Two Down - One to Go

My second day at the Bioneers Conference went well. It's so invigorating to attend these conferences. To know that there are other people in the world who are just as concerned as I am and yet who are actually doing something about it is a great relief. I must admit, there are times where I am actually ashamed to be human.

Here's a quote from their program book that I found very interesting:

“The annual Bioneers conference is a hub of practical solutions for restoring the Earth and people. It’s a thriving network of visionary innovators who are working with nature to heal nature. Bioneers draw from more than four billion years of evolutionary intelligence and apply nature’s operating instructions in practical ways to serve human ends harmlessly. We herald a dawning age of interdependence founded in natural principles of diversity, kinship, community, cooperation and reciprocity. The good news is that for the most part the solutions to our problems are already present. The models percolate up from the deep wisdom of the natural world. Extraordinary human creativity focused on problem solving is exploding the mythology of despair. Bioneers focus equally on the creative social strategies that can help us realize these solutions by restoring community, justice and democracy. Over and over, it’s the story of how one individual can make a difference.”

For today’s plenary speakers, I heard Paul Anastas talk about Green Chemistry, I heard Majora Carter talk about Greening the Ghetto, and I heard Evon Peter give an Indigenous Perspective on How to Survive the Next 100 Years. After a wonderful lunch of local organic food I attended two workshops: the first one titled “Managing and Describing Natural Resource Development and Possibilities by Means of Systems Approaches” by Henry Cole, and the second one titled “Electrical Efficiency: How and How Much Money” by Ian Sharrock.

And for those of you paying attention: no, I did not run in to Mr. Oh My God today. This is a good thing, since I really did want to concentrate on the message (and not the scenery). I did, however, meet up with a Biologist from Seattle who was on his way to Dutch Harbor to be a Crab Watcher. He was very interesting, and if anybody knows anything about the crab fisheries off the Aleutian Islands, you’ll know he’s in for the ride of his life.