Page 87 – Bioneers

Bioneers, Native American Youth, and Google Earth Outreach Break the Silicone Wall

Native youth from San Francisco Unified School District’s Indian Education Program, the American Indian Child Resource Center in Oakland, and the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center at Google’s Mountain View Campus.

On July 1, 2019, the Bioneers Indigeneity Program and Google co-sponsored an all-day workshop attended by 20 greater Bay Area Native youth and chaperones kicking off the second year of the flagship “Digital Natives” initiative. Digital Natives is a reciprocal partnership between Bioneers, Google Earth Outreach, and Native youth-serving organizations in the greater San Francisco Bay area including San Francisco Unified School District’s Indian Education Program, the American Indian Child Resource Center in Oakland, and the California Indian Museum and Cultural Center.

This initiative supports Native youth to share their stories online, using advanced Google Earth mapping and storytelling tools. Bioneers has a long history with Google Earth Outreach as a collaborative partner via our Dreaming New Mexico project and numerous Bioneers Conference presentations. The Digital Natives initiative was launched as a result of this history of collaboration. In 2018, Google Earth Outreach founder Rebecca Moore spoke on the Bioneers main stage about the latest cutting edge work taking place combining the impact of digital geo-storytelling with the power of the newly launched Google Earth Engine.

The Digital Natives Initiative supports Native youth to share their stories online, using advanced Google Earth mapping and storytelling tools.
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*Kris Easton, Co-Chair of the Google American Indian Network (GAIN), offers a land acknowledgement and welcome to Native students.*

Students attended a panel presentation featuring four Native American Google staff (Googlers) working in a range of tech positions from product leads to Hardware, Industry, Security and YouTube, followed by an HR presentation with an inside look to the internship and hiring process at Google and in tech in general. Native Googlers shared their personal journeys to careers at Google, with real-life stories and advice about how to reach your goals as a young Native person. After the “Careers in Tech” panel, five Native youth presented the maps that they created through the program in 2018 to each other and Googlers.

After lunch, Raleigh Seamster, Senior Program Manager at Google Earth Outreach, presented a training on Google Earth tools for digital storytelling and education. Students quickly integrated the software skills, and then broke into groups to plan how they would transform the maps they created in 2018 into dynamic Google Earth Stories, addressing the themes of “Indigenous San Francisco,” “California Indian Genocide,” and “The ongoing legacy of Indian removal, displacement and genocide in the East Bay.”

*Lukas Aguilar and Justice McHenry of San Francisco Unified School District’s Indian Education Program present their plan for a Google Earth story.*

Students will complete their projects — telling the stories that matter to them in their own words — using Google Earth tools, and culminating in an awards ceremony and presentation in the 2019 Bioneers Indigenous Forum.

Come join us to celebrate the gifted storytelling, and technical talents of our Native Youth Leaders at Bioneers 2019!

Paul Hawken: ‘We Need to Be Fierce and Fearless’ to Reverse Climate Change

Social entrepreneur and author Paul Hawken is a leading voice in the environmental movement. His visionary ideas emphasize changing the relationship between business and the Earth. As humanity seeks to rise to the challenge of our time, Hawken provides a refreshingly positive and comprehensive approach to global warming solutions in many of his bestselling books, including the latest, Drawdown – The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. Bioneers sat down with Paul Hawken to learn more about his work and his plan for helping build a more connected world.

Hawken will present a keynote address at the 2019 Bioneers Conference.
Buy your tickets to Bioneers 2019 here.

BIONEERS: In what ways have you seen the world change as a result of your work on Drawdown?

HAWKEN: My guess is that Drawdown moved the conversation away from despair to a sense of possibility for many people. We know that it is being taught here in the U.S. from 4^th grade to MIT graduate school, and that it is in 14 languages now. All of this has surprised our publisher as, generally speaking, climate books don’t sell very well and Penguin was hesitant to publish it for that reason. The outcome is the opposite. It started out as a New York Times bestseller, and this latest printing, the eleventh, was its biggest printing ever. I can’t say what the results are so much as point to a hunger people have for enacting solutions. There are “drawdown”-named groups around the world who have come together to apply solutions that are applicable to their region, city, country.

BIONEERS: Drawdown, was published in 2017. Based on what’s happening in the world environmentally and politically right now, would you make any changes to the book if it were being published in 2019?

HAWKEN: The book was intended to have a sequel called Regeneration, which is what I am working on now with Lynne and Bill Twist at the Pachamama Alliance. Drawdown mapped, measured, and modeled the most substantive solutions to reversing global warming. However, models do not instruct us as to what to do, how to do it, how to prioritize, or the interrelationship among living systems, social justice and climate.

Regeneration is the social expression of Drawdown on a deeper systemic, biological, and human level. We have to be careful that we do not fall into a conceptual trap that we need to “fix” the climate. That is the same thinking that broke it, making the atmosphere something separate and “other.” What we need to transform is how we relate to life down here, both nature and each other. Social justice is at the heart of regeneration and our ability to reverse the climate crisis. Othering Indigenous people, races, religions, regions, and nature is the fundamental disease of our time.

