This Week’s “Bioneers” Presents Legendary Environmentalist Paul Hawken

Environmentalist, entrepreneur and author Paul Hawken is featured on this week’s radio show “The Bioneers” with a program called “Regeneration: Wisdom of the Wild, Generosity of the Heart.”  I catch the Bioneers Mondays at 1:00 PM Pacific Time on my local NPR affiliate KCBX, which, btw, boasts recently improved Internet streaming capability.  I hope you’ll check it out.

They write:

(Hawken’s) work includes starting ecological businesses, writing about the impact of commerce on living systems, and consulting with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy.  “What we’re trying to do is not about winning.  It’s about losing…losing this burden of having to ‘make it’, to be rich, to be comfortable, to be seen, to be famous, to be followed, to be friended, to be known….  Takers suffer — universally.”

I often quote Hawken’s remark about his work in environmental and social justice:  “It’s not a way to get rich.  It’s a way to BE rich.”

And here’s the way he began his commencement address (pictured above) to the graduating class of 2009 of the University of Portland:

Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.  This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken.

Wow.  I hope you’ll be able to tune in on Monday.