Most fungi live out of sight, yet they make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The symbiotic mycorrhizal networks formed by plants and

Most fungi live out of sight, yet they make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that support and sustain nearly all living systems. The symbiotic mycorrhizal networks formed by plants and fungi comprise an ancient life-support system that easily qualifies as one of the wonders of the living world. Yet climate change strategies, conservation agendas and restoration efforts overlook fungi and focus overwhelmingly on animals and plants. This is a problem: the destruction of underground fungal networks accelerates both climate change and biodiversity loss and interrupts vital global nutrient cycles.

In this session, Merlin Sheldrake, the biologist and bestselling author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our World, drives home just how critically important fungi are and discuss the visionary work of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) and its efforts to map and protect the mycorrhizal fungal communities of the planet. He also presents cutting-edge research into the flow dynamics of carbon and nutrients within mycorrhizal fungal networks.

This keynote talk was delivered at the 2024 Bioneers Conference.

Indigenous peoples across the Pacific have a deep knowledge of the ocean and its ecosystems acquired from hundreds of generations of observation. Today, commercial farming, overfishing, resource

Indigenous peoples across the Pacific have a deep knowledge of the ocean and its ecosystems acquired from hundreds of generations of observation. Today, commercial farming, overfishing, resource extraction and global warming are destroying the ocean systems and exacerbating the climate crisis. In this panel, three leaders with intimate knowledge of the relationships between land and ocean will discuss how to restore balance to the Pacific and to the planet. Moderated by Alexis Bunten. With: Loa Niumeitolu; Kiana Frank; Andrea Kealoha.

This talk was delivered at the 2023 Bioneers Conference.

By now, we have all heard the statistic that Indigenous Peoples protect 80% of the world's biodiversity, despite being 5% of the world's population. This simple fact alone should position

By now, we have all heard the statistic that Indigenous Peoples protect 80% of the world's biodiversity, despite being 5% of the world's population. This simple fact alone should position Indigenous, Native, and Tribal Peoples as not only leaders but experts on resource management and climate mitigation and adaptation. Yet, in many spaces, political and institutional, Indigenous knowledge and expertise are seen as supplemental, and at worse, romantic.

So how can we move beyond just acknowledging Indigenous Peoples to working to ensure that their rights are centered and strengthened in climate action at the local, national and global levels? Jade Begay, one of North America’s most effective Indigenous Rights activists will share her insights on how far Indigenous leadership has come and what we can do to strengthen and embolden this leadership that is so needed if we are all to survive on planet Earth

This keynote talk was part of the Bioneers 2023 Conference.

Learn more at http://www.bioneers.org

A massive influx of clean energy investments is poised to transform the American economy during this decade. Opportunities abound to take advantage of new climate incentives. If we get this right,

A massive influx of clean energy investments is poised to transform the American economy during this decade. Opportunities abound to take advantage of new climate incentives. If we get this right, the U.S. could be on track to reach 80% clean power by 2030, leading to deep decarbonization across other sectors including transportation, buildings and manufacturing. Nevertheless, success is far from guaranteed without widespread action from the grassroots to the canopy. What did it take to pass a historic $370 billion climate deal in Congress? How can American households and businesses take full advantage of it? What does effective, equitable implementation look like? Join award-winning author, political scientist, and climate expert Dr. Leah Stokes for a deep dive on clean energy policy and the tools we have to realize our electric future in this decade and beyond.

Leah Stokes, Ph.D., one of the nation’s most influential leading experts and “engaged scholars" in climate and energy policy, is the author of the award-winning book Short Circuiting Policy, which examines the role of utilities in undermining regulation and promoting climate denial. Trained at MIT, Columbia, and the University of Toronto, Stokes’ widely read and cited work has been published in top scholarly journals, as well as the New York Times, Washington Post, and other popular media outlets. She is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a senior policy consultant at Rewiring America, and co-host of the popular climate podcast “A Matter of Degrees.”

Learn more at http://www.bioneers.org

In our opinion, Kim Stanley Robinson is our greatest living science fiction writer. His more than 20 award-winning books over four decades, translated into some 26 languages, have included many

In our opinion, Kim Stanley Robinson is our greatest living science fiction writer. His more than 20 award-winning books over four decades, translated into some 26 languages, have included many highly influential, international bestselling tomes that brilliantly explore in a wide range of ways the great eco, economic and socio-political crises facing our species, yet nothing had prepared him for the global explosion of interest in his visionary 2020 novel, Ministry for the Future, which projects how a possible climate-disrupted future might unfold and how the world might respond meaningfully. It’s also chock full of brilliant science and wildy imaginative ways humanity steps up. Among other results, he was invited by the UN to speak at COP-26 in Glasgow. Stan offers us his overview of where we currently stand in relation to the climate crisis.

Kim Stanley Robinson is the author of about twenty books, including the internationally bestselling Mars trilogy, and more recently Red Moon, New York 2140, and The Ministry for the Future. He was part of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and 2016, and a featured speaker at COP-26 in Glasgow as a guest of the UK government and the UN. His work has been translated into 26 languages and won many awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. In 2016 asteroid 72432 was named “Kimrobinson.”