BIONEERS: The Green New Deal proposal got a lot of press coverage this year. What was your reaction to the proposal and the hype—both positive and negative—around it?

HAWKEN: I loved it. It is bold, spunky, and radical. There is so little truth-telling in Washington, D.C., and it was the Green New Truth. It approached the problem from a deeper systemic level, which I think makes it a difficult piece of legislation to pass. My pragmatist side would have done this in steps, making each piece of legislation shorter, more to the point, and easier to get supported.

BIONEERS: When many people and publications discuss environmental issues and climate change, we see words like “fight” and “battle” and “struggle” a lot. In your opinion, is there a way to discuss mitigating environmental issues that is empowering and unifying?

HAWKEN: The language used is very much about sports and war metaphors, verbs that males and the media use for just about everything. Any time there are two sides, we create a semantic coliseum. The term “climate change” itself is incorrect. You cannot fight change. Or if you try, it makes Don Quixote look like a pragmatist. Climate is supposed to change, and the evolving systems of weather are miracles to be grateful for.

The language we hear is about fight, combat, battle, crusade, slashing emissions, the Carbon War Room, negative emissions, decarbonization—all profoundly negative terms. The language and mindset of healing the Earth and atmosphere needs to employ these words: restore, renew, rejuvenate, regeneration, connect, purpose, meaning, respect. What we want to do is change the conditions down here on Earth that are causing global climatic volatility up there and extreme weather everywhere.

BIONEERS: Are there groups being left behind in the discussion about the environment? Why, and what can be done to solve that problem?

HAWKEN: I would say that nearly everyone has been left behind, either callously or unknowingly. Those with little or no resources endure the greatest suffering from climate disruption, and that will continue to increase unless we do something. My guess is that 99 percent of the world is disengaged from the climate crisis. This goes back to how we have communicated the science. To this day, the emphasis is on threat, fear, and potential doom. This is generally very good science; however, it is inept psychology.

We know that fear and threat light up the amygdala, the fight, flight or freeze response of the brain, a response that shuts down the prefrontal cortex, which is the problem-solving part of the brain. Problems need to be presented in the context of solutions that people see benefit in. The solutions that are heard and repeated are about solar, wind, and maybe electric cars. These are crucial solutions in that they focus on reducing fossil fuel combustion: the major source of greenhouse gases. But they are solutions people can do little about because they cannot erect solar and wind farms, or afford an electric car. Yes, people can put solar panels on their house but most people rent.

This creates a disempowered citizenry that hopes “they” fix it, whoever they are, that they get it right, change out the electrical grid, etc. This is a very limited view of what we need to do and it excludes agency, that what each of us can do is critically important. The media infantilizes the range and impact individuals can have and focuses too much on recycling and plastic straws. Thus, people feel disempowered and left behind. But there is another critical point. Even if we turned off every fossil fuel combustion source today, we will still move to climate chaos. We need to stop putting our greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to be sure. We also need to bring CO2 back home where it came from. That can’t be done with a Tesla.

BIONEERS: Who are some of the leaders in your field who you look at and think, “That person is doing it right”? Who gives you hope?

HAWKEN: Well, I am not a big fan of hope. Hope is the mask of fear. They are two sides of the same thing. You can’t have hope without fear. We need to be fierce and fearless, not hopeful.

People I admire are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Greta Thunberg, Bill McKibben always, the children who are marching, Varshini Prakash of the Sunrise Movement, Gail Bradbrook of Extinction Rebellion, Michael Mann, Alexandra Rojas of Justice Democrats, May Boeve of 350.org … I could go on. There are many.

BIONEERS: The plant-based diet part of Project Drawdown seems to get really passionate, both positive and negative, reactions from readers. Do you see that section as being particularly irksome or emotional for your audience, and why do you think that might be?

HAWKEN: Plant-rich diet was the term I coined for Drawdown. It did not prescribe a diet, but rather outlines a shift in awareness about protein and its source. We eat too much protein in more affluent countries, almost twice the 50-55 grams needed for a healthy existence, and we source far too much from animal sources, sources that involve cruelty, degradation and extraordinary environmental impact. The choice of being vegan, vegetarian or omnivore is an individual choice. Drawdown showed that if people reduced their protein intake and moved to greater or total use of plant proteins, it would have a very significant impact on greenhouse gas reductions.

BIONEERS: What would you suggest as one action a regular person could take to mitigate climate catastrophe that would be impactful but also approachable?

HAWKEN: The most powerful action an individual can take is to educate their self. The second most powerful action would be to eliminate food waste in their life. We waste 40% of our food in the US. The third most powerful activity would be to change their diet. The last two are helpful in another way. They make you mindful and connected to the climate crisis every day, all day.

BIONEERS: What are your plans to continue to use your research and influence to affect environmental action?

HAWKEN: My plan is to collaborate with some brilliant women and men to help create Regeneration, How to Reorganize Civilization in One Generation. It looks like it may come out as a documentary by the brilliant Leila Conners, and a one-day event on publication date at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, organized by Diana Rose of the Garrison Institute. Collaborators include Haley Melin, Calla Rose Ostrander, John Wick, Charles Massy, Nirmal Kishnani, Cyril Kormos, Laurene Powell Jobs, Geoff Von Maltzahn, and many others.

