Beyond Katrina

Bioneers Conference Day 3

Nina Simons, President and Co-founder: How dominant our left side of the brain is personally and in the culture. Another intrepretation: Masculine and feminine capacities. The question is how do we as a culture find balance? What is the purpose of leadership? to catalyze change. Peter Senge - leadership is about creating new realities. We must redefine leadership. Most of our models for leadership are outmoded. She proposes we lead more from the feminine - from the right side of the brsin, involves a shift into awareness of the natural world - to community and connection. Leadership is an evolving practice. How to practice leadership 1. valuing relationships more than things. 2. pay attention to our biases 3. Name our prejudices 4. Appreciate processes as much as outcomes 5. Ask the right questions - allow others to step into leadership 6. partner in supporting each other into leadership - reciprocal mentorship, especially women and girls. Naomi Klein - THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER CAPITALISM The deals that are being made now re the financial bail out are impacting the future. The banks have been essentially nationalized. Plan A was handling the debts - taking private debts and making them public. Both political parties rose up against it and the people said no. The bad idea is to turn the government into a kind of hedge fund. Crony capitalism at its worst. Klein urges people to read the fine print on this deal. 9 banks agreed to partial nationalism. The public is taking on the risks with none of the power. So what are the conditions? Milton Friedman quote: Only a crisis real or perceived will bring change. We have an opportunity because the economic infrastructure is in crisis. The biggest crisis of our time is climate change. This is a moment of opportunity. We can only be defeated by our tentiavness. Google Earth: Visualizing change, mapping the future: Rebecca Moore Rebecca's efforts are dramatically leveraging the crucial work of NGO's, communities, initiatives With google earth u can hold the earth in the palm of your hand. Initially it was used for recreational use. When Katrina hit New Orleans NOAA asked google earth to provide hi res images - helped save 4,000 people. Goog doesn't just give you the earth - they give you the tools to add your own content to it. You are putting information in context which is useful in environmental activism. Appalachian Voices -Mountain Mining Initiative: used google earth to show the communities that would be impacted...image overlays to show before and after of mountaintop removal.'' you can annotate and embed video... This initiative needed signatures on a petition to stop a mountaintop removal project and were able to accomplish this with google earth. San Francisco Oil Spill - ocean conservancy used google earth to raise awareness. Dreaming New Mexico: Now you can embed google earthninto your website. incredible group of activists, systems approach to collaboration They were invited by an Amazon tribe trying to save a rainforest to come down and teach their people how to use Google Earth. They had first contact with modern life when a highway penetrated their rainforest. The chief went to a university, tried google earth on a computer and did the first thing everybody does, flew to his home. The chief connected the dots and then went to Google Earth and asked them to train their people - a way for them to show the world how they are saving their forests and how it is economically sustainable. The tribe realized that they were going to connect with and share their culture with millions of people. Rick Reid COLLABORATING ON A GRAND SCALE: THINK SYSTEMICALLY AND ACT COLLABORATIVELY New approaches to grant making. Climate change project in the midwest. 19 grantmaking agencies commited funds to a process - to reform a system. Goal was an 80% reduction in coal reduction - 25 year gold. First thing was to generate a complete systems map - then to pare it down to 4 leverage points. While they were doing this 100 million dollar wind farm was announced - but also a new coal plant. They were able to mobilize. No one group could reach their goal but together they could. The whole body made grant making decisions that were aligned with the larger goals.

