Bioneers is wonderful and awful - just like life!

[ConnieMadden]

Blog I FINALLY published on Bioneers:

https://connie-madden.petaluma360.co...=2280598&mode=

Freak out; then get to work, says Bill McKibben; Lucas says "chirp!"

Most important words (and sounds) gathered in by me at Bioneers "Revolution from the Heart of Nature," the great cheerleading conference for Green Lovers: Author, Bill McKibben says "freak out, then get to work," Petaluma's Baby Lucas Hess, 9 months, examines a leaf in the sunshine and says "chirp!

The Bioneers Conference, held each fall at Marin Civic Center, is where you go to get scared at how terribly Mother Nature is faring, then meet and hear a whole huge crowd of amazing, brilliant people and go away - nearly overwhelmed but determined to do more that is - useful."

Bill McKibben, speaker/activist/author of incredible books and articles, with articles this month in both Mother Jones and Atlantic, wrote Deep Economy recently and End of Nature earlier. His rap: science tells him (and you if you care to listen) that around 350ppm (parts per million) is the carrying capacity of our air to bear greenhouse gases (GHG) with us still on a liveable planet. But we're at 387ppm NOW! Freak out indeed! Thought we had 10 years or 4 years but this is no years. How to get back to 350ppm?!? Got to ww.350.org and dig in.

Solutions to climate crisis are plentiful in mass media and many presented are foolish. Build a ton of nuclear facilities each costing upwards of 5 times what solar and wind renewable energy would cost, and you can have carbon-free energy - in 14 years! And you're bankrupt but that will happen rather sooner than 14 years if present trends continue. And of course, no one has REALLY got it down how to bury nuclear wastes for 1/2 million years (count'em, 500,000 years the half-life of "spent" nuclear materials from energy plants or bombs. Same stuff.) Clean Coal isn't real - all mining of coal pollutes and leaves scars on the landscape probably forever.


So I say I'd rather work the Daniel Solnit way (And others around the planet) and adopt community choice aggregation (CCA) where, say, and I said in earlier blog, you put solar on Luchessi Community Center perhaps - and it is shared by a neighborhood most of whom wouldn't be able to afford their own solar units. Thats CCA and I'm for it.
This, my fourth year at Bioneers was again intense - why go to something that makes you cry and get scared? I like the truth, I guess. I like to know what is really going on on our planet and I trust this group a lot. A lot to trust.


Mother Nature demands we treat her well, at least I hope SHE has the strength to demand for herself - we'd better help! After Bioneers, I made myself a Mother Nature costume and tried demanding people take good care of me at All Hallows Eve parties in Petaluma - people were tolerant; they smiled. No commitment toward action, though! Costume began with Macaw & Parrot feather earrings I bought at Bioneers. Told all the money goes back to a group in the Amazon, I believed it and knew I might never see these birds or feathers again, so high-to-me purchase price was accepted. Add a leafy wreath with local turkey feathers and viola, I'm spouting "take good care of Mother Nature" to any who would deign to listen at three separate venues (our "Subteranean Bunker," Barry & Janies and the Moose Lodge, the ones I made it to).


Back to Bioneers: The Weight, (remember the song by The Band?) was first put squarely on my inadequate shoulders by the granddaughter of Jacque Cousteau, Andrea Cousteau. A poetic presentation by this artful beauty who spoke of falling in love with the whole water world forever, taken deep under the sea starting at 4 months old - and not also the beauty of fathomless depths but also the ocean from above, from her father, Phillipe's airplane. Andrea has devoted herself to clean water for the world and recently came back from Guatamala where she walked a daily 5-hour routine with a young girl over rough rocks to fetch dirty water for cooking, drinking, everything. We are spoiled, aren't we?


Midday on Satuday, I was warmed by an amazing dance and rap from Destiny Arts of Oakland, brazen and brilliant dancing to powerful verse delivered all by - young people! All young people were invited to come up for group photos with the brave new Destiny Arts troupe. Hi-energy graceful and powerful routines depicting war and the war between men and women - fine poetry set to dance, DestinyArts! Check them on YouTube, but the real stuff is to see them up close. Gorgeous! Gorgeous because they are true.
Last year I enlisted in WiserEarth.org and thought all year about working with them somehow in their physical office or just keeping in touch online (I DO that). This year, I wrote my first Bioneers blog - and WiserEarth came back with a comment within 5 minutes! Connectivity is theirs, though I never did go into the WiserEarth room at Bioneers. Founded by a hero of many (including mine) Paul Hawken, WiserEarth boasts the melding of 1-2 MILLION non-profits working toward social justice and sustainability globally/locally, WiserEarth, perhaps the greatest network of good guys and gals ever assembled anywhere including online.



If I came away with a personal message from the whole conference, it was Bill McKibben saying we can no longer just focus on global OR local - everything we do is local/global.