Basically, we know more and learn faster as a “we,” and as with Drawdown, my hope is that Regeneration can model what the world has to do. The co-founder of Project Drawdown was Amanda Ravenhill and she had this wonderful phrase that I hope to use in another book I am writing called Carbon: “Carbon is the element that holds hands and collaborates.” Exactly what we need to do if want to reverse global warming.

Hidden Half of Nature: Intelligent, Invisible Life In Us and On Us

Microorganisms have always been an invisible part of life. But now that scientists are uncovering how they can help us address some of the world’s most pressing problems, a revolution for life and health is emerging. In The Hidden Half of Nature (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2015), authors David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé explore humanity’s relationship with microbes across science and nature by recognizing the essential roles they play in our lives.

This book recognizes the abundance and resilience of microbes, and by drawing on the specialized work of scientists, doctors, gardeners and more, it uncovers an unseen world that works for us, from inside of us. Read on to discover this new perspective on how embracing microbes could be the key to healing our world, from promoting soil fertility to fighting chronic disease.
Following is an excerpt from The Hidden Half of Nature.

See David Montgomery and Anne Biklé speak about their work at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

The latest revelations about microorganisms show that we are not who we thought we were. This was brought into sharp relief a few years ago when a large consortium of scientists reported their findings in the journals Science and Nature. An unfathomably vast array of invisible life—bacteria, protists, archaea, and fungi—thrives on us and in us, as do innumerable viruses (which are not considered alive). Their cells outnumber our own cells by at least three to one, and many say ten to one, yet we are only beginning to learn what they do for us. And our planet—like the bodies of plants, animals, and people—is literally covered, inside and out, with microorganisms. Not only are they abundant, they’re robust, able to withstand the most extreme conditions the planet can offer.

The more we looked into these recent discoveries, the more we were intrigued by the parallel roles of microbes in maintaining the health of plants and people. And we learned the new name for microbes that live on us and in us—the human microbiome. We began to see how microbes could help restore soil fertility and counter the plague of modern chronic diseases. We had stumbled upon a whole new way of seeing nature.

In this book we tell the story of our journey uncovering and connecting ideas and insights about the emerging revolution swirling around nature’s hidden half. We lean on, draw from, and champion the work of dozens of scientists, farmers, gardeners, doctors, journalists, and authors. It is a story that explores humanity’s relationship with microbes. We are now realizing that microbes, long seen as invisible scourges, can help address some of the most pressing problems facing us today.

This new view of microbes is shocking—they are essential parts of us and plants, and always have been. Such a view points to an astounding potential for promising new practices in agriculture and medicine. Think animal husbandry or gardening on a microscopic scale. By cultivating beneficial soil microorganisms on farms and in gardens, we can ward off pests and boost harvests. And in medicine, research on the microbial ecology of the human body is driving new therapies and treatments. A few decades ago such ideas would have sounded as preposterous as invisible life itself did a few centuries before that. The emerging science of a microbial basis for health directly challenges the wisdom of indiscriminate campaigns against microbes in agricultural soils and our own bodies. Some are our secret silent partners.

There is no doubt that studying the natural world in neatly compartmentalized subjects lets us grasp the otherwise incomprehensible complexity of the whole. Specialization has allowed scientists to chalk up spectacular successes and discoveries. This is the standard approach in seeking cures and treatments for what ails crops and people. But this limited vantage point conceals broad connections fundamental to the microscopic world and our own.

It doesn’t help that profound changes have occurred in the way scientists write about and communicate their scientific discoveries. Pick up a copy of Science or Nature from a century ago, and the average reader can understand what the authors of pretty much any article are talking about. Not so today. Modern scientific jargon is, for the most part, dumbfoundingly mind-numbing. Not to pick on any particular research group or journal, but in researching this book, we often found ourselves wading through sentences like this: Recognition of peptidoglycan by NOD1 in IECs elicits production of CCL20 and b-defensin 3 that direct the recruitment of B cells to LTi-dendritic-cell clusters in cryptopatches to induce the expression of sIgA.

Unintelligible to most, this is actually an example of succinct scientific writing—the kind that advisors and editors encourage, and sometimes insist on. It packs a page into a sentence. But who, other than technical specialists in that field, can comprehend its meaning? In simpler terms this phrase says that certain intestinal cells recognize particular types of bacteria, and that this bacterial recognition causes immune cells to release substances critical to health. Of course, it conveys more details, like the name of the particular molecules and immune cells involved. But sometimes clarity on the specifics can obscure larger messages. And the more we delved into microbiome science, the clearer it became that we all need to know far more about how microbial ecology affects our well-being and our environment.

Researchers in microbiology and medicine are uncovering the intricate symbiotic relationships that exist between people and the microbes living in and on our bodies. Bacterial cells live alongside the cells lining our gut, where, deep within our bowels, they teach and train immune cells to sort friend from foe. Likewise, soil ecologists have made strikingly similar discoveries about the effects of soil life on plant health. Bacterial communities inside of and around plant roots help sound the alarm and man the barricades when pathogens storm the botanical gates.

