Eco Evolution Archives - WebTalkRadio.net

Placemaking is a growing movement across the U.S. and around the world whereby communities, neighborhood by neighborhood, are collaborating in the “creative reclamation of public space.” Mark Lakeman is the founder of the movement, whose City Repair in Portland has developed a number of model projects that have been replicated in hundreds of towns and cities across the U.S. In the last decade Mark has directed, facilitated, or inspired designs for more than three hundred new community-generated public places in Portland, Oregon alone. City Repair’s Village Building Convergence event has for over a decade been catalyzing the development of dozens of participatory organizations and urban permaculture design projects across the United States and Canada. The holistic approach to rearchitecting local spaces, bringing village-like public gathering spots back into our isolating urban and suburban neighborhoods, is having a profound impact upon communities, changing the social dynamic of neighborhoods as well as public respect for and intelligent engagement with the local ecology. This conversation covers not only the remarkable work of City Repair and the localization movement it has spawned, but also reveals Mark’s unique influences and informed vision that have ignited a do it yourself revolution in neighborhoods – with far reaching evolutionary consequences.

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This is the true story of how (and why) one couple ditched their high-pressure lives and moved to rural New Mexico to make, build, invent, forage, and grow everything they need to live self-sufficiently. After mastering life in the modern age as successful working professionals in New York City, Wendy Jehanara Tremayne and her husband Mikey began to reflect on their choices. Inspired by their experiences at the Burning Man Festival with its “gift economy” (no commercial transactions of any kind except the purchase of ice and coffee) and observing that her generation is the first to witness the whole world for sale, Wendy asked herself some questions: Am I limited and mechanistic, a consumer? Or am I unbounded and creative, a creator? Answering these questions became a journey of discovery and evolution as she and her husband sought a middle ground between living in the material world, and satisfying their need for a broader definition of what it is to be human. Their journey is chronicled its lessons distilled in Wendy’s new book The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living. Our conversation goes into details on what they have learned by doing, as they forged a creatively and ecologically satisfying post-consumer lifestyle in building a compound – in effect a laboratory – that gives new life to used materials and offers many solutions on how to do much more, with much less. The many ideas and insights shared here are likely to inspire that same infectious do-it-yourself spirit that Wendy and Michael came to embody.

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Hemp, the non-psychoactive cousin to cannabis sativa, has been an essential crop around the world for thousands of years, and still is in most countries. Why not in the U.S.? This discussion with Linda Booker, producer of the new documentary on industrial hemp Bringing It Home reveals the profound qualities of this truly remarkable plant, that make it ideal for textiles, building materials, food products, bio-plastics, auto parts and more. The film is based on a father’s search to find the healthiest building materials for his environmentally sensitive daughter, and the construction of the nation’s first hemp house in Asheville, North Carolina. As Linda shares here, the film was a journey of discovery as she learned about the astounding utility of this carbon-sequestering, weed-resistant and highly profitable crop currently grown in 31 countries. It became all the more puzzling that hemp farming is illegal in the U.S. when in reality this renewable resource is used to make thousands of sustainable products and offers solutions for global warming, nutrition, poverty and deforestation. Our exchange goes into details about hemp building and other uses, and initiatives to change the laws led by groups such as Vote Hemp and Hemp Industries Association. Hopefully this entertaining and highly informative film will help wake up the American public to the sham that hemp prohibition is, and inspire the political changes needed to make this vital natural resource available to U.S. farmers, industry and consumers.

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Intentional community projects such as Arcosanti in Arizona, Auroville in Southern India and Damanhur in Northern Italy have all contributed to the sustainability equation, which is as much about personal psychology, lifestyle choices and social dynamics as it is about well designed infrastructures and renewable resources. Tamera was founded two decades ago in Portugal as a “peace research center and healing biotope.” The experimental community combines innovations in social systems that support inner and outer peace, with an applied holistic relationship with their local ecology. This 45 minute exchange with Benjamin von Mendelssohn, a next generation leader in the community, goes into detail about the project‘s history and current activities. One of the most significant initiatives was the renewal of their 400 acre property through ingenious water retention techniques. Current projects include a high tech solar village integrating a comprehensive combination of solar technologies, environmentally sound energy storage and food production, intelligent greenhouses, and other innovations.

We also discuss the community’s many educational and service outreach programs. Their informative website is in English, German and Portuguese www.tamera.org.

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Adam C. Hall made a fortune in real estate development as a master of structured finance. He was living what he understood to be the American Dream. But it all came apart, like a fractured picture of perfection, as he sought meaning in his life as a human being. His journey of discovery, both within himself and as witness to the miraculous works of the natural world, led to his founding new ventures in service of the planet, and authoring The Earthkeeper: Undeveloping the Future, a very personal and bold account of his experiences, and a comprehensive reference on current environmental initiatives and groups. Following a philosophy he calls Earthonomics and the quadruple bottom line (people, planet, profits, peace), his Certified B Corporation Earthkeeper Alliance, invests in thousands of acres throughout the U.S. as land stewards for conservation and “undevelopment.” The Alliance donates 10% of profits to its sister non-profit Earth Services, Inc., which is a major facilitator of the urban gardening movement among youth in major American cities, and promotes the “Earthkeeper Movement.” This conversation should be an inspiration for everyone looking for the deeper reality behind the façade of consumer culture, but especially for those people who represent financial institutions and corporations that have the opportunity (the responsibility?) to play a role in the shift to sustainability – vs. continuing on with “business as usual.”

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