How do we imagine what’s possible, what matters? Who we are shapes what we do, and what we do in the present shapes the future. In addition to the many practical, scientific and material aspects, the climate crisis has cultural aspects with which we need to engage in order to meet this emergency. Drawing from the new anthology she co-edited, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, Rebecca Solnit talks about the stories emerging from what science, Indigenous leadership, good organizing, and visionary thinkers are giving us. These stories offer the grounds for hope and the work hope does. What are the ways that what the climate requires of us could mean ushering in an age of abundance rather than austerity?
This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
Rebecca Solnit, one of our nation’s most influential writers, thinkers, historians and activists, is the author of 20+ books, including: Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. She is also co-editor of Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (coming April 2023) and writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and just launched the climate project Not Too Late.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s visionary 2020 novel, Ministry for the Future, projects how a possible climate-disrupted future might unfold and how the world might respond meaningfully. It’s also chock full of brilliant science and wildly imaginative ways humanity steps up. In this Bioneers 2023 keynote, Stan offers his overview of where we currently stand in relation to the climate crisis.
As climate chaos and obscene inequality ravage people and planet, a new generation of visionaries is emerging to demand a bold solution: a Green New Deal. Is it a remedy that can actually meet the magnitude and urgency of this turning point in the human enterprise? This podcast features lifelong activist and politician Tom Hayden, and Demond Drummer of Policy Link.
This performance took place at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
Rising Appalachia, an internationally touring Appalachian and world folk ensemble founded by Atlanta-raised, New Orleans-based sisters Leah and Chloe Smith whose soulful folk-roots sound traces back to their open-minded musician parents and to grassroots music communities in the hills and valleys of the Deep South as well as urban Atlanta, has consistently used its platform to activate, organize and support frontline justice work and community organizations. Fifteen years into an adventure that has taken this self-made, stubbornly independent band around the globe, they have recently released a new master-work, their seventh album, Leylines, recorded in California in a studio overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia discusses making art that brings people together and responds to the times we’re in with Bioneers Arts Coordinator, Polina Smith.
“In community we pause, we open, we nourish, and we become.”
Yuria Celidwen is of Nahua and Maya descent from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, born into a family lineage of mystics, healers, and poets. Her scholarship centers on Indigenous forms of contemplation and has developed into a broader statement she calls the “ethics of belonging.” It has become evident that when we pay attention to the world around us, all we hear is urgency. It is time for community reflection. Yuria shares two core guiding principles from her scholarship, Kin Relationality and Ecological Belonging. She explains how these concepts can help us access an ever-expansive unfolding of a path of meaning and participation rooted in honoring Life.
This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
Yuria Celidwen, Ph.D., of Indigenous Nahua and Maya descent, born into a family of mystics, healers and poets from Chiapas, Mexico, conducts research at U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Psychology at the the intersection of Indigenous studies, cultural psychology, and contemplative science; is a Senior Fellow at the Other & Belonging Institute; co-chairs the Indigenous Religious Traditions Unit of the American Academy of Religion, and is part of the steering committee of its Contemplative Studies Unit. She also works with the United Nations on the advancement of Indigenous peoples’ rights and the rights of the Earth and is a teacher of Indigenous epistemologies, spirituality and contemplative practices.
Deep Ecology extends an inalienable right to life to all beings. In this podcast episode, systems theorist, author and lifelong activist Joanna Macy describes how healing the world and healing your heart and soul go hand in hand.
This podcast series, a project of Bioneers Indigeneity Program, features deep and engaging conversations with Native culture bearers, scholars, movement leaders, and non-Native allies on the most important issues and solutions in Indian Country. It explores compelling issues such as Indigenous Land Return, Cultural Appropriation, Rights of Nature and other essential conversations that exemplify the essential leadership role that Indigenous cultures are playing in the effort to reshape and transform society’s relationship with the natural world while highlighting the contemporary lives, work and experiences of Native Americans.
