima, Peru this week to hammer out the important pre-work necessary to come to some sort of agreement on a global climate treaty next December in Paris.  They’ll be helped by news like this, the growing cost competitiveness of clean energy.  Regardless of what comes of negotiations at a global level, progress continues to be made on the ground and it’s certainly cause for hope.  As Ms. del Chiaro reminded the audience at Bioneers this year, this will take all of us:

“Through our political activism, through our ingenuity, our entrepreneurialism and our creativity  and by joining with other like-minded regions and countries, we will be both the source of the optimism and the engine of change.

Renewable energy and solar isn’t the entire piece of the pie, but it is a critical component. If we continue to grow, we will get to 100% renewable energy. We will get to it in time that the climate requires, and we’ll do it by small groups of people like this working together one house at a time, one community at a time, one state at a time.”

For more content like this, explore more of the talks given at our California Climate Leadership Summit www.bioneers.org/climateleadership or search for “energy” on our YouTube page.

California: Global Game-Changer for Climate Leadership

On Oct 16, 2014 Bioneers hosted a special one-day summit, California: Global Game-Changer for Climate Leadership.  The event featured visionary policy, government, finance and civil society representatives exploring how the state of California is emerging as a key player and model in the global movement towards a low-carbon, clean energy future.

Since the event, Governor Jerry Brown has been re-elected and momentum continues to gather.  It remains incumbent upon us to keep the pressure up and to take a leadership role in whatever capacity we can to keep moving towards a clean, equitable and low-carbon future.

Please explore the presentations from the plenary as well as an episode from our internationally distributed radio series and podcast, created from talks and interviews with speakers at Bioneers.

For your reference, here is complete program from the day.

Bioneers Digital Media Internship

Are you interested in amplifying the voices of change makers and building community around solutions for a more just and sustainable world? Bioneers is seeking an enthusiastic and tech-savvy intern to support our media outreach and communications program.

This position is perfect for someone looking to gain experience in the fields of communications, marketing, public relations and social media strategy. An interest in environmental justice, food justice, social justice, indigenous rights or women’s leadership is preferred.

Bioneers communications interns possess strong computer, research and writing skills and must have excellent attention to detail.

Primary Responsibilities:

  • Social Media Outreach: Support our digital communications, content creation and weekly reporting with an opportunity to take the lead on Instagram campaigns and contests
  • Press Relations: Research and do outreach to traditional and online publications, coordinate press interviews and track media coverage
  • Digital Media Archiving: Sort and categorize audio and video content, optimize our YouTube and SoundCloud channels

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

  • Excellent verbal and writing skills
  • Energetic self-starter who can work on projects independently
  • Digital native with experience using Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google applications
  • Good organizational skills, demonstrated initiative, flexibility and creativity
  • Interest in environmental health, biomimicry, social justice, food system reform, indigenous rights and women’s leadership is strongly preferred; passion around these issues is even better

Bonus:

  • Graphic design skills (Photoshop, Canva.com)
  • Video editing skills (Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere)
  • Experience managing social media campaigns
  • Experience with Google Analytics
  • Experience using Hootsuite

A small stipend is paid for this internship. No benefits included. We will work closely with you to translate the skills you learn into résumé language. Our office is located in The Presidio in San Francisco, CA. We are accessible by public transit and have secure bike storage on premises. The length of the internship is three months with the possibility of extension, and we are seeking a commitment of 5-20 hours per week.

About Bioneers: Bioneers is a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. Our acclaimed annual national and local conferences are complemented by extensive media outreach including an award-winning radio series, book series, and role in media projects such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s film The 11th Hour. Our programs further focus on Women’s Leadership, Indigenous Wisdom, Community Resilience Networks, and Leadership Development and Youth.

Application Process:
Please submit the following to dorothee@bioneers.org with the subject line: Bioneers Digital Media Internship

  • A cover letter indicating your relevant experience and interests, what experience/skills you hope to gain during your internship, your available dates, and number of hours per week you wish to work
  • A current resume highlighting your experience and/or coursework relevant to the position
  • A brief writing sample, preferably online content.
  • Links to any relevant social media profiles: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Bioneers Development Internship

Are you interested in engaging a growing community in solutions for a more just and sustainable world? Bioneers is seeking a passionate and articulate intern to support our Fundraising and Development program.

