The Bioneers transformed a sprawling San Francisco Bay Area Civic Center into an educational eco-village for a sell-out conference of over 3000 people Oct. 14-16. Bioneers are “biological pioneers,” according to its producers Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons. Another 8000 or so participated in 16 sites around the United States and one in Canada, where the morning plenaries were beamed in by satellite and local afternoon sessions added.

This 16th annual conference was dedicated to “visionary and practical solutions for restoring the Earth and people.” Among more than 100 presenters were scientists, performers, indigenous people, teachers, young people, activists, artists, and spiritual teachers. They generated insight, laughter, anger, and some tears as they described the state of the world and what to do about it.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben headlined the first day. The author of the ground-breaking book “The End of Nature” asserted that “people are finally paying attention to global warming. It is no longer a prospective problem; it is crashing down upon us now.” He observed that “the SUV age came to an end when people saw on TV hundreds of gas-sucking SUVs run out of gas leaving Houston and become stranded in flight from the hurricanes.”

“The Earth is telling us that it is sick,” Ausebel added. “When we fight the Earth, we will lose. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are coming attractions of what we can expect in the future.” McKibben and later environmental educator David Orr explained how global warming strengthened Katrina by heating up the Gulf waters.

The weekend built to a climax provided by African American historian, composer and singer Bernice Johnson Reagon, who for 30 years led the musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock. The civil rights activist began by speaking slowly, deeply, poetically, precisely, and powerfully. She noted that “the bones at the bottom of the ocean” provide the basis for her music. She filled the large auditorium with dignity, elegance, beauty, and mystery, building to a musical highlight. Reagon spoke from a deep faith that moved people. She communicated with feeling about her friends and ancestors, living and departed.

“When I die you can cast me to the ocean wide,” Reagon sang. She invited the audience to join her and we became her chorus in a stirring song with the line “Come and go with me to that land where I am bound.” Reagon effectively captured the conference’s mixture of sorrow at the state of the world and determination to do something about it, rooting us into the Earth.

One youth at the gathering, Sarah Sullivan of New York, commented, “I always love the sharing of specific information at Bioneers and the newness of the innovation and ideas that are brought to light. But what I will remember is singing with hundreds of Bioneers, the presence of the youth and their dance and drum and spoken word, the circles of bodies connecting in the grass during the breaks, the food I shared with friends, the pictures I saw on the screen in the theatre, and the tea and literature offered in the exhibition center. Bioneers is getting more heart-centered and diverse each year; I look forward to watching it mature and deepen with time.”

This year’s Bioneers offered over a dozen films, often presented by their directors. Plenary speaker and shrimp fisherwoman Diane Wilson was featured in a film about her as an “unreasonable woman.” For a decade and a half she stood up to chemical corporations polluting her south Texas bay and elsewhere. She has been arrested numerous times for her anti-corporate actions and explained that she is “currently on the lam. So if you see one of those Texas Rangers with a big hat, let me know.”

The films included “Trudell,” about the poet, musician, actor, and American Indian activist, who spoke about his work [we showed this film in SLO the day before the screening at Bioneers]. Deborah Koons Garcia, the director of “The Future of Food”— which recently opened at mainstream theaters around the US and received a positive review in the “New York Times”—spoke on a panel about “Food and Farming at the Movies.” [Another film that they showed is called “The Real Dirt on Farmer John” which we will be showing; check the schedule in this issue.]

Among the many speakers on food and agriculture was 25-year-old African American Will Bullock of Boston’s Food Project. Urban farmer Michael Ableman read from and showed photographs from his new book “Field of Plenty [read article in this issue].” A panel discussed “Food Security.” Co-producer Simons noted that “almost one fourth of US shoppers now buy organic. The organic industry is growing by 20% a year. More than 700 school districts now have farm to cafeteria programs.” An increased partnership between Bioneers and the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley was announced by Simons.

Many presentations were on communication and the media. “We all need stories,” author and radio personality Thom Hartmann asserted. “When stories change, the world changes.” He maintained that “changing even one word can make a difference. Corporations try to convince us that our real identity is as consumers. Before that we understood ourselves as citizens, part of a community, needing to defend the commons.” Hartmann suggested an identity and word change back to understanding ourselves as citizens, rather than consumers. McKibben also pointed to the creation of the community as essential to working on the multiple problems that confront us at this time.

Other prominent speakers included physicist Fritjof Capra, activist politician Tom Hayden, moveon.org’s Joan Blades, the Green Party’s David Cobb, author Francis Moore Lappe’, and architect Sim Van der Ryn. Among the speakers were a number of young people. Around 500 young people attended the main conference and some separate events for youth.

Bioneers is an annual ritual for many people. After the first day photographer Scott Hess sent out an email including the following: “Bioneeers rocked once again today with a rhythmic, deep-thinking, soul-stirring pulse…It was one of those heavenly days that lift one up to timeless places of deep love and gratitude experienced in the midst of one’s spiritual tribe.”

The networking that occurs around the sides at Bioneers is important. One of the interesting persons this reporter spoke to was Ann Wright of Honolulu. She served nearly 30 years in the US Army and Army Reserves, rising to the rank of Colonel, and 16 years as a diplomat, some of this time overlapping. Wright resigned in 2003 to protest the Iraq War, while she was Deputy US Ambassador to Mongolia.

Wright indicated that many military members and their family members oppose the Iraq War. Col. Wright spent August as the commandant of the anti-war protest Camp Casey outside Bush’s ranch in Texas. Another woman impacted by the military, Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain American soldier, briefly attended Bioneers, where she signed books at a Code Pink booth.

At a session on “Deep Water: Saving the Oceans” Michael Stocker of Seaflow noted that “We are all dependent upon the sea. Yet the oceans are in rough shape. We use the ocean as a cesspool to dump things and over-harvest it.” Ocean scientist Wallace “J.” Nichols added, “Most people live within 50 miles of the ocean. We’re tied to the ocean. The water we drink, the air in our lungs, and the food we eat come from the ocean. Our survival depends on the ocean.”

Orr [see a summary of his lecture in this issue] and McKibben were among the plenary presenters to mention Peak Oil, which was not on this year’s program as a separate topic. However, among the discussions organized by conference participants were two on Peak Oil. Dave Room of the Post Carbon Institute explained to about 50 listeners how the Earth’s petroleum supply has or will soon reach its mid-point and become more difficult and expensive to extract.

On the Bioneers final day Richard Heinberg, author of “The Party’s Over” and “Powerdown,” explained to some 75 people that “Peak Oil is the good news. It will lead to a collapse of industrial society. It will involve hardship for humanity, but eventually we will have to create the sustainable society that many of us have been talking about for years.”

Bioneers is more than a yearly conference. Audio and visual tapes are available of the various presentations. Bioneers maintains a website—www.bioneers.org. It has also become a vibrant and growing multi-cultural and multi-generational community that is developing into a movement with an increasing number of people identifying with it.


Dr. Shepherd Bliss, sb3@pon.net, teaches college on the Big Island and writes for the Hawai’i Island Journal as well as living and working on a farm in Sebastopol.

[HopeDance has purchased all the plenary sessions of BIONEERS on DVD format so be prepared to see some of the outstanding presentations during our film screenings in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.]


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