Amara Ifeji mobilized a grassroots effort to address racism in her high school in Maine, at age 14. She also developed a love for the mountains and woods around her, but she saw her passions for the environment and racial justice as distinct until she heard youth of color like herself share their experiences working at this intersection and realized these struggles were completely intertwined. She shares how this awakening shaped her subsequent work as a remarkably effective organizer and advocate who centers storytelling to realize environmental justice, climate education, and outdoor learning for ALL youth.
This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
Amara Ifeji, 21, an award-winning (2021 National Geographic Young Explorer and 2022 Brower Youth Award) climate justice activist, Director of Policy at the Maine Environmental Education Association, has had great success in mobilizing youth-led, grassroots movements to advance climate education legislation and ensure equitable access to outdoor learning for ALL youth in Maine.
For the Climate Justice Movement to arrive at results that are truly “just,” it must be radically inclusive, which means that its struggles must of course intersect with those of social, racial and gender justice movements, but it also means that other historically disenfranchised groups can’t be excluded. In this Bioneers 2021 keynote, Brower Youth Award winner Alexia Leclercq, an environmental justice organizer based in Austin TX and NYC, shares her passion about these rarely discussed aspects of intersectionality.
In this Bioneers 2022 keynote, international youth organizer Alexandria Villaseñor shares the unique ways in which a multicultural, geographically distributed youth movement is building trust, negotiating compromises, distributing decision-making and centering the stories, experiences and leadership of those most impacted in each action and campaign.
Kim Stanley Robinson is one of our greatest living science fiction writers. His more than 20 award-winning books over four decades, translated into some 26 languages, have included many highly influential, international bestselling tomes that brilliantly explore in a wide range of ways the great ecological, economic and socio-political crises facing our species, yet nothing had prepared him for the global explosion of interest in his visionary 2020 novel, The Ministry for the Future, which projects how a possible climate-disrupted future might unfold and how the world might respond meaningfully. It’s also chock full of brilliant science and wildly imaginative ways humanity steps up. Among other results, he was invited by the UN to speak at COP-26 in Glasgow. Stan offers us his overview of where we currently stand in relation to the climate crisis.
This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
Kim Stanley Robinson, an American science fiction writer, is the author of about twenty books, including the internationally bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140, and The Ministry for the Future. He was part of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and 2016, and a featured speaker at COP-26 in Glasgow as a guest of the UK government and the UN. His work has been translated into 26 languages and won many awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016 asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.”
In this Bioneers keynote address, Kim Stanley Robinson draws from his decades of work and thinking on this question to sketch a utopian but deeply informed and cogent scenario of a new economy for the coming decades..
Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies interviews Kim Stanley Robinson, discussing the inspiration for The Ministry for the Future: a remarkable vision for climate change over the coming decades.
The energy transition race is on. Fossils fuels have peaked. What do we need to get renewables to prevail as fast as possible, and can we make that victory good for everyone? The 2020s will be the decisive decade in the climate justice fight. Where and how we create the new energy economy, who gets to lead it, who owns it and who works in it now matter more than ever. We must prepare for a large pulse of eco-industrial activity the likes of which the world has never known.
As we race to the finish line of the transition away from fossil fuels, visionary “green” entrepreneur and founder of New Energy Nexus Danny Kennedy presents a plan to build out the full 3D potential of clean energy—not just distributed energy, but decentralized in ownership and democratized in control. Highly decentralized global grassroots entrepreneurship is central, as the pathfinding work of New Energy Nexus is demonstrating.
This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
Danny Kennedy, with a long background in eco activism, has become one of the nation’s leading figures in clean-technology entrepreneurship and the capitalization of the transition to a “green” economy. Co-founder of the solar energy company, Sungevity, and the clean energy incubator Powerhouse, Kennedy supports the clean technology and energy fields in myriad ways. In addition to leading roles with Third Derivative (a joint venture with the Rocky Mountain Institute) and the California Clean Energy Fund, Kennedy is currently CEO of New Energy Nexus, a global nonprofit providing funds, accelerators, and networks to drive clean energy innovation and adoption.
In this Bioneers keynote, Danny Kennedy draws from lessons learned over decades as an activist and entrepreneur on the frontlines of the global energy transition to illustrate his vision of how to achieve clean energy accessible to people of all classes, cultures and countries in a distributed, decentralized and democratized system.