As it turns out, the vast majority of bacteria in the soil and in our bodies benefit us. And throughout the history of life on land, microbes repeatedly deconstructed every piece of organic matter on the planet—leaves, branches, and bones—fashioning new life from the dead. Yet our relationship with the hidden half of nature remains modeled on killing it, rather than understanding and fostering its beneficial aspects. In waging war against microbes for the last century, we’ve managed to unwittingly chisel away much of the foundation on which we stand.

And while impressive and transformative new products and microbial therapies are on the horizon for both agriculture and medicine, there is a profoundly simple reason we should care about the hidden half of nature. It is a part of us, not apart from us. Microbes drive our health from inside our bodies. Their metabolic by-products form essential cogs of our biology. And the tiniest creatures on Earth forged long-running partnerships with all multicellular life in the evolutionary fires of deep time. All around us they literally run the world, from extracting nutrients plants need from rocks, to catalyzing the global carbon and nitrogen cycles that keep the wheel of life turning.

It’s time to recognize the essential roles microbes play in our lives. They shaped our past and how we treat them will shape our future in ways we are only beginning to understand. For we will never escape our microbial cradle. Nature’s hidden half is as deeply embedded in us as we are in her.

Excerpted from The Hidden Half of Nature by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé. Copyright © 2016 by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

David Montgomery and Anne Biklé will speak about their work at the 2021 Bioneers Conference.

The Apology: Eve Ensler’s Alternative to Waiting on What May Never Come

Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Ensler has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), written by Ensler from her father’s point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness, compassion, and an expansive vision for the future.

As an award-winning playwright, best known for her play “The Vagina Monologues,” Ensler has used art as a vehicle for anti-violence activism. Her performances are threaded together by the common theme of reclaiming female identity. The Apology continues that legacy by pioneering an important perspective about accountability and apology in our contemporary, fourth wave of feminism.

Following is an excerpt from The Apology written in Ensler’s father’s voice.

Charm was my fortification. It served a dual purpose. It lured people in and it kept them excited and delighted long enough to come under my spell. Then, after, even when people felt demeaned or hurt or frightened by me, the charm confused them, but like a fly to honey, they clung to me in spite of their pain. My status among my peers transformed overnight from obscure to mysterious, from abhorred to imitated. I am not sure whether anyone, then or ever, really knew or liked me (and in full honesty what was there to like?), but they followed me, they were in awe of me; they wanted to be near me and have what ever I had.

Of course, it was shimmering illusion, a chimera, but who cared? Charm took the ugly off my grandiosity. It sweetened the arrogance. I was no less a snob, but now people admired me for it, as it seem justified. In those years before meeting your mother, I perfected my performance, and indeed it seemed my whole life was a grand act. Somehow this shining new rendition of myself seemed to ward off my father’s harsh criticisms and contempt. He was impressed by my commitment to this new attitude, attire, and manner and suddenly had faith that I would indeed rise to be the golden boy he and my mother had dreamed of, bringing the family wealth and status. My sisters and mother became even more deeply enamored and devoted. I was the new American king, the pathway to a glamorous and glittering future for all. Even Milton, my vicious brother, was thrown off balance and seemed almost inspired by the entire effect. He gradually started to imitate my way of dressing and would sometimes accompany me to the movies.

The tortured and angry young man inside me was now firmly disguised, costumed in dashing handmade suits. He dressed in confidence and elegance and seemed, at least momentarily, to transform his enemies into admirers through style and charm. As you can imagine, this was a most synthetic remedy to what I can only identify now as soul sickness. I had been cast into the world as the exact opposite of the deep, reflective, philosophical man I had once dreamed of becoming. Instead I was becoming everything I secretly despised.

For I see now, after years of ceaseless self- obsession in the death realm, that there is no pain we can ever truly bury or avoid within ourselves. The tortured man I tried to leave behind would eventually surface. All the years of forcing him underground, all the sorrow and pain I ignored and did not care for, eventually metastasized into an entity and returned as a most terrifying fiend. He claimed my life then, and most regrettably, for the last thirty-one years he claimed my death in limbo. I realize I am speaking of him in the third person. I am by no means attempting to escape responsibility for his actions. It was more an indication of how profoundly detached I became from the person I shall call Shadow Man.

In the same way my parents had not seen or paid attention to the little boy I truly was, in the same way they idealized me and turned me into a king, I learned in turn to do the same thing to myself.

I became God in my own mind. I became all powerful and perfect. Shadow Man had no place in that story. So I banished him the way I had been banished. If he was hurting, I became impatient with him and told him to snap out of it. If he was afraid or doubtful, I bullied him with merciless judgment. If the ragged edges of his low self- value surfaced, I dosed him with grandiose visions of my prowess and accomplishments. If he tried to remind me how far I had strayed from my spiritual longings, I shamed him into compliance by demeaning his impractical and nonsensical dreams and glorifying my rising fortune. I drank him away. I achieved him away. But all the while, Shadow Man plotted, seethed, and stewed. His sense of betrayal, his bitterness, his rage grew like volcanic lava bubbling beneath the surface of my skin. He would not emerge until much later. The ongoing friction caused by the growing disdain I had for myself combined with my arrogance and my utter inability and unwillingness to change my path assured a future in which I would become cruel and violent.

