The BioIntegrity Podcast: Recent Episodes
BioIntegrity Partnerships
We're helping "Permaculture Man" Harrison Aron, founder of K'Aron Community Farm in Kenya, raise funds for a fence this week and we need your help! He's very happy after all the support our community has given in the last two weeks. This audio is a segment from this week's interview with Harrison by BioIntegrity founder/director Chris Searles. Unfortunately, that video and audio were again too inconsistent to present, so we share this important piece: Harrison updating us on some of what he's done just since receiving funding for seeds, including already purchasing and planting new seeds, digging a very large, natural seep well for the new expansion garden, and continung to harvest from their already functioning gardens. Harrison also shares some of the regenerative, permaculture techniques he's using to eliminate hunger and malnutrition in his community.
"(Our malnutrition problem is) Mostly from dirty water and the type of food we are eating." (Harrison Aron)
Harrison is a Permaculture designer / regenerative farmer working to feed his whole community in ways that eliminate food shortages, regrow ecosystems, restore local biodiversity, cool the local micro-climate, improve local water supplies... It's truly exciting.
Our community just raised $1,260.00 (US) for for Harrison's 1-acre expansion garden: first ploughing and seeding, then purchasing rainwater collection/distribution equipment. We've also funded half a fence. We are now trying to raise just an additional $500 US (for a grand total of $1,750) to fund the other half of the fence. You can help! These donations will help feed +1,000 people in Homa Bay. With support like ours, Harrison believes he can feed all 5,000+ people in his community within a few years. He then wishes to teach and expand his community-based, Permaculture farming across East Africa. Help Harrison, Help Kenya!
More info: https://mailchi.mp/biointegrity/070822
More info part 2: https://mailchi.mp/biointegrity/071422
Donate here: https://flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/MTU1MDAx
Contact us: biointegrity.net/contact-us
Thanks!
PROGRAM
0:00 Check In
Harrison Aron and Chris Searles (director, BioIntegrity):
- Natural seep well: is dug!
- New seeds: some already planted and germinating
- Ploughing was a good decision
- Community is happy (so are we)
- K'Aron Farm has been harvesting a lot of food varieties this week
4:00 Rebuilding the Soil Naturally
Harrison:
- Composts & mulches
- Lasagna layers
- What destroyed the soil? Inorganic Fertilizers
- Adding-back Organic Fertilizers: manures, plants & layers
8:00 Some Soil-Building Food PlantsHarrison:
- Pea Plant ("Jelo Peas")
- Chop & drop leaves for natural mulch
- Ground cover foods: squash, pumkpins, beans
- Nutrition & drought
12:00 Eradicating Malnutrition with PermacultureHarrison:
- Diverse food plantings to create a balanced diet
- Overcoming many diseases
- Squash leaves & nursing mothers, Beet root & blood health
- Installing "Kitchen Gardens" in Homa Bay
- "CBO": Community-Based Organization, here is K'Aron
Lilsten to the first podcast in this series
Help Harrison Expand His Community Garden Project to Feed +1,000 People, Cool the Climate, Restore Biodiversrity, and More -- by clicking this long sentence (click here).
Thanks again!
This audio is a segment from several hours of interviews with Harrison Aron, by BioIntegrity founder/director Chris Searles. Unfortunately the video and audio were too inconsistent to present as a whole, so instead we share this important piece: Harrison talking about the water infrastructure they need in his community and some of the ways having it will greatly help.
Harrison is a Permaculture designer / regenerative farmer working to feed his whole community in ways that eliminate food shortages, regrow ecosystems, restore local biodiversity, cool the local micro-climate, improve local water supplies... It's exciting: You can help.
We just raised $250 US for seeding Harrison's expansion garden. Our goal now is to raise an additional $500 to help fund Harrison's water infrastructure asks. He also talks here about needing a fence to protect the community garden from livestock, chickens, and wild animals. That cost is estimated to be an additional $1,000 US (for a grand total of $1,750). You can help. Do it!
More info: https://mailchi.mp/biointegrity/070822
Donate here: https://flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/MTU1MDAx
Contact us: biointegrity.net/contact-us
Thanks!
From the Austin Community College Honors Program and Office of Sustainability's Earth Week celebrations, in Austin, TX, Earth Day, 2022: "What do we do now?" presented by Chris Searles, director of BioIntegrity.net. [Watch the Zoom video of this podcast on Facebook or YouTube.]
This Zoom is QUITE noisy for the first 5 minutes, thanks for your patience!
PROGRAM: WHAT DO WE DO NOW
0:00 Intro
0:25 What is “the biosphere”?
