Learning How to Regenerate the Berkshire Bioregion

The Wellspring Commons Stewards and Alliance for a Viable Future welcome the co-founders of the Design School for Regenerating Earth, Joe Brewer and Penny Heiple to Great Barrington for a conversation about learning how to regenerate our Earth. The 90-minute talk will be followed with time for snacks and a chat. You support is invited. "Ticket" amounts are suggested donation levels. 

Humanity has destabilized key processes of the Earth to such an extent that our future is in peril. What will it take to restore living systems at the necessary scales so that it becomes possible to regenerate the entire planet? Such an ambitious question begins at home