Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

Nontoxic hair color from the recipes of beetles, and a potential Alzheimer’s cure derived from applying nature’s operating instructions. The world-renowned “co-father of green chemistry,” John Warner, says: “We’re learning to do everything we want to do without poisoning people or planet.” He’s showing how we can follow nature’s lead to create good chemistry with nature and our own health. The res...

Women are coming together to heal in community, with hands in the soil, in one of the most broken places on the planet, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Playwright and feminist Eve Ensler’s life-and-death struggle with cancer transformed her. At the heart of it was her reconnection with nature. She expanded her work to end violence against women and girls to include restoring nature and our relat...

Are plants intelligent? If we knew their language what might they tell us? Potawatomi Indigenous ecologist and author Robin Kimmerer and evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano merge Traditional Ecological Knowledge with Western science for a surprising trip into the minds of mosses and chili seeds and the songs of corn. They agree what we really need today is a revolution in values, an “Honorable...

As the world’s eighth largest economy, California is emerging as the potential game-changer for global climate leadership. Using strategic alliances and smart policies that integrate ecology, economy and justice, these climate leaders show how: Tom Hayden, lifelong activist and former California State Senator; Vien Truong, Environmental Equity Director, Greenlining Institute; Wade Crowfoot, Senior...

Transformational women leaders are restoring societal balance by showing us how to reconnect relationships – not only among people – but between people and the natural world. This astounding conversation among diverse women leaders provides a fascinating window into the soulful depths of what it means to restore the balance between our masculine and feminine selves to bring about wholeness, justic...

A handful of global business leaders are blazing trails to a biologically based "eco-nomics." They are fundamentally recalculating core assumptions to allow business to make good returns killing the planet. Ray Anderson, leading-edge founder and CEO of Interface, the world's largest modular carpet company, articulates his bold vision to operate the company to take from the Earth only that which th...

Wounded warriors have walked through fire. They carry the scars forever, yet many have somehow managed to heal even the most horrific of their emotional wounds. Rather than turning away from those unimaginable traumas of war, abuse and violence, what can we learn from looking respectfully at their wounds? Our veterans and other survivors are on a transformational, ethical, and spiritual journey. A...

As the consumer feeding frenzy has gone global, each seemingly innocuous purchase of stuff we make today leaves behind a devastating legacy of waste that will envelop and even poison future generations for centuries to come. Ironically, it's not like all this stuff is making us any happier. Acclaimed filmmaker and environmental advocate Annie Leonard says we have choices to make, right now. Are we...

As we navigate the onset of climate change, we're witness to the rapid obsolescence of the human systems built on the assumption of cheap oil. The clock is running out on expensive (and vulnerable) practices such as the long-distance, fossil-fueled global supply chains that transport the average bite of food 1,200 miles to reach our plates. Inevitably communities are moving toward a greater re-loc...

Would you believe, here at the beginning of the 21st century, that every order of fast-food served with a slice of tomato is part of a system of slavery and labor abuse that exists right here in the United States? The intense demand for cheap food from the largest corporate buyers drives farm workers into the ground. The courageous labor organizer Lucas Benitez calls for reform at all levels of th...

For a decade, the award-winning play "The Vagina Monologues" has pro­ vided a startling window into the conflicted complexity of women's relationships to their bodies and pervasive worldwide violence against women. By revealing the deeply personal stories of women and their private parts, world-renowned playwright and women's rights activist Eve Ensler gave birth to a global movement to end violen...

Just how dumb do they think we are? Who would believe that destroying the ecosystems on which all life depends, while dis-employing more and more people, is somehow good for the economy? But exactly that fiction of jobs versus the environment has been successfully marketed to us. Community organizers Van Jones and Majora Carter propose a radically simple solution for both environmental destruction...

For thousands of years, First Peoples have successfully managed the complex reciprocal relationships between biological and human cultures using Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Yet no prior human civilization has ever faced the globalized ecological collapse occurring now. In the face of unprecedented pressures on their homelands and ways of life, indigenous leaders Enei Begaye, Dune Lanka...