As climate chaos and obscene inequality ravage people and planet, a new generation of visionaries is emerging to demand a bold solution: a Green New Deal. Is it a remedy that can actually meet the magnitude and urgency of this turning point in the human enterprise? This podcast features lifelong activist and politician Tom Hayden, and Demond Drummer of Policy Link.
“If we know where to look, and we turn our attention and energies to the world that’s being born, there is ample reason for hope.”
Bioneers’ Co-Founder and Chief Relationship Strategist Nina Simons traditionally sets the stage for each year’s conference, and does it again with sublime clarity and heart-warming passion, as she frames Bioneers’ history and its core values rooted in reverence for the natural world and biological and human diversity and stresses the need to balance the inner and outer in our quest to give birth to a new civilization based on relationships rather than the possession of things.
Nina Simons, co-founder of Bioneers and its Chief Relationship Strategist is also co-founder of Women Bridging Worlds and Connecting Women Leading Change. She co-edited the anthology book, Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart, and most recently wrote Nature, Culture & The Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership. An award-winning social entrepreneur, Nina teaches and speaks internationally, and previously served as President of Seeds of Change and Director of Strategic Marketing for Odwalla.
Learn more about Nina Simons and her work at ninasimons.com.
Nature, Culture and the Sacred offers practical guidance and inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership on behalf of positive change.
Directed by Bioneers Co-Founder Nina Simons, our Everywoman’s Leadership Program highlights and promotes feminine-centered leadership frameworks that are relational, collaborative, culturally diverse, intergenerational and appreciative of differences.
People over 60 were instrumental in creating social change in their youth, and their wisdom and energy are greatly needed today. Third Act is a place where those who’ve been around awhile can bring their life experience to the work of social change, while supporting the next generations in creating a world that is healthy, equitable, and whole. Longtime activist and renowned leadership educator Akaya Windwood explains the work of Third Act, co-founded by Bill McKibben, and how we can participate in this exciting new movement.
This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
Akaya Windwood, founder of the New Universal Wisdom and Leadership Institute, on the faculty of the Just Economy Institute, “Lead Advisor” at the activist group Third Act, and former President of Rockwood Leadership Institute (for ten years), also directs the Thriving Roots Fund. A longtime “transformation facilitator,” Akaya has won slews of awards for her activism and visionary leadership and is the author of:Leading with Joy: Practices for Uncertain Times.
In this talk, Bill McKibben explains why older activists not only need to have their backs, but how we can harness the power of the fastest-growing population on earth—people over the age of 60—and move them towards progressive political involvement, foster intergenerational collaboration, and deepen the fight for a fairer, more stable planet.
In this one hour special from The Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature, join Alice Walker, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Nina Simons, Sarah Crowell, Joanna Macy and Akaya Windwood to imagine a future where women, children, men and the planet can thrive.
For materials from nature to become human-designed products, they have to undergo multiple transformations in processes of assembly and disassembly. Atoms combine to make molecules; molecules combine to make materials; and we humans assemble and disassemble nature’s products to form molecules and materials that we then recombine to create our artifacts and products, but, unfortunately, most of what we produce is fundamentally unsustainable and dangerously incompatible with living systems. However, one of the founding progenitors of the entire field of “green chemistry,” John Warner, explains that by using the principles and practices of the discipline he helped birth, we can embrace and emulate nature’s “materials metabolism” to create the products we need without endangering the web of life. By reimagining how we design and build, we can create a new materials economy that is truly in harmony with nature.
This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
John Warner, Ph.D. is a co-founder of the field of green chemistry. With 300+ patents and 100+ publications, he has designed and created technologies inspired by nature with the principles of green chemistry. After working at the Polaroid Corporation, John served as a tenured full professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell (in Chemistry and Plastics Engineering). In 2007 he co-founded (with Jim Babcock) the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry and (with Amy Cannon) Beyond Benign, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and green chemistry education. John has won many prestigious awards for his research, inventions and policy advocacy and has served as a sustainability advisor for several major firms.