So what is useful? Who do you listen to? How to be happy amid chaos, dying mammals, polluted air and war - while keeping in mind that Petaluma looks like Paradise to people with their eyes open - but even Petaluma won't look like that if we don't turn greenhouse gases (GHG) around this century. Ex: Estimate is IF WE DON"T CLEAN OUR AIR AND WATER BY 2100, WE LOSE 80% OF NATIVE CALIFORNIA PLANTS. Petaluma gets to look like Bakersfield; Bakersfield is a desert. Truly.

And the peoples of the earth we hear about but never see? Millions will die from lack of clean water and food - already happening.

Later, we heard about the weight of toxics in our air. The incidence of cancers that would never be were it not for extreme doses of poisonous chemicals in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the products we use.

Again I loved Green Jobs for All and Van Jones's great leadership toward bringing troubled kids up so they become engineers, helping us all by learning to install solar panels and more. Great good work in a timely manner. You got it, Green Jobs! I hear Obama is looking to enlist Jones in his upcoming administration...

So what did I take away? The Weight, resulting in a need to stay off by myself instead of having fun with the several great friends also in attendance: Scott Hess, Shepherd Bliss, Trathen Heckman, Daniel Solnit, David Keller, Kim Weichel, more and the Indian speaker who sang Gandhis favorite song. Aching beauty and hope.


Best moments? Sitting on the lawn with Petaluma Mom and graphic artist, Karen Hess of DragonflyArts, as her own Baby Lucas said "chirp," waiting for my "chirp" in reply. I did reply, and I will again! Discovery of a leaf in the sun when you're 9 months old! What an exquisite thing!

[nicofrog]

What a touching statement;
Thank you Connie Madden for your kind and honest chirpings
regarding our current predicament. Although it seems like the greatest conundrum of all. I'm sure folks in the plague years, the great depression, and those poorly placed geographically during the second world war felt the same ,or worse.
The dread, and hoping, trying,talking till I'm the weirdo at parties etc. started for me in 1971 when Buckminster Fuller gave a talk at Olney hall
at college of Marin. Among other wonderful, and amazing topics, he discussed the very real possibility (to him and about 6 other people at that time) of "global warming" he said we have about 50 years of life sustaining planet left, if corporate interests succeed in selling the American way of life to the rest of the planet ( the internal combustion engine,carbon powered electricity,chlorine,and the flushing toilet).
At that time he was working closely with Adam Trombley.The U,S. Govt climatologist who discovered the breakdown of the ozone layer,(dubed the ozone hole,by subsequent Govt. propagandists). ((google))
Adam T. was fired and blacklisted for insisting that the smoke plume from the oil fires in the first Gulf war had reached the stratosphere. And also for his alogations that ozone depletion was a problem. He also determined that
CHLORINE not hydrochlorocarbons, or auto emissions was the primary
cause of ozone depletion. Today this is STILL A SECRET because the chlorine industry is bigger and more powerful than oil. They are indispensible in "developing nations" we all know that germs that cause normal population
control should be eliminated.
The second cause of global warming "green house gasses" is probably Methane, from FOOD in the landfill,and sewer systems. Now it comes from
thawing organic tundra in the Arctic as well. This is an issue you have not heard Sarah Palin address as yet. Funny that.
Yes Gas and coal are a problem. But watch the green Marketers, they will SELL YOU something, Like a squiggly-toxic light bulb,or a hybrid,or a re-cycling program(that returns value to industry to burn more fuel processing) and let you think THERE ,YAY I'm Green now...whoo who!!!
meanwhile the pool is spouting chlorine gas, the compost is to messy to deal with, and our real problem is the price of gas!
So I have "wasted" about a third of my time from then untill now composting wastes from commercial sources,and friends ,myself etc.
Only recently have I realised that I could sell worms and compost.
I do natural building in schools(cob,wattle and dob,and strawbale) and would like to hook up with more of you to get worm bins, and even "hot"
composting going in local schools. Rick Kaye of www.compost.org is a good resource for this as well.
Our first GIFT to mother nature is clearly defined by our waste.
That is unless you are a Native American who may still wake each day with prayers of graditude, give blessings at every meal, and keep alters in symbolic gesture to your awareness of her grand providance.
Feel free to contact me for composting information, and corrections on
my urban legondry here!!
May we save the earth, or at least HAVE FUN trying!!
Nicolas

[The Owl]

Just wanted to stick my head in and say what you meant to write, I think was chloroflourocarbons. and if you look at the first part of that word, the chloro stands for chlorine, so you are basically correct, when those big chloroflourocarbon molecules break apart in the upper atmosphere they are reduced to their components chlorine, flourine and carbon and this gives the Os that would form O3 (ozone, a less stable form of oxygen) a chance to form chlorides (a more stable situation than O3) with the chlorine and that's how chlorine destroys ozone... by taking up the O that would in the absence of any other choice join an O2 to become an O3 and hooking it into a chlorine molecule to make a chloride or a flourine to make a flouride.