But Shadow Man would not emerge until much later. In those next years I built a life on charm, good looks, and snobbery. I moved in glamorous and fashionable crowds. I modeled for a time, and I was never seen in public without a bombshell actress or an elegant socialite on my arm. I was invited into the most exclusive clubs. I rose seemingly effortlessly to the top of society and the business world. The irony of course was that I despised those impostors and hypocrites who welcomed me and I had no interest in money. I found it beneath me and distasteful, merely a means to maintain my façade. But perhaps it was my very disdain for all of it that brought me fortune.

I’ve noticed that people often seem desperate for the person who has no interest in them. They gravitate toward the most critical and judgmental because that person confirms their deepest suspicion of being a worthless faker. I exploited this weakness to raise and sustain my position. People were intimidated by me, as they could sense my underlying contempt for their pathetic preoccupations. But my charm and looks distracted and drew them in. My life was a game to be mastered, a persona and an image to be styled and perfected. I was what was becoming known as a modern American man.

The Hemp Revival: An Ecological Alternative with Many Commercial Uses

Linda Delair is a LEED accredited green building consultant and the Northern California Regional Coordinator for the California Hemp Association. Bioneers Restorative Food Systems Director, Arty Mangan, interviewed Linda at the CalCAN Conference at UC Davis.

ARTY: How is hemp different from or similar to marijuana?

LINDA: The difference federally is the quantity of THC [the principal psychoactive constituent in cannabis] in the plant. If it’s under three tenths of a percent of THC, then it’s hemp. Anything above 1% is considered to be cannabis. I don’t like to use the word marijuana because it’s a made-up name. It was part of the war on hemp, and they really didn’t care very much about cannabis at all. They made the name up, marijuana, calling it reefer madness back in the 1930’s. The hemp plant can grow to 18 feet tall, and it’s specifically grown for the fiber and for the woody core.

ARTY: But they’re both the genus cannabis, isn’t that correct?

LINDA: That’s correct. One would say the genus of hemp is cannabis sativa L. They’re both cannabis sativa.

ARTY: Hemp was instrumental in connecting you with the Native American poet John Trudell.

LINDA: Yes, our beloved John Trudell. In 2012, I was at the Green Festival in San Francisco, and I had just heard the brilliant Winona LaDuke, of the Anishinaabe tribe in Minnesota, speak about having a crop to grow to raise the tribes out of poverty and she mentioned hemp. That’s where I met John Trudell.

He said that he wanted to see the tribes work together with white ranchers and create a hemp industry that would benefit both. John and Willie Nelson had just started a project called Hempstead Project HEART. HEART stands for Hemp Energies Alternative Resource Technology. At that point it was just a concept. My friend Lea Walter and I started working with John to develop the project.

I organized events. I have a green building background, I wasn’t an event organizer, but this was very appealing to me. I knew about Hempcrete, made from hemp and water and lime, which can be used as a green building material.

Before John died, young Menominee tribal member from Wisconsin, Marcus Grignon came to see John, and they discussed having the tribe take over Hempstead Project HEART. After John died in 2015, we met with Marcus and handed the project over to the Menominee tribe, and they’re doing a great job legislatively, etc.

ARTY: You mentioned your background in green building and Hempcrete. How can hemp be used in building?

LINDA: Hemp has been around for thousands of years. It has been found in the pyramids. It is a wonderful, lightweight material. Hemp has many uses; hemp as a green building material is just one. When you remove the fiber from the outside of the stalk, there’s a woody inner core, and that is what you use to make Hempcrete. The woody core is ground up into half inch pieces, no larger. You mix that with water and lime – lime S or a hydraulic lime or a hydrated lime. The plant, in the growth phase, sequesters carbon, so the hempcrete locks that carbon up in the walls of the building.

It’s basically an insulation material. There’s a niche to be filled with insulation in order to lower energy requirements. The volume of insulation material we use today is going to rise dramatically in commercial and residential buildings. It makes ecological and financial sense to fill this volume with materials that are annually renewable, have a low ecological impact, and ideally are sourced from waste streams or byproducts from other processes. Hempcrete meets all of these important criteria and compares favorably with conventional insulation materials in many ways.

You don’t have to add drywall or insulation. Hempcrete is an insulating wall. It looks similar to concrete, but it’s about an eighth of the weight, and there is no Portland cement used, so there is no off-gassing from the wall at all. When you mix it together and you create this monolithic wall, all you really need to do is put a lime wash on the wall or something of that nature. Hempcrete is flame retardant and it’s mold and insect resistant. You don’t have to worry about termites, you don’t have to worry about mold, but you do have to let the material breathe.

ARTY: What are some other uses for hemp?

LINDA: The fiber from hemp can be used for clothing and plastics. It’s so amazing. The hemp plant has very long roots that break up and remediate the soil. It takes carbon out of the air and sequesters it into the soil.

ARTY: One of the other uses is as a food source. Can you talk about the nutritional value of hemp?