Learn more about John Warner and his work at johnwarner.org.
In this podcast episode, John Warner shows how we can follow nature’s lead to create good chemistry with nature and our own health. The results are jaw-dropping.
In this podcast episode, John Warner and Amy Cannon show how the combination of green chemistry and biomimicry in the STEM curriculum provides a unique opportunity to inspire students to make connections with the natural world and to use that inspiration to become creators of truly sustainable products and processes.
The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape is a captivating anthology that draws inspiration from nature to encourage readers to explore an imaginative language for better understanding and connecting with the environment. Through her tree alphabet, author Katie Holten presents a collection of beautifully illustrated and thoughtful writings that celebrate the natural world and inspire readers to reclaim their relationship with it.
The following excerpt, The Ojibwe New Year, is written by Winona LaDuke.
APRIL 16, 2022
Land determines time. Giwedinong, or up north, we have six scasons, includ ing a couple shorter seasons: “freeze up” and “thaw.” The Cree and Ojibwe people are the northern people here: to the west the Dene, Gwichin and Inuit have different descriptions of the seasons.
What’s for sure is that the freeze up, Gashkaadino Giizis or November in Anishinaabemowin, is called the Freezing Over Moon. March is referred to as Onaabaanigiizis, or the Hard Crusted Snow Moon.
In the Anishinaabe world, and the calendar of our people, there’s nothing about Roman emperors like Julius or Augustus. Those are not months to most of us. In an Indigenous calendar time belongs to Mother Earth, not to humans.
Bradley Robinson, from Timiskaming, Quebec, writes these seasons, not only in Cree and Ojibwe, bue in syllabics. the orthography of the north:
If language frames your understanding of the world, those who live on the land, have a different understanding than those who live in the memories of emperors. There’s no empire in creator’s time.
The Ojibwe new year has arrived.
That’s what I know. Gregorian calendars are based on commemorative times, while the nishinaabe view the new year to begin as the world awakens after winter. Indigenous spiritual and religious practices are often said to be reaffirmation religions, reaffirming the relationship with Mother Earth.
The maple sugarbush, that’s really when the year begins, when the trees awaken. We are told that long ago, the maples ran all year, and the trees pro- duced a sweet syrup. Our own folly changed that equation, and today the maple sap runs only in the spring, and it takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.
We learned to be respectful of the gifts provided by Mother Earth. That’s a good lesson for all of us. We go to the sugarbush now, and we are grateful for the sugar which comes from a tree. This sugar is medicine.
As spring approaches, we prepare our seeds of hope, and we think about the future plants, foods and warm ahead-aabawaa, it’s getting warm out. Minookamin, the land, is warming up and with that, the geese and swans return in numbers to our lakes, thankful to be home. After that 5,000-mile flight, it seems that we could make sure their homes are in good shape, their waters clean.
I’ve been worrying about that Roundup stuff and the unpronounceable chemicals big agriculture is about to levy on these lands. I’ve always maintained that if you put stuff’on your land that ends in “-cide,” whether herbicide, fun- gicide or pesticide, it’s going to be a problem. After all, that’s the same suffix as homicide, genocide and suicide.
Don’t eat stuff that ends with -cide. So, heading into a local Fleet Farm, or Ace Hardware, there’s going to be a lot of that in the aisles. Take Monsanto’s Roundup, that’s the stuff we are going to see all over these stores; there are thousands of lawsuits about the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Or maybe paraguat, associated with Parkinson’s disease. An estimated 6.1 billion kilos of glyphosate-based weed killers were sprayed across gardens and fields worldwide between 2005 and 2014 (the most recent point at which data has been collected). That is more than any other herbicide, so understanding the true impact on human health is vital.
A 2016 study which found a 1,000% rise in the levels of glyphosate in our urine in the past two decades- suggesting that increasing amounts of glyphosate is passing through our diet.