I. Some Good News
0:50 What you can do now:
1:15 Tropical Forests
2:20 The Systemic Climate Solution: http://tinyurl.com/systemic-cs
3:45 Our Life-Support System
4:45 BioIntegrity’s planetary impacts
6:45 Ecosystems over Technology
7:00 Protect Tropical Forest: biointegrity.net/solutions ($2/acre)
II. What’s Going On Here
7: 45 No Reason to Care?
Reason #1 Humans over Nature?
8:00 Genesis 1:26, “the dominion verse”
8:50 “Dominionism”: https://tinyurl.com/allcreation-domin...
9:15 Jewish dominion: “Humans are God’s partners in bettering the creation.”
9:45 Islamic dominion: “You are answerable to God for what you do with the animals, the plants…”
11:00 Christian dominion: “To figure out how to live well in our places with each other.”
11:30 Reclaiming Genesis “dominion”: 1) Agrarian context, 2) Theocentric identity, 3) Christians are care providers, 4) Discipleship of caring change.
Reason #2 50,000 more years?
14:10 We could have 50,000 more years of a stable climate
Reason #3 “The environment” is our life-support system
14:30 The forgotten memory
15:00 Biosphere Earth = Life & living systems
15:55 The Value of Biosphere Earth: https://www.biointegrity.net/value.html
16:00 The quick history of Life
16:40 The value of ecosystems: Life, life-support & ecosystem services
Reason #4 We are collapsing our Life-system now
18:00 Bad news science: A top 10
20:00 Rapid growth of a biospherically-destructive system
21:00 Biodiversity is in the greatest crisis of all things today
III. Recenter on the Biosphere
21:30 Biospheric Reformation: 2 Priorities
23:10 One question: “Does it strengthen or weaken the life-support system”
IV. The Biospheric Climate Solution
(Fixing Agriculture + Ending Deforestation + Restoring Land Biosphere)
23:30 Looking at what we gain by regrowing the most bio-productive ecosystems Earth
24:20 This strategy could take us out of the climate crisis within 10 to 30 years
25:45 Carbon
32:40 Sponge
33:30 Cooling
35:20 Irrigation
36:15 Self-care
37:45 Weaves
38:20 The lymphatic system of the planet
39:30 Circulation
41:00 We have the potential to stop & reverse Climate Change
41:20 The main priorities
V. Necessity & Promise
42:00 Reversing our collapse
42:45 Biospheric Reformation
43:45 Indigenous People 1st
44:30 Even “clean tech” must fit into biospheric reality
45:00 Add these values
45:25 How to support systemic changes (slide): 1) Indigenous Rights, 2) Regenerative Agriculture, 3) Globally-strategic protection & restoration of biodiversity
45:45 Technology
VI. Wrap Up
45:55 What We Covered
46:45 Upward Spiral Economics
“Forests bring the rain.”
47:00 Q&A
(Questions)
47:15 Citizen Climate Lobby & carbon fees good?
48:15 What’s more viable for carbon capture: nature or technology?
“We need to make our economics empower Nature to be the solution.”
52:45 What can we do at home?
55:00 How can the environmental movement learn from its mistakes and connect better with more people?
58:30 Who do we reach out to help support Indigenous people in stewarding the land?
Thanks for watching.Visit biointegrity.net to learn more.
Visit biointegrity.net/solutions to help protect tropical forests
Visit biointegrity.net/donate to make a tax deductible gift in support of our work.
Biosphere Earth is the composition of life and living ecosystems that make human life possible. This series, "The Value of Biosphere Earth", seeks to connect people of all backgrounds to a greater relationship with that reality by sharing synopses of current science. In this episode, Ecosystem Services, BioIntegrity founder/director Chris Searles shares a brief synopsis of the most valuable thing humans have: Earth's Ecosystem Services. So far this series has covered the history of Life and our Life-support system’s architecture. This podcast talks about what other Life does for us.
CitationsCheck out this Google Doc.