Learn more at http://www.bioneers.org

How we imagine what’s possible, what matters. Who we are shapes what we do, and what we do in the present shapes the future. In addition to the many practical, scientific and material

How we imagine what’s possible, what matters. Who we are shapes what we do, and what we do in the present shapes the future. In addition to the many practical, scientific and material aspects, the climate crisis has cultural aspects with which we need to engage in order to meet this emergency. Drawing from the new anthology she co-edited, "Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility", Rebecca Solnit talks about the stories emerging from what science, Indigenous leadership, good organizing, and visionary thinkers are giving us. These stories offer the grounds for hope and the work hope does. What are the ways that what the climate requires of us could mean ushering in an age of abundance rather than austerity?

Rebecca Solnit, one of our nation’s most influential writers, thinkers, historians and activists, is the author of 20+ books, including: Orwell’s Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Solnit writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and just launched the climate project Not Too Late.

Learn more at http://www.bioneers.org

Before Rep. Pramila Jayapal was elected to Congress and later became the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she was an organizer and activist, and an enthusiastic Bioneers participant.

Before Rep. Pramila Jayapal was elected to Congress and later became the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, she was an organizer and activist, and an enthusiastic Bioneers participant. In this personal video message to the Bioneers community, Rep. Jayapal discusses her theory of change that she developed as an organizer and has employed as a legislator. She highlights an “inside-outside” approach to building power and enacting meaningful change and policy shifts at national, state, and local levels.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, now serving her third term in Congress representing Washington’s 7th District, the first South Asian American woman elected to the House, is the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and serves on many key committees. A highly influential leader on progressive policies on: immigration, LGBTQ rights, labor issues, economic inequality, climate, clean energy, etc., Congresswoman Jayapal, prior to her election to political office, spent decades working internationally and domestically in global public health and development and as an advocate for women’s, immigrant, civil, and human rights. She is the author of two books, including, most recently: Use the Power You Have: A Brown Woman’s Guide to Politics and Political Change.

Learn more at http://www.bioneers.org

Register now for the 2023 Conference! https://conference.bioneers.org/

Join us for three days of riveting talks and movement building with hundreds of visionary leaders, artists and

Register now for the 2023 Conference! https://conference.bioneers.org/

Join us for three days of riveting talks and movement building with hundreds of visionary leaders, artists and solutionaries! Tickets are going fast, get yours now!
___________________________________________________________________

As Bioneers rolls into our 34th annual gathering, the big wheels of massive change are turning.

Climate disruption bears down daily, and there’s a widely felt morning-after awakening that it’s going to crash the economy and bring civilization to its knees. Although the regime shift to renewables is now an accelerating inevitability, it’s going to take relentless political action. To beat the clock, we also need to override the doom loop of delay and propaganda the desperate fossil fuel industry will keep pushing.

Meanwhile, the unprecedented movements of the past decade for liberation, justice and multicultural democracy are swelling to challenge the right-wing populist and neo-fascist forces underwritten by cynical plutocratic elites. “Make feudalism great again” is proving to be a marketing challenge. Something’s gotta give.

At the core is a crisis of democracy: a radical disconnect between the world people want and the world corporations and their client governments have hijacked. The climate crisis and the inequality crisis are the same crisis. Our separation from nature and our separation from each other are the same dis-integration. The choice is clear: nihilism or regeneration. Shattering or wholeness.

For over three decades, the Bioneers Conference has served as a trellis on which this visionary movement of movements has grown and grown together around authentic “solve-the-whole problem” solutions.

Especially in these darkest of times, we come together to regenerate and celebrate. We invite you to join forces with the Bioneers community of leadership in this time when we’re all called upon to be leaders.

Learn more at https://conference.bioneers.org/

Indigenous Peoples already do “green jobs,” integrate cultural values into business activities, and protect 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. In order to transform our

Indigenous Peoples already do “green jobs,” integrate cultural values into business activities, and protect 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. In order to transform our economies through Indigenous-led solutions, we need to uplift movements and stories inspired by Indigenous resistance. To do this, we must change the culture of philanthropy and “impact investing,” which still largely circulates in privileged circles. In this panel, Sikowis (Plains Cree/Saulteaux), Nick Estes (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe), and Alexis Bunten (Unangan/Yupik) discuss colonial-capitalism and how Indigenous-led strategies can offer us a pathway towards an equitable and regenerative future.

Watch more videos from the 2022 conference at https://bioneers.org/conference-media/

California is the world’s largest consumer of oil from the Amazon rainforest. This extraction contributes to climate change, causes deforestation, pollutes the oceans, displaces Indigenous

California is the world’s largest consumer of oil from the Amazon rainforest. This extraction contributes to climate change, causes deforestation, pollutes the oceans, displaces Indigenous peoples stewarding the Amazon Forest’s last remaining biodiversity, and harms people at every end of the supply chain, including the marginalized communities living in the shadow of toxic refineries right here.

We are honored to be able to offer our main stage to two leading Indigenous Amazonian forest-protectors, sisters Nina and Helena Gualinga, who work closely with our friends at Amazon Watch as they appeal to Californians (and all of us) to #EndAmazonCrude and demand corporate responsibility for people and planet.