Bioneers Conference - Day 2 Plenaries

13,000 people are gathered today in real time - on site and in satellite locations around the globe. Chief Oren Lyons of the Wolf Clan speaking at Bioneers now... Janine Benyus: NATURE'S 100 BEST: TOP BIOMIMICRY SOLUTIONS TO ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES Qualcomm - research on imitating the colors of a butterfly's wings - applications to color on digital screens Benyus is the "mother of biomimicry"... just returned from the ICN conference - International Conservation League. She said she is not going to talk about scarcity, she's going to talk about abundance - life's good ideas. There is more than one way to spread our seeds. Indigenous people have known for a long time that the models are there. Co2 is being used to make plastics. There is a company that is learning to harvest wave energy like kelp. bioluminescent jellyfish - just add calcium and you get light. Bee swarm technology - bees have a unique voting system. algae know how to manage bacteria without killing it. purifying water using human membranes as a model. the economy - one company's discards being used by another...resource sharing. Life's most innovative design is that it gives and takes care of its own needs. Vision for who we can be as a species? Dune Lankard - SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS OVER CENTURIES: A NEW BUSINESS MODEL Dune is an Eyak Athabaskan native - became an activist and preservationist when the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill descecrated his homelands and water. He describes the preservation of ecosystems and the people who inhabit them as the way to maintain healthy, thriving economies for businesses into the community. Conservationists are fighting over the same funding pots. Started a land trust - the native conservancy - for his tribe so they didn't have to give up their land to preseve and conserve it.

Bioneers Conference Friday afternoon sessions

I am covering the topic 'Women Rising Globally' this afternoon in the main tent. This is a panel discussion. Media and communications is one of the main components in this rising movement of women in leadership. 3 Unstoppable Trends: 1. The rise of women's leadership. 2. The communications Revolution ---lower barriers for publishers. 3. The shift in global consciousness to invest in women's issues. my observation: I am thinking to my self how young they look - the 4 amazing women who are sitting on this panel - and right there is the evidence...and the good news! Kavita Ramdas just said something amazing - she said there is this idea that we should be focused on educating women. She says women have a lot to do to educate the world. There is this idea that women are this group of people who need educating, filled up, given micro-credit. Women need to be have their voices and their wisdom heard - The knowledge and wisdom is already there.

Bioneers Opening Notes

Energy market is a 6 trillion dollar industry - I am not sure I can wrap my mind around 6 trillion. Texas is about to build one of the biggest wind plants in the world. The Dreaming New Mexico Project inspires an idea -What about a Dream map for gulf coast rebuilding? Paul Stamets - "the mushroom guy" is speaking right now about using fungi to save the world! Just heard Erica Fernandez speak, a young lady who at the ripe age of 16, rallied her community to stop an LNG pipeline project that would have negatively impacted the coastal community she lives in. Ray Anderson speaking on the "green collar economy", Industrial sustainability in action now. 7 real examples of new thinking, conscious design, and bio-mimicry...status quo thinking is an opiate that must be over come. He says the goodwill of the marketplace has been astonishing. In closing Anderson says "our society cannot survive unless we take care of nature. She is the goose that lays the golden egg. We must not only 'do no harm', we must do good. Kavita Ramdas, The Global Fund fund for Women - extraordinay woman doing amazing work to empower underprivledged women. Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of the late great Jaques Cousteau speaking on blue issues - she believes water is the defining crisis of this next century. She says passion for the ocean is a beautiful legacy to have been born into...and her grandfather grew weary of answering environmental questions at the end of his life. He did not understand how people could see the grandeur of the earth and its oceans and ask why it should be preserved. Our water planet gives back what we give to it. If we abuse it returns abuse. I don't think any of us in south Louisiana can argue this point. Alexandra urges all of us to change the conversation from one of guilt to one of urgency in hope.

Blogging Live From Bioneers Conference

Good morning. I am blogging live this week-end from the 19th annual Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California. Bioneers members are creating and realizing imaginative approaches to restoring and protevting the health of our planet and the well being of our communities.

Tenacity Over Tears: The Life of a Bayou Woman

I want to take this opportunity to introduce my readers to a very special friend from Bayou Du Large, one of the the coastal communities in Terrebonne Parish, La that was  impacted  by the storms of 2005 and now severely in  2008.  Her name is Wendy Wilson Billiot, but she is most affectionately known these days as "Bayou Woman". While I have never met Wendy personally - inasmuch as we have a shared passion for Louisiana's coastal concerns -we've enjoyed a wonderful pen pal relationship via email for the past year or so. There are some folks you just feel an affinity to right off the bat. Wendy is one of them.

