October 20-22, 2000
Marin Center, San Rafael, CA
The Bioneers Conference is the preeminent gathering of visionaries with practical solutions for restoring the Earth. For both professional and general audiences, this three-day annual event equips participants with models, resources and networks, encouraging everyone to act as primary forces in the transformation toward a restorative future.
By Bob Russell
I attended the 11th Bioneers Conference in California in October.The conference focus was on positive solutions to ecological problems and moving humans towards a more sacred relationship with all life on earth. William McDonough, the leading designer of what he calls the next industrial revolution, perhaps sums up that approach best with one of his design principles, "How do we love all the children of all the species, all the time." How do we move from where we are now, an unsustainable human dominated planet, towards a place of nurturing the sacred in all things? Speakers, workshop presenters and the participants at Bioneers formed a mini-community and shared many diverse ideas to help us move to that restorative future.New directions for agriculture were presented by Wes Jackson, president of the Land Institute and Joel Salatin, a third generation "alternative farmer" from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. The Land Institue is promoting the concept of "Natural Systems Agriculture", an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops. Jole's latest book , You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start and Succeed In a Farming Enterprise, is a guide for small scale ecological farming.
Michael Lerner, founder of Commonweal, and Steven Foster, author of Herbs for Your Health, spoke of health related issues that linked humans more to the natural environment and the need to protect it for our own well being. David Foreman, Earth First!, and Julie Butterfly-Hill, who lived in a Redwood tree for 2 years to protest clear-cutting, were passionate in their plea to save wilderness.
It is good to hear new perspectives and ideas from speakers after traveling thousands of miles and David Korten's plenary talk filled that need. Dr. Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World, spoke on creating the post-corporate world. I had read his book and attended a lecture he gave during the WTO Seattle ordeal last November so I knew what a gifted speaker and thinker he was on globalization. Along with an overview on the effects of our corporate dominated global economic system, he spoke of the work by sociologist Paul H. Ray, PhD., and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson, PhD. They have been researching the emergence of what they are calling the Cultural Creatives -- people who care deeply about ecology, social justice, spirituality, personal growth and relationships. The optimistic news is that the authors believe there are already 50 million of us. That's about 20% of the US population; David told us that it was only 25% of the population in this country that started the last revolution in 1776. He went on to say that the corporate controlled media is one of the main reasons that the Cultural Creatives don't realize the extent of their numbers. (The corporate controlled media was often mentioned by various other speakers at the conference as a major obstacle to change.) Korten claims that once the Cultural Creatives become more connected to each other, real change will cascade into major shifts in our world. Real democracy -- living democracy -- will emerge that values the natural world and returns the control of people's lives and communites back to the local level, away from global corporate controlled governments. Ray and Anderson's book, The Cultural Creatives, has just been released and I can't wait to read it.
J.L. Chestnut was the most dynamic speaker for me at the conference. He is an African-American lawyer from Alabama. A long time civil rights activist, he worked with Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement. He spoke about many things, but his main theme was that "racism has a stranglehold on the throat of this democracy". He explained about the the historic lawsuit he was instrumental in winning on behalf of the southern black farmers against the United States Department of Agriculture. The lawsuit proved that black farmers were discriminated against by the USDA and denied loans. The settlement of the lawsuit has already cost the Federal Government billions of dollars and not all the money has been paid out yet. He repeated over and over again in a preacher-like style, "racism has a stragglehold on the throat of this democracy", and after the recent almost election, this couldn't be clearer. While the white vote was split, Gore received over 90% of the black vote which clearly reflects a racial divide in this country.
I often hear the same concepts from different perspectives which helps me clarify my knowledge about various subjects. But the presenters at Bioneers went beyond just re-enforcing what I have heard before. Paul Stamets, mycotechnologist (one who studies fungus), provided me with the most amazing new information I have heard in a long time. He sees himself as an ambassator for the fungus world and believes fungus have a biological intelligence that humans don't yet understand. He calls the mycelia (the underground branching vegetative part of fungus) the Earth's natural Internet, the essential wiring of the Gaian consciousness. He has discovered incedible things about fungus, from medical properties to its ability to clean up toxic waste and nuetrilize chemical weapons. You can read more about this topic in an article that Paul wrote in the Fall, 1999, Whole Earth magazine, No. 98. He also has a web site, www.fungi.com.
I went to the conference for some inspiration to counteract the constant stream of bad news about species extinction, global warming, toxic pollution, increased cancer, poverty, militarization and human cruelty. I was inspired by some of the people who have experienced and know more of the horror stories and still have hope for a restored future. This is especially true of the indigenous peoples who spoke. It may be their spiritual beliefs that keep them strong in the face of the advancing globalization on their territories and cultures.
There were 2000 people at the conference and the organizers believe that to be the limit. They suggested that other people consider having smaller bioneers events in their own communities. We are considering organizing a "mini" bioneers-type conference in our area that would focus on practical, restorative solutions to regional and local issues. Stay tuned for more information as plans are developed.