Graphic of Ecosystem Services
Map of Earth’s vertebrate biodiversity concentrations on land. (Source)
Partial list of Ecosystem Services
- Oxygen production
- Freshwater filtration
- Micro-climate establishment
- Generation of fertility
- Body formation intelligence
- Decomposition
- Nutrient cycling
- Detoxification
- Biological richness and abundance
- Biological diversification
- Air purification
- Water purification
- Cellular intelligence
- Adaptative intelligence
- Moisture retention
- Moisture recycling
- Moisture circulation
- Immunity
- Pollination
- Food production
- Flavors
- Food quality
- Food diversity
- UV protection
- Atmospheric composition
- Air quality
- Humidity
- Air Pressure
- Atmospheric circulation
- Water quality
- Sentience
- Brain formation
- Beautification
- Pest control
- Pathogen control
- Seed dispersal
- Cloud creation
- Precipitation stimulation
- Climate tempering
- Micro nutrient exchanges
- Micro fluid movements
- Photosynthesis
- Carbon absorption
- Nutrition creation
- Storm water buffering
- Communication
- Microbiome generation
- Community generation
- Ecosystem generation
- Self-maintenance
- Rapid regrowth
- Creation of relationships
- Genetic diversity
- Genetic intelligence
- Body formation intelligence
- Biome diversity
- Human diversity
- Soil generation
- Biomass generation
- Generation of microbes
- Generation of micro-insects
- Generation of plants
- Generation of animals
- Carbon storage
- Instinct
- Nurturing
- Fertility and reproduction
- Primary value creation
- Global integration…
About This Podcast
Biosphere Earth's rescue and ongoing integrity is our most urgent, essential, and powerful climate solution and economic priority. This series talks about why. Read the two paragraphs on Ecosystem Services here. This piece contains more than 60 academic citations. Read the essay version of this post.
More in this Series
· Listen to "About this series."
· Listen to more episodes here.
MusicThe music heard at beginning of this podcast comes from renown songwriter, Stephen Doster. Visit StephenDoster.com to hear more of his music.
QuotationTommy Orange's first novel, There There, won the 2019 American Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the John Leonard Prize. Learn more about There There here.
Biosphere Earth is the composition of life and living ecosystems that make human life possible. This series, "The Value of Biosphere Earth", seeks to connect people of all backgrounds to a greater relationship with that reality by sharing synopses of current science. In this episode, A Self-Generating "Stack", BioIntegrity founder/director Chris Searles explains his analogy that the architecture of our Life-support system is pretty similar to the architecture of our computers, but infinitely more advanced. For a complete list of the citations referenced in this post, check out this Google Doc.
The analogy: A “stack” is what software engineers call the layers of interacting technologies they build to make your phone work. Earth's Life-suport system is comprised of layers of interacting life, living ecosystems, biological structural elements, and non-living structural elements. See the life stack diagram below.
GraphicsBiosphere Earth aproximately three billion years ago.
Earth, a planet of only microbes, roughly three billion years ago. (NASA, 2017)
A diagram of Earth’s “life stack."Graphic by Chris Searles.
Click here for larger graphics.
About This Podcast
Biosphere Earth's rescue and ongoing integrity is our most urgent, essential, and powerful climate solution and economic priority. This series talks about why and how. Read the two paragraphs on the architecture of Earth's Life-support system here. This piece contains more than 60 academic citations. Read the essay version of this post.
More in this Series
· Listen to "About this series."
· Listen to more episodes here.
· Read part 1 of this series.
· Read part 3 essay.
MusicThe music heard at beginning of this podcast comes from "She Blinded Me With Science" by the great Thomas Dolby (obviously). Purchase that track here. Remix by SecondBeatSongs, grabbed from here.
Biosphere Earth is the composition of life and living ecosystems that make human life possible. This series, "The Value of Biosphere Earth", seeks to connect people of all backgrounds to a greater relationship with that reality by sharing synopses of the current scientific record. In this episode, The Life Timeline, BioIntegrity founder/director Chris Searles shares the most recent science on the history of Life's development on our planet. For a complete list of the citations referenced in this post, check out this Google Doc.
Graphics
Earth three billion years ago and today.
Microbial Earth (NASA, 2017) and modern Earth (NASA, 2000).
Science’s timeline of Life’s history on Earth.
Graphic by Chris Searles.
Click here for larger graphics.
About This Podcast
Biosphere Earth's rescue and ongoing integrity is our most urgent, essential, and powerful climate solution and economic priority. This series talks about why and how. Read the two paragraphs on the history of life discussed in this podcast here.
More in this Series
· Listen to "About this series."
· Listen to more episodes here.
· Read part 2 essay.
· Read part 3 essay.
MusicThe music heard at beginning and end of this podcast comes from Ralph Vaughan Williams' piece The Lark Ascending, recorded by The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and Sir Neville Marriner in 1986. You can purchase that recording here. Also featured is a snippet of Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus from the same album.
Our First Priority. "How are we going to shift our focus from climate change being a technological problem to climate change and the biodiversity extinction crisis being a life-support system problem?" This is the core question that led to the creation of this series, based on a series of short papers about our humanity's Life-support system.
Biosphere Earth is the composition of life and living ecosystems that make human life possible--animals, plants, intact ecosystems, and more. The Value of Biosphere Earth series seeks to connect people of all backgrounds to a greater relationship with this reality by sharing synopses on the most recent science. In this episode, BioIntegrity founder/director Chris Searles shares what led him to start this series.