In addition to keeping up with her through email,   Wendy publishes a very unique and interesting blog about her life in Bayou Du Large which I read frequently. Well before Gustav and Ike made landfall in coastal Louisiana, I told Wendy I wanted to do a tribute to her and her blog here at Beyond Katrina because I've enjoyed it so much.  After Ike's storm surged pushed into Terrebonne Parish flooding her community and her home, I just knew it was time to make good on that promise.

Wendy's blog, "Life in the Louisiana Wetlands ", (which can be viewed at http://bayouwoman.wordpress.com/ ) is a veritable plethora of information about life on the bayou  as seen through the eyes of a true blue Bayou Woman. She covers everything you'd ever want to know there (but are too afraid to ask) from fishing, to bayou cooking, wildlife, plant life and  more.

Wendy is also a hard working and  relentless advocate for the preservation and restoration of Louisiana's fragile wetlands.. Her community of Bayou Du Large is in the  Terrebonne Estuary System, which she is quick to remind is "vanishing at the astonishing rate of a football field every half hour". She has a  USCG captain's license which enables her to take people on tours to see the amazing beauty and degradation of our wetlands. She has also penned a wonderful book, Before the Saltwater Came, an environmental book about our local wetlands and the first of its kind. Her book  is being used to educate students about our disappearing wetlands in  classrooms across the  state, the nation, and indeed all over the world. Likewise, her articles have appeared in many well know magazines and newspapers and she won the  Louisiana Outdoor Writer's Association Excellence in Craft first place award  in 2007 for her articles about Louisiana's coastal issues.

Believe it or not  there is still more - and while  I haven't told Wendy this yet -  this is just the  first in a series of posts I'll be doing about "Bayou Woman". She is one of the most creative, interesting and multi-talented folks I've ever encountered and there is just way too much to share about the cornucopia that is her life in just this one post. I also feel it is important to cover Terrebonne's recovery and rebuilding efforts here, just as I have done for the communities impacted by Katrina and Rita. However, I couldn't share the story of Terrebonne's recovery any better than Wendy can.

As I write, Wendy is working hard to clean up after Gustav and Ike, choosing "tenacity over tears" as she deals with the multitude of personal and collective losses inherent to the impact of two back to back hurricanes.   Her latest blog posts with accompanying photographs (yep she's quite a photog too)  provide an insiders view of the many facets of  hurricane recovery in Terrebonne parish. I do hope you will stop by Wendy's blog at http://bayouwoman.wordpress.com/ and peek in on the amazing life of a Bayou Woman!

Margaret Saizan

**Photo courtesy -- Wendy Billiot

Gov. Jindal visits storm-wrecked Terrebonne Parish

    

"The Gulf of Mexico came up, and as you know, we couldn't stop it," said Terrebonne Parish sheriff Vernon Bourgeois.It was amidst that backdrop that Governor Bobby Jindal arrived in Terrebonne Parish, talking about the state's efforts to recover from two hurricanes in the span of two weeks. He says the state won't be able to do it on its own.Continue>>>

Changing the landscape of Louisiana marshes

Upcoming long-term projects to rebuild dying marshes will alter the landscape of the coastal fishing communities, which need to start preparing

As Hurricane Ike's storm surge created coastal chaos, I couldn't help thinking back to conversations earlier this summer with Lafitte area anglers upset about the impacts of the Davis Pond Freshwater Diversion Project. Speck fishing had been lousy in the northern part of Barataria Basin, and fishermen were convinced it was because Davis Pond had changed their brackish habitat into a freshwater lake. Continue>>>

Tugboat hits bridge in Bayou Sorrel, hundreds landlocked

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Most of Louisiana's coast flooded by Ike

HACKBERRY — Hurricane Ike's floodwaters lay over most of Louisiana's 250-mile coast Sunday, inhibiting search and rescue missions while leaving behind vast destruction of a landscape still struggling since the deadly 2005 storm season. Continue>>>