Most American schools are flunking out when it comes to how well they integrate ecological literacy across the curriculum. And many are doing no better than a C average with the idea that schools should be actively engaged in sustaining the natural and social communities in which they exist. Fritjof Capra, co-founder of the Center for Ecoliteracy, Cheryl Charles, from the Children and Nature Netwo...

Some of the best minds on the planet are busy cataloguing possible solutions to the crisis of climate chaos. Scientists, entrepreneurs and educators on technology's cutting edge offer a broad array of bio-based solutions that are already working to transition us to a truly sustainable civilization. Biomimics Janine Benyus, Stephan Dewar, David Orr and Jay Hannan offer a smorgasbord of startling so...

Bathing suits modeled on sharkskin that win the Olympics. Low-energy display screens based on peacock feathers. Nature has done everything human societies want to do technologically-without mining the past or mortgaging the future. Acclaimed author, naturalist and biomimicry leaders Janine Benyus, Jason McCiennan and Bob Hawkins uncork a mind-boggling bouquet of breakthrough innovations that, like...

Perhaps we should call it Watershed Earth. We're made of water, totally dependent on it, yet water in turn depends on us to play our part in a good way. Mother Ocean is the primary regulator of Watershed Earth. But the marine news is heartbreaking. Ocean defenders Michael Stocker, Anne Rowley and David Helvarg illuminate both the peril of noise and plastics pollution and the promise they see In th...

The Original Instructions represent the ancient empincal wisdom of traditional ecological knowledge earned over generations and millennia by people living closely with the land and each other. They also comprise disarmingly simple counsel: be thankful, enjoy life and attend to the inner pollution that results in outer pollution. Indigenous leaders Winona LaDuke, John Trudell and Evon Peter voice t...

Could Western civilization's oldest ethical instructions of the Golden Rule hold acute relevance to our planetary environmental crisis? Could restoring respect for human beings be the key to restoring the health of the planet? Author Paul Hawken has been tracking the rapid proliferation of nonprofit, non-governmental organltations around the world. It boils down to this: Taking care of nature mean...

Do you think of the wilderness as something far away? Not in the age of climate change and human population growth. The real wilderness is always underfoot- the complex systems underlying life on Earth that we barely understand. It's our inheritance, our guardianship to understand traditional and indigenous knowledge of Earth as a vast, cultivated landscape. Land managers such as Miguel Santisteva...

Labor leader Cesar Chavez helped ban DDT. Truckers are helping address appalling asthma rates at the filthy port of Los Angeles. And inner-city clergy, not suburbanites, led the latest victory against the big-box Wal-Mart stores sprawling over community open space. Unlikely allies? Environmental justice and labor leaders Manuel Pastor, Maria Elena Durazo and Rev. Alexia Salvatierra show us that in...

Because industrial agriculture is the single most destructive human activity against the environment, what we put on our collective plate and how we grow our food are going to be among the most decisive factors impacting the fate of the Earth and public health. Few journalists have done more than Michael Pollan to serve up food for thought about our diet and food systems. He reports on the burgeon...

"We know what's wrong... says the iconic Jungian psychotherapist and author James Hillman, "but do we know that knowing what's wrong is some of what's wrong?" Has "analysis paralysis" sapped our energy and determination to transform a failing world? Can we cut through the tangle to actually act to make a positive difference? Can we turn our vices into virtues? Though Hillman's approach may sound p...

Garbage in, garbage out, as the early computer innovators remarked about information. A vital free press is the single most important feedback loop in a democracy. New media including especially the Internet have challenged the supremacy of corporate media concentration and junk news. A brave new wave of activists such as Brad Friedman, John Stauber and Joan Blades are using d1gital media to resto...

The current industrial system generates 94 percent waste. It all lands somewhere, often ultimately in our bodies. A society that wastes its resources also wastes its people. Why are low-income communities and communities of color the perennial human sacrifice zones? Courageous environmental justice advocates Clayton Thomas-Muller, Shawna larson and Maryanne Hitt are successfully rejecting this new...