About This Podcast
Biosphere Earth's rescue and restoration is our most urgent, essential, and powerful climate solution and economic priority. This series talks about why and how. Hope you'll listen to all of the episodes in this series. Check out more episodes here.
Music
The music heard at the beginning of this podcast comes from Ralph Vaughan Williams' piece The Lark Ascending, recorded by TheAcademy of St. Martin in the Fields and Sir Neville Marriner in 1986. You can purchase that recording here.
In this podcast, BioIntegrity founder/director Chris Searles offers a kind-of, somewhat, funny reading of a partial list of Earth's Ecosystem Services. This list comes from the new series, "The Value of Biosphere Earth" (VOBE). The VOBE series identifies how and why Earth's biosphere--the composition of life and living ecosystems on our planet--is humanity's most urgent, essential and powerful climate solution. Each week a scientific brief, usually two paragraphs with dozens and dozens of academic citations, a short essay, and a short podcast are produced.
Check out parts 1, 2, & 3:
- Part 1: The Life Timeline
- science
- essay
- podcast
- Part 2: A Self-Generating "Stack"
- science
- essay
- podcast
- Part 3: Ecosystem Services
- science
- essay
- podcast
Sign up for this weekly email series here.
Follow Chris on Medium to see the essays as soon as they're available.
Visit biointegrity.net for more.
Janene Yazzie is an entrepreneur, community organizer and human rights advocate from the Navajo Nation. She has an extensive bio. Janene is perhaps best known as co-founder/CEO of Sixth World Solutions, a consultancy focused on rights-based approaches to development, which center on Indigenous Peoples rights and traditional ecological knowledge, and as the International Indian Treaty Council's co-convener of the Indigenous Peoples Major Group to the United Nation's High Level Political Forum on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
About this podcastJanene is interviewed here by Cherokee citizen Vance Blackfox. This segment comes from the Fall 2021 issue of AllCreation.org guest edited by Vance and presented by BioIntegrity. Learn more about the issue here.
Quotes
"For everything we have done wrong, we are capable of creating a solution to heal that, to address it, to take responsibility for it, and to create a new way.” “When we invest in right relationship with those around us and with other forms of sacred life, non-human life, that’s how we win.”
BioIntegrity founder / director, Chris Searles, reads his paper, "The Value of Biosphere Earth" -- an academic consideration of Earth's life-support system as our primary economic, social, climate, and cultural-advancement priority this decade. This is the first draft. We are welcoming all forms of feedback at this time. Send your comments to chris "dot" searles "at" biointegrity.net.
LinkRead the full paper, The Value of Biosphere Earth = All Economic Value + All Life Value, here: https://mcusercontent.com/4f8c6cb2fda71eae586f9b913/files/1e76a561-2f4c-cd92-e3ec-a1576df7484d/The_Value_of_Biosphere_Earth_Searles_Draft_1_8_20_21_.pdf
ContentsThe paper contains 13 pages of citations and just eight pages of text. Here is how the paper is organized::
- Abstract
- I. There's Only One Life-Support System
- II. How Our Life-Support System is Constructed.
- III. The Value of Biosphere Earth.
- IV. The Most Valuable Thing in the Universe.
- V. Biospheric Rescue as Our #1 Priority.
- Epilogue
- Citations
- Addendum
Addtional InfoWe are planning on publishing the final draft of this paper on Sept. 20.
Visit biointegrity.net to learn more about our work.
"We have built our society on a number of paradigms that are not rooted in Life-support system reality." In this podcast, BioIntegrity founder Chris Searles shares on the idea that wealth monarchies have propagated the paradigms that whatever's best for those who have the most is best for society, and society can live on material wealth alone. Recorded on a morning walk across a 3,000 acre pecan farm in West Texas about 100 miles from Jeff Bezos' recent launch into space.
References
- Bezos in space
- Branson in space
- A draft of the paper, "The Value of Biosphere Earth"
- No other planet has even one microbe (NASA)
- NASA has explored +4,400 planets
- Proxima Centauri B, "our best hope", is deadly and 73,000 years away
- Wealth monarchy has been good to me, but not my friends
- UN Convention on Biodiversity, first draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework
- Cover photo credit: NASA Flight Opportunities
Quotes
"Biodiversity is the biosphere. Biosphere is everything to us.""The guardians of the biosphere are not the nations, it's the Indigenous people who still have occupation of their ancestral lands. The paradigm shift that we need to make is to empower indigenous leadership, on Earth, especially for those who are on their ancestral lands now -- they are the guardians of our Life-support system."