This position is perfect for someone looking to gain experience in the field of fundraising, and can offer experience in grant research and writing, running online campaigns, donor cultivation, event planning, and strategic development strategies. An interest in environmental justice, food justice, social justice, indigenous rights or women’s leadership is preferred.

Bioneers development interns possess strong computer, research, communication, and writing skills and must have excellent attention to detail.

Primary Responsibilities:

  • Event Planning: Assist in the planning of donor cultivation events, which range from small parties, to educational presentations, to trips
  • Grants: Research grants and foundations in line with our mission and assist in the writing of proposals and reports
  • Donor Communication: Support the Development and Communications Team in donor communications and developing and disseminating engaging materials to donors

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

  • Excellent verbal and writing skills
  • Excellent organizational skills
  • Energetic self-starter who can work on projects independently
  • Excellent organizational skills, demonstrated initiative, flexibility and creativity
  • Interest in environmental health, biomimicry, social justice, food system reform, indigenous rights and women’s leadership is strongly preferred; passion around these issues is even better

Bonus:

  • Graphic design skills (InDesign, Photoshop)
  • MailChimp or other e-communication platform experience
  • Experience with Raiser’s Edge

A small stipend is paid for this internship. We will work closely with you to translate the skills you learn into résumé language. Our office is located in The Presidio in San Francisco, CA. We are accessible by public transit and have secure bike storage on premises. The length of the internship can range from 2-6 months and from 5-20 hours per week.

About Bioneers: Bioneers is a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges. Our acclaimed annual national and local conferences are complemented by extensive media outreach including an award-winning radio series, book series, and role in media projects such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s film The 11th Hour. Our programs further focus on Women’s Leadership, Indigenous Wisdom, Community Resilience Networks, and Leadership Development and Youth.

Application Process:
Please submit the following to jessica@bioneers.org with the subject line: Bioneers Development Internship

  • A cover letter indicating your relevant experience and interests, what experience/skills you hope to gain during your internship, your available dates, and number of hours per week you wish to work.
  • A current resume highlighting your experience and/or coursework relevant to the position.
  • A brief writing sample (2 pages or less)

Elk River: Looking at the Whole Picture

It’s been several weeks since thousands of gallons of a chemical used to process coal spilled into the Elk River in West Virginia. 300,000 people were told to turn their taps off, nearly 200 people have been admitted to hospitals for treatment and the overall response at a state level has been somewhat short of an A+ grade.

It’s easy enough to point to each problem independently. There’s the oft-maligned and outdated Toxic Substances Control Act (1976), which grandfathered in 62,000 compounds, requiring no further testing for toxicity. There’s the general ineffectiveness of West Virginia’s environmental regulations, which do not require inspection of chemical storage facilities – ever. There’s the impressive incompetence of the official response- when asked whether it was ok for residents to drink the water coming through municipal pipes weeks after the spill, WV Gov. Tomblin responded, “It’s your decision.”

However, the Elk River spill is a poignant reminder of just how interconnected environmental concerns are and why taking a systems approach to these issues is so important. In this case, consider two key root causes:

  • Our reliance on coal for energy (these chemicals are utilized in the manufacture and cleaning of coal)
  • Our reliance on toxic chemicals for so many of our industrial and commercial processes.

(Note: Water privatization is another key consideration and Appalachian Voices has a good piece on the privatization of municipal water supply.)

Much has been made of the unknown toxicity of MCHM, the chemical in question. Perhaps we need to be asking a bigger question – why do industrial chemicals need to be toxic at all?

Paul Anastas and John Warner are responsible for the rapidly growing field of Green Chemistry. They emphasis the upside down reality here in which we are purposefully designing toxic chemicals when the industry has the technology and sophistication to accomplish many of the same processes with much less toxic results. Anastas and Warner have both spoken at the Bioneers Conference about the vision and reality of a much less toxic world. “You ever ask yourself why do we have hazardous materials? Who in their right mind would in- synthesize a red dye that caused cancer? Who in their right mind would develop a plasticizer that causes birth defects? Why are we in the situation that we’re in?” – John Warner