From the micro-plastics in our blood to the weedkiller in our urine, I’d like a little less weird stuff in my body, and maybe we move toward organic- the geese and bees like that better. That’s one of my prayers for this New Year. Along with my New Year’s resolutions: to listen better, to not lose my mittens, be with my family, and to grow more food and hemp. It’s time to make those plans.
As climate change transforms our world, I am still hoping we can keep a few constants, like our six seasons.
This is what I know, the geese return, and that’s a time. When the crows gather, the maple trees flow with sap and the world is being born again.
Winona LaDuke’s text “The Ojibwe New Year” was originally published on her blog Winonaladuke.com on April 16, 2022. Reprinted here courtesy of the author.Excerpted from The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten. Used with permission of Tin House. Copyright (c) 2023 by Katie Holten.
The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape, is a captivating anthology that draws inspiration from nature to encourage readers to explore an imaginative language for better understanding and connecting with the environment. Through her tree alphabet, author Katie Holten presents a collection of beautifully illustrated and thoughtful writings that celebrate the natural world and inspire readers to reclaim their relationship with it.
The following excerpt, Acorn Bread Recipe, is written by Lucy O’Hagan.
Find an oak tree in late autumn. Touch the ridges of their wrinkled bark and say hello. Look on the ground to see if they have dropped their seed–the deliciously smooth and chocolate brown acorn. Within each one lies the potential wisdom of a new oak tree.
Gather them in your basket, skirt or arms, and watch as the squirrels do the same. Bring them home and lay them out somewhere warm to dry completely–careful they don’t touch one another, lest the fungi take hold and consume the bunch!
Once dry, you can rattle them and hear the seed’s movement within the shell. Crack open the shell with a mortar and pestle, revealing the not-yet-ready-to-eat seed. This will be covered by a bitter papery membrane which needs to be removed. Rub them between a tea towel to loosen the membrane and then either peel it off with your hands or put them in a bucket of water where the membrane can float to the surface.
Now time to leach! Acorns are full of tannins-clever compounds which make them too bitter to eat straight off the tree. Grind the acorns to increase the surface area and put your grinds into a mesh bag. Now immerse this bag into flowing water which will carry off the cannins, leaving you with deliciously nutty acorn mush. Alternatively, you can boil chem in a pot of water for ten minutes, strain and boil again in fresh water. Repeat this process until the water runs clear.
Dry, then toast on a pan to enhance that delicious nutty flavor and grind it into a fine four. Hey presto, you’re now able to make your acorn bread!
Combine your acorn flour with water, salt or add honey. Form small balls with the mixture and press flat. Bake on a hot stone, roof tile or pan over the fire. Serve with blackberry jam, birch syrup or tree nuts and honey.
The wisdom of the oak now resides in your body!
Lucy O’Hagan’s “Acorn Bread Recipe” was first shared at the Wild Awake hearth. Wildawake. ie. Reprinted here courtesy of the author. Excerpted from The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten. Used with permission of Tin House. Copyright (c) 2023 by Katie Holten.
This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.
Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone), born and raised in the village of Huichin (aka Oakland, CA), is the chair and spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan and co-founder and Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native-run organization that sponsored annual Shellmound Peace Walks from 2005 to 2009. As a tribal leader, she has continued to fight for the protection of the Shellmounds, uphold her nation’s right to sovereignty, and stand in solidarity with Indigenous relatives to protect sacred waters, mountains, and lands all over the world. Her life’s work has led to the creation of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led organization in the Bay Area that seeks to heal and transform legacies of colonization and genocide.
California Indians have survived some of the most extreme acts of genocide committed against Native Americans. In part 1 of this Indigeneity Conversations podcast, we talk about the importance of addressing that historical trauma, which caused deep wounds that still affect Indigenous Peoples today.
Defending land rights and preserving tribal culture is difficult for North American tribes, especially for those that do not have sovereign nation-to-nation status with the federal government. The lack of recognition of a tribe’s nationhood as a self-governing entity (as defined by the U.S. Constitution) has been explicitly used as a tool to continue to prevent Native peoples from living on the most desirable lands or protecting sacred lands that have been stolen. We talk about these issues in part 2 of this discussion with Corrina Gould.
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