LINDA: Hemp seeds are very high in omega 3 and omega 6. Most hemp seeds on the market today come from Canada where it has been legal to grow for 20 years or so. Companies like Nutiva, a local California company, built their business on hemp seeds and coconut oil. You can sprinkle the hulled seeds on yogurt or in your salads or whatever you want. They are very very healthy for you because of those fatty acids, which the body loves.

As far as eating any other part of the plant, it’s pretty much the seeds that are edible. You can make oil from hemp seed, but you do not want high flame under the oil. Use the oil on salads and that sort of thing, but you don’t want to heat it up.

ARTY: What is the legal status of hemp? I know there’s been a change recently.

LINDA: At the federal level, it had been considered a Schedule 1 narcotic as of 1970 and prior to that the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937 made it too expensive to grow. But historically hemp was commonly grown. My goodness, in 1776 The Declaration of Independence was drafted on hemp paper. The word canvas comes from the word cannabis. All the ships, ropes and sails of the world were rigged with hemp from India to Pakistan to South America. The Chumash grew hemp in California for catching otters and for rope for their fishing lines. When the Spanish arrived in California, they wanted to grow hemp for their sails and ships, etc. and they discovered that the Chumash were already growing it.

The 2018 Farm Bill, introduced by Mitch McConnell and signed by President Trump, made it legal to grow hemp in the US. Mitch McConnell’s state of Kentucky lost tobacco subsidies. Historically they were big hemp growers. Hemp is no longer a Schedule 1 narcotic and it is considered a commodity crop.

However, all the states have rights, and some states can say no. They don’t care whether it’s legal, they don’t want it grown in their state. South Dakota is not allowing it, but Florida is. Every day there seems to be another state looking at what the other states are doing and how well they will profit from the hemp plant whether it’s for CBD or fiber or whatever it is, and are saying yes to growing it.

The challenge is that processing plants doesn’t exist for hemp hurds – the small pieces of the woody core of the stalk used for hempcrete, paper, animal bedding, etc. – and hemp fibers. We haven’t had hemp processing infrastructure since 1958, when the last processing plant in the country, in Wisconsin, closed. But CBD is processed in a laboratory, which is much easier to get established. CBD is the low hanging fruit in terms of getting a product to market. So, that’s an issue when investors are considering which states should they invest in.

ARTY In a place like California or Colorado where cannabis is legal and a farmer wants to grow hemp, do they still need permits?

LINDA: You have to register where you are growing because of the low threshold of THC in a hemp plant. And the farmer has to pay whatever the county fees are.

All food seeds, whether it’s a radish or a potato or anything else,have to be registered so that everybody knows, for example, that’s a Russet potato. That way when you’re planting Russet potato seeds, you’re not going to get a variety that’s not a Russet. If you’re going to grow hemp for CBD or for whatever, that seed also has to be registered. That way you know what you’re getting. There is testing of different parts of the field, and different parts of the plant. If the THC content is too high, that can ruin a thousand acres. That’s a large financial loss.

Hopefully, eventually, that will change, and the THC content in the hemp plant will be raised, because you’re not going to get a mouse high on under 1% THC. I promise you. The THC level for hemp is arbitrary.

Another obstacle exists at the county level in California. Neither the state nor the California Department of Food and Agriculture have come out with regulations for 2019. A lot of farmers are not able to grow the crop because something like 35 counties in California have moratoriums on the growing of hemp since there are no state regulations.

ARTY: Are they treating hemp the same way they’re treating cannabis? Or are they distinguishing between the two when it comes to these regulations and permits?

LINDA: It is distinguished, absolutely. Cannabis farmers pay a lot of money to grow their crops. They pay a lot in state taxes, etc. If there’s a hemp farm nearby that has both male and female plants, pollen from the male plant can cross pollinate the cannabis girls, and the cannabis crop will be ruined. So, it’s completely understandable why cannabis people are very concerned about hemp being grown next to them. But the state hasn’t come out with regulations, not even for how many miles there has to be between a field of hemp and a field of cannabis.

I’m part of the California Hemp Association, we have Memorandums of Understanding, we just signed one with Imperial Valley. With the MOU, we work closely with the farmers and the county on crop insurance and political regulation and we bring the police in to be part of the process.

ARTY: What are some of the other things that the California Hemp Association is focused on?

LINDA: We work with farmers in counties that don’t have moratoriums. We supply PhD scientists who work with the farmers on growing practices, insect problems, etc. because it’s been 81 years since hemp was grown here.

We work with UC Davis on identifying the best cultivar for your area, for the type of soil that you have. Hemp doesn’t like clay. If you have clay soil, you’re going to have to use a lot of amendments to your soil. It likes a nice loamy soil. What plant doesn’t?

We go around to different states and visit farms and learn from them. When Kentucky made hemp legal, they bought their seeds from Italy, because even though Canada is closer, why would you grow a cold-weather plant in Kentucky when Italy could supply you with seeds more appropriate for your climate. The University of Kentucky in Lexington studied the seeds for several years before they finally decided which seeds they wanted to grow for CBD. At first, they wanted to grow hemp for the fiber and the hurd for the automobile industry up and down the East Coast. BMW and Mercedes Benz and other car companies have been using hemp fiber in their dashboards and their car door panels and their car parts. They call it a bio-fiber for the American market, it’s like a plastic.

