Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature

Both or Neither - The emerging green economy promises to provide large-scale job creation while healing the Earth and building the middle class. Roxanne Brown, Assistant Legislative Director for the United Steelworkers and Steering Committee member of the BlueGreen Alliance, describes how this national partnership of major labor unions and environmental organizations is expanding the number and quality of jobs in the green economy. BlueGreen Alliance Director of Chemicals, Public Health and Green Chemistry Charlotte Brody portrays the real-time societal transformation underway when workers and environmentalists find common ground and also honestly acknowledge their differences.

Fireflies, Dumpsters, Soft Power and the Design Science Revolution - The visionary designer and architect R. Buckminster Fullers remarkable legacy inspires new generations to create the Design Science Revolution he first called for in the 1960s. Elizabeth Thompson, executive director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI), brings to life Buckys vision, along with contemporary BFI Challenge Award recipients. Sheila Kennedy, Professor of Architecture at MIT, and John Edel, Director of the Chicago Sustainable Manufacturing Center, whose imaginative design innovations address humanitys most pressing problems.

Landscapes of Hope - Just like our bodies, nature has a profound capacity for healing and self-repair. Filmmaker-turned-ecological-restorer John Liu shifted from documenting Chinas massive environmental and societal upheavals to filming a groundbreaking, large-scale ecosystem restoration cum local economic renewal. Prioritizing natures ecological functions above producing goods and services, the groundbreaking work is spreading to other nations, with Liu as a global ambassador of dramatic ecosystem restoration wonders.

Growing Growers and Seeding Leaders for a Real Food Future What happens when green turns to grey? Fewer than 5 percent of 2 million American farmers are under 45 years old. Bucking that trend is the next generation of unstoppable young farmers Severine von Tscharner Fleming, Tyler Webb, and Sarita Role Schaffer, along with renowned urban food innovator Nikki Henderson and real food advocate Amin Steele. With dirt under their nails and laptops at their fingertips, theyre reinventing a radical patriotism founded in a return to local agriculture and community. It runs on clean energy and knows how to move markets. It seeks greater self-sufficiency, self-determination and food justice, and the checkout line is the pulpit.

Somewhere in a typical American city, a woman wakes up to the noxious odors of a nearby sewage treatment plant. Her daughter carries a rescue inhaler to school. Like hundreds of her neighbors, this woman is sick and tired of being sick and tired. Women and men from vulnerable communities everywhere are rising up to gain equal access to clean water and air, equal environmental enforcement and protection, and equitable land use and planning. Impassioned community organizers Mary Gonzales and Peggy Shepard show us all how successful environmental justice campaigns across the U.S. are raising the voices of people of color and low-income communities and creating a better world for everyone.

Our misbegotten industrial food system is one of our greatest vulnerabilities. Its dangerously fossil-fueled, toxic, monocultural and centralized. The real cost of cheap food is very high to both people and planet. Urban food innovators are designing vibrant new local food economies built on environmental and ecological integrity, sustainability, diversity and equity. Join author Michael Pollan, Fair Food Foundation CEO Oran Hesterman, faith-based change-maker James Ella James and student leader Victoria Carter for a smorgasbord of nourishing morsels from the emerging locavore movement.

History is a tale told by the winners. How then can we reclaim the voices of those who have been historically written out - silenced through the ages? Perhaps as women write herstory into history, well see clearly the eternal power, brilliance and unique value of womens contributions. Join media innovator Jensine Larsen and feminist historian Sally Roesch Wagner as they share the emerging landscape of an inclusive, sustainable and just society at whose heart is the leadership of women.

A popular character on a Spanish-language soap opera resonates so deeply with viewers that they become empowered and educated about reproductive health. Avatars in the virtual world called Second Life enable people of all faiths to better understand and respect Islamic culture. A global communications network crosses the digital divide to help women around the world share solutions for improving everyday life. Digital and media entrepreneurs Jensine Larsen and William Ryerson effectively use innovative media for social change. Digital citizen diplomats Joshua S. Fouts and Rita J. King design virtual games that help foster vibrant community and culture in the physical world. Theyre all demonstrating the game-changing power of technology to change the world for the better.

Forty years ago when a logging road was blasted deep into the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, the outside world discovered the Surui people. Contact with the Western world led to their decimation by disease, warfare and illegal logging and mining. The Surui organized to save themselves and their homeland by electing a young leader to tell their story to the world. Chief Almir Narayamoga Surui traveled from the Amazon rainforest to the Google-plex to ask for help to bring his people back from the brink of extinction and save their precious rainforest. The collaboration with Google Earth Outreach manager Rebecca Moore has helped map a next world that marries the best of tradition and conservation with the best of high technology. Translation by Vasco van Roosmalen.

Half of Americans cannot name one component of the water cycle upon which all life depends. Yet water is at the root of every human endeavor - from manufacturing to agriculture, energy production and waste management. No water, no life. Join master permaculture designers Darren J. Doherty and Brock Dolman for both practical and poetic ways to re-educate earthlings in soil and water literacy. Their practical vision for regenerating ecological integrity and social resiliency prepares us for the challenges of climate change and environmental stress. But above all, they illuminate inspired pathways for restoring nature and people in the re-enchantment of Earth.