"We must call on private wealth to be the change. Every entity that has a net worth of $30 million or more should put a small portion of their wealth right now into advancing humanity by protecting the remaining wilderness, by regrowing the wilderness continuum, and transitioning the economy away from being self-destructive."
"Everything is possible. We have the mathematics. We just have to focus that ingenuity on biospheric reality, Life-support system reality."
"Living in the life-support system paradigm has embedded in it the resolution of a lot of the negativities that have come from the wealth monarchy system; the racism, the mysogyny, the subjugation of people who have less than... There is really a requirement that we employ the best of ourselves in the project of caring for the only life-support system in the known universe, and restoring Earth's biointegrity."
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In this podcast BioIntegrity director Chris Searles provides a brief overview of what each table leg means to BioIntegrity's new organizational model and identity, and proposes the world's .1% wealthiest entities (individuals, corporations, funds, institutions, etc.) invest 5% of their net worths in rescuing the only life-support system's remaining old growth wildernesses and transitioning today's economy into a regenerative economy. The rest of this decade should be focused on successfully achieving this paradigm change in order to overcome today's global challenges. Our primary goal: de-fragmentation of the global wilderness continuum by 2040; emergency-scale protection, regrowth and integration of wilderness integrity on Earth.
The Six Table Legs
- Life-support system
- Biodiversity relationships
- Life force reality
- Personal healing
- Indigeneity
- Advancement of humanity
Quote
"The next eight years should be focused on successful paradigm change.""Science shows us where to focus. Indigenous people show us how."
References
- BioIntegrity Lunch & Learn #8 (which includes a link to scientific citiations)
- Global Drought Monitor
- Chris' article, Biospheric Philosophy
- Donate to biointegrity here, thanks
Donate to BioIntegrityDonate to BioIntegrity here!
Covered in this podcast
- Thank you Jane Lowrimore, Linda Miller-Raff and Dr. Anne-Marie Thomas for their recent donations! Thank you also to CJ Abdo, new monthly contributor!
- The fundraising ask (short)
- We need something we can all agree on, how about continuation of the only Life-Support System?
- We are now living in the era of the broken climate system.
- Think in decades for the solution to take shape: next eight years (the 2020s), next ten after that (2030s), and the next ten (2040s): Regrow stability. Transition out of life-support system destruction economics and practices. The next 8 years should be focused on successful paradigm change: Optimizing our Life-Support System's integrityProtect, Regrow, and Integrate the Wilderness Continuum, some rationale:
- Our most reliable social and environmental solution
- Our quality of life determiner
- Our continuation determiner
- Our best response to Climate Change, biodiversity extinctions, food system collapse, overpopulation, biospheric collapse, poverty, preventing / mitigating / being resilient to / and recovering from extreme weather, drought, pollution, and more
- Maximizing biospheric integrity is the best global drought crisis response.
- Micro climate = wilderness integrity and richness.
- Life wants to live.
- There only good reasons for rescuing and restoring Earth's biointegrity.
- Restoration of the wilderness continuum offers more beneficial facets (returns on investment) at greater scale than any other solution.
- The .1% have more than enough resources to fund this.
References
- BioIntegrity Lunch & Learn #8 (which includes a link to scientific citiations)
- Global Drought Monitor
- Chris' article, Biospheric Philosophy
- Donate to biointegrity here, thanks
Thoughts on the severity of the day — biospheric recession and becoming the “next” generation. This podcast is re: the recent Fast Company article, "The Amazon used to be 'the lungs of the planet.' Not anymore" and related academic research. Scientifically, the Amazon is the heart of our life support system and the greatest of the productive ecosystems. It is no doubt in retreat and radically threatened today by global warming and human abuse. How do we respond? This isn't just an Amazon problem..... This podcast identifies the basis for change from the top and advancing our known future with biospherically-led economic revolution. Let us embrace biospheric realism today and the opportunities it brings even in nascent form. Let us call for real change now. This is BioIntegrity 2.0.
Citations for this episode (view on Google docs):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kPbe1TFsOGQbNhLDqjOySCxF1cycpmqc/view?usp=sharing
On Feb. 26, 2021, The United Nations published a report which clarified that nations have 10 months to get serious on their climate pledges. Here's a response to that, for the BioIntegrity community, from BioIntegrity founder/director, Chris Searles. In this podcast, Chris talks about the urgency of shifting our focus onto the biosphere, as we endeavor to sort-out how to stop and reverse multiple, urgent, planetary crises.
Show notes, with citations, here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T6Cv_N3B66ycEqKUrXx0aYwSUxYQGlio/view?usp=sharing