The fiber on the outside of the plant stalk is what you use for plastics and for clothing. There’s so many things you can use hemp for. Hemp is in Paul Hawken’s book Drawdown. He says that the area where hemp could make a difference is as a substitute for cotton because cotton uses an awful lot of water and the other plant parts of hemp can support the economics of fiber production. Cotton growers in Central California are very interested in growing hemp because of water issues.

ARTY: Hemp is more drought tolerant?

LINDA: Yes. It’s certainly not a cactus, but it’s far more drought tolerant than cotton. Levi’s is now working with the hemp and the cotton plant primarily because of the water that cotton takes to grow. They’re very aware of it. The first jeans that Levi’s made were hemp. It’s just like canvas. Levi’s is now saying by 2022, I think, that they’re going to be able to get the cotton and hemp blend to be fairly soft because it’s a very tough stalk. Ralph Lauren uses a hemp and silk blend. It’s like silk charmeuse. It’s absolutely beautiful. A lot of the fashion companies around the world are looking to use hemp because it’s such a strong fiber and it takes less of the more expensive fibers like silk. Hemp is the most useful plant on the planet.

ARTY: It is versatile.

LINDA: Farmers, especially cotton farmers, want to phyto-remediate their soil, because cotton has very much depleted the soil. Ethanol can be made out of hemp and not corn. These are really coming attractions with the hemp plant. Many states are welcoming the hemp plant. California is too, but we seem to be slow with our regulations. I would say that in 2020, that’s the year that you’ll see hemp really in the ground in California.

The Rights of Nature with Mari Margil and Thomas Linzey

Nature is not our property. Communities are now passing legislation to recognize the legally binding rights of nature. This spreading network is honoring and upholding the personhood of the environment, instead of the personhood of the corporations destroying it. Featuring Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, and Thomas Linzey, co-founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

Learn more about The Rights of Nature here.
Explore more Bioneers media on the Rights of Nature here.

This video is part of a series called “Seeding the Field: 30 Years of Transformative Solutions,” which celebrates some of the best moments of the Bioneers Conference through the last 30 years.

Directed by: Maximilian DeArmon
Edited by: Abe Costanza
Sound Mix: Stephanie Welch
Consulting Producer: Kenny Ausubel for Bioneers
Produced by: Maximilian DeArmon and Theo Badashi for Cosmogenesis Media Group

Creative Commons Credits:
We the People 2.0 – The Documentary
PBS
iTV News

Green Economy with Van Jones

As the climate change movement leaps to the center of political, cultural and economic urgency, we’re confronted with two crucial questions: Who will we take with us? Who will we leave behind? This issue is now about more than just saving the planet as it is united with the goal of slashing poverty. Featuring Van Jones, activist and co-founder of Dream Corps.

This video is part of a series called “Seeding the Field: 30 Years of Transformative Solutions,” which celebrates some of the best moments of the Bioneers Conference through the last 30 years.

Directed by: Maximilian DeArmon
Edited by: Johwell St-Cilien
Sound Mix: Stephanie Welch
Consulting Producer: Kenny Ausubel for Bioneers
Produced by: Maximilian DeArmon and Theo Badashi for Cosmogenesis Media Group

Additional Footage:
Green For All
https://www.youtube.com/user/greenforall
Grid Alternatives
https://www.youtube.com/user/gridalternatives

New Paradigm Hiphop feat. Climbing Poetree, Dj Cavem, Lyla June, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Isa Roske

Hip-hop has been a movement not only based on music, but also on social justice. Explore the emerging paradigm of eco hip-hop: a growing sub-culture of artists speaking out on environmental issues. Featuring spoken word performers Climbing Poetree and hip hop artists DJ Cavem, Lyla June and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez.

Explore more about Art for Social Change here.

This video is part of a series called “Seeding the Field: 30 Years of Transformative Solutions,” which celebrates some of the best moments of the Bioneers Conference through the last 30 years.

Additional Footage:
“Rubble Kings” – Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxYGhrwsle0

Youth Leading the Way for Climate Justice

Young people across the world are rising up to spur action on climate change. This powerful movement is gaining momentum as the stakes continue to escalate in the fight for their future. Featuring Alec Loorz, co-founder of iMatter; Naelyn Pike, co-founder of Apache Stronghold; Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, co-founder of Earth Guardians; and Chloe Maxmin, co-founder of Divest Harvard and currently the youngest State Representative in the Maine Legislature.

This video is part of a series called “Seeding the Field: 30 Years of Transformative Solutions,” which celebrates some of the best moments of the Bioneers Conference through the last 30 years.

