Bioneers 2007

This past weekend I attended the Bioneers conference in San Rafael, CA. I went because Aoibheall said, "You should go. This looks like something you'd really get a lot out of." She was, as usual, absolutely right.

Since the Babygoddess was going to be with her dad this weekend, we figured that rather than spend a gajillion dollars on a hotel room just for me, we'd spend a third of a gajillion on a KOA Kamping Kabin and Peaches could bring a friend. They'd be camping and doing fun things while I was attending a neato ecohippy conference.

There were several things that went wrong, but there were many things that went right. The truck is having problems with the cooling system (I think I broke it) and we found it nonoperational on Friday morning. No problem, we'll rent an SUV and I'll just miss the morning session. Done. On my way up north, though, I was driving through mist and rain. After the sessions I started heading for the campsite and drove through rain. I was thinking about our camping trip at Lassen and the strong silent backs of my women; I knotted my useless and gnarled manly hands on the steering wheel and thought about just driving into the ocean. But it was all fine. We had hot soup instead of roasting vegetables in a campfire made from damp wood and we all slept in a warm and cozy Kabin. And we were happy.

Friday afternoon, I got to attend a panel discussion about ecovillages and another about green building. Awesome stuff, it really made me think about different things to do with our house. The big word here was, "cohousing," which is the new word for, "commune." Already I'd looked around and the attendees were all earnest, pleasant, happy people with a shared interest in living sustainably. But, as with the Singularity Summit, there was a significant, "woo!" factor. Nobody offered to massage my aura, but there was a lot of talk about the Wisdom of Indigenous People.

I am unconvinced that people whose ancestors lived in a particular geographical region are inherently wiser than people whose ancestors moved around. On the other hand, wisdom is where you find it. One thing that Evon Peter said was that before starting a project, we should first think about how much of that project is ego. To the degree we're working on "I" stuff, we're not listening to other people and we're not thinking about balance, and that is just not sustainable.

Some of my favorite quotes from the presentations on Saturday morning:

"Environmental justice tells us we have a right to practice our traditional culture." (Isn't that how people justify whaling, female circumcision, male circumcision, rape, stoning, etc.? Just because it's been done for centuries doesn't mean it's a good idea.)

"We have a right to demand that our surroundings be beautiful." (This is so egocentric I don't even know where to begin.)

"This is a really powerful, powerful place for women to be. [pause] And men, too."

On the other hand, there were some really cool things, too. The idea of green roofs, planting gardens on rooftops, for instance. That didn't immediately connect to me because I live in a forest. But when I went into downtown San Rafael at lunch time and looked around from the upper floor of a parking structure, I saw a lot of roofs. I imagined them with grass and flowers and shrubs and yeah, that would be really cool.

I also imagined them covered with solar collectors, and that was cool. Paul Anastas was the first presenter for the Saturday plenary session and he spoke about "green chemistry." One point he made was that we (people) celebrated the construction of a photovoltaic cell with 40% efficiency. But leaves photosynthesize at a mere 1% efficiency. 1% is good enough for plants because the production of leaves isn't heinously expensive nor extraordinarily toxic, so leaves can be ubiquitous. If we could make solar cells as cheaply and inoffensively as plants make leaves, we could stick them everywhere and have plenty of power, even if the cells were not terribly efficient.

It strikes me now that perhaps what we're looking at is technological development having been evaluated against the wrong fitness function. We've been looking at efficiency but we should have been looking at toxicity and sustainability.

Saturday afternoon I went to a panel discussion of biomimicry. It was all about looking at the way nature has solved problems (abalone shells are incredibly tough ceramics, for instance) and seeing if we can design systems that mimic those solutions. The hope there is to achieve the result in a way that doesn't degrade the environment or doesn't cost a lot of energy, etc. Very cool, and inspiring.

By Sunday, I was really fired up. Yes, I felt a little put off by many of the people; I have a hard time with a lot of hippies. Aoibheall points out that I'm a hippy but I'm in denial about it. Wallace J. Nichols gave a presentation about his work with sea turtles and advocacy for taking care of the oceans. He's an inspiring speaker, with lots of passion. And he's got cute kids. He convinced me: shrimp suck.

Sunday afternoon I attended a panel discussion on scenario planning. The moderator, Peter Warshall, opened the session by saying that he wanted us to talk to each other and to the panel. Then the presenters, Peter Schwartz and Diana Scearce, got up and talked about the process they go through in developing scenarios for organizations. It was fascinating, and when they opened it up for questions from the audience, I got in line. I asked what tools they used to help in their process and what tools, if any, I might make to make it easier. It turns out that software isn't the missing thing; the process is narrative rather than algorithmic. The hard part, as they put it, is getting the organization to buy into scenario building as a useful process.

I stepped away from the mike and was approached by a guy who was really interested in simulation and modeling, since he'd just finished doing some research in which he was developing a predictive model of rat behavior. Anyway, we got to talking about ways to capture people's ideas about what might happen and then model outcomes. We were asked to keep it down. Then we were asked to go outside. Then we were asked to go farther away from the door. So much for Peter Warshall's invitation to talk to one another. We were joined by another fellow, an AI researcher, and we kept on talking about ways to do scenario planning and modeling. I was thinking about verdigris, and the conversation was giving me all kinds of cool ideas.

Overall, the Bioneers conference was a great event.