Directed by: Maximilian DeArmon
Edited by: Brandon Pinard
Sound Mix: Stephanie Welch
Consulting Producer: Kenny Ausubel for Bioneers
Produced by: Maximilian DeArmon and Theo Badashi for Cosmogenesis Media Group

Photo Credits:
“Greta Thunberg” – Anders Hellberg of Effekt magazine

Green Chemistry with John Warner

Scientific breakthroughs aren’t always about fabricating new solutions; sometimes they’re about the creative use of solutions already found in nature. One of the originators of the field of Green Chemistry, Dr. John Warner has found that grey hairs can restore themselves to their natural color, and all it takes is a little beetle chemistry. Featuring Dr. John Warner, President and Chief Technology Officer of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry

This video is part of a series called “Seeding the Field: 30 Years of Transformative Solutions,” which celebrates some of the best moments of the Bioneers Conference through the last 30 years.

Additional Footage from:

Hairprint Mimics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNgr-Zdr6to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt1VqxesyvU

“Respiratory System Animation” – Encyclopedia World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ilCc0fnGdo

Garden Pests and Weeds: Bob Cannard’s Unique Take

Bob Cannard, a master farmer who developed his own innovative ecological farming practices, has always been ahead of the curve. More than 25 years ago, he was a lonely voice extolling the importance of carbon in farming when everyone else was emphasizing nitrogen. We know now that soil carbon can build fertility and mitigate climate change. He is also a pioneer in using practices that enhance soil biology.

Bob tends to make seemingly outrageous statements that later prove true. Several decades ago, he was suggesting that humans are really just an amalgamation of microbes. Recent research indicates that the ratio of microbial cells to human cells in the human body is at least 1:1 (and possibly much higher depending on the individual). Cannard, the activist, was the first to initiate a campaign for GMO labeling in California. His latest effort is a campaign to eliminate all pesticides from California agriculture by 2050. This is an excerpt from a past Bioneers Conference presentation.

There is some acceptance of the term “pest.” I just can’t see that. When I go out to the garden, especially the garden of nature, I see no pests. I see high population levels of some organism that we’ve labeled as pests because they are massing on the fruits or the foods that we wish to consume. The presence of these organisms is a demonstration of weakness, not of the genetic makeup, but most likely the environmental support that the plant is getting.

Weeds and Pests as Allies

I don’t look at those organisms as pests. They’re really great friends. They’re letting me know whether or not the environmental circumstances are sufficient to support that crop at that time. We look so little to the organism that we cultivate, even all the way up through the university research systems. I’d like us to actually look at the plant as if it were one of our children, know the plant, truly sensorially connect with the plant, listen to its speech, its speech of anchorage.

We go out into the garden to pull a weed and that weed doesn’t want to get pulled. It is well bonded with its spot. It likes it there. It is there of its choice. We could learn something from that pestiferous plant organism, the weed. Why does it like it there?

Plant Communication

Plants that like it where they are have good anchorage. Plants that don’t like it where they are don’t have good anchorage. Plants that don’t like it where they are and don’t have good anchorage and which are then fed to get their needs met, increase in anchorage qualities and characteristics. Anchorage is one of the ways of speech of the plants.

Bugs are another form of speech. The plant population that is happy in its environmental structure doesn’t have pestilence problems. Bugs and plants have grown up together beautifully during the life of this planet. If they truly had adversity between each other, one or the other would have won out a long time ago, and it probably would have been the bugs. But they can’t do that because they have completely sympathetic activities. The bugs are the cleaners and the gleaners and the improvers of life; they’re the bathers. They eat the old leaves on the lower level of the plant, which was once the present part of the plant, but has now become the past of the plant. The plant doesn’t need it anymore, it has withdrawn the nutritional support from its past in order to put it into the present, into flowering, into the seed-bearing time of its life.

Attitude of Adversity

The observation of past and present and conceptualization of where that is leading is so important in growing a plant. If we want to grow plants that have energy and completeness and contentment and possibly etheric sweetness, we can’t cultivate those plants with an attitude of adversity.

If we look at the garden and we think of all those hateful weeds and all of those horrid bugs and all of those pests, we carry an adversarial energy into the garden. That adversity is part of what we are likely to harvest. Instead of viewing bugs as pests and focusing our energies on getting rid of them, we can view bugs as a resource that we can utilize. If we strengthen the plant’s resistance to bugs by improving the environment and providing nutritional support, we can harvest a more complete meal, one that digests nicely and has lots of energy – from the great diversity available in the environment – to share with us. We can start thinking like a cilantro or a carrot or a potato, any and all.

But our food is not grown that way. I really feel that it is because we don’t look at plants. We hardly even address the issue, and to me, this is truly restorative. We’ve got to drop right down to the level of the creature that we are interacting with and very rarely do we do this.

What Are the Bioneers? – Kenny Ausubel

#Bioneers take their strong personal connection to nature as a call to action, with the guiding principle that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. By incorporating lessons from nature, Bioneers seek to craft a more cooperative future that embodies interdependence, resiliency and diversity. Featuring Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers co-founder and CEO.

Learn more about the annual Bioneers Conference.
Learn more from Kenny Ausubel here.

This video is part of a series called “Seeding the Field: 30 Years of Transformative Solutions,” which celebrates some of the best moments of the Bioneers Conference through the last 30 years.

Weeds and Pests as Allies

Plant Communication

Attitude of Adversity

Keep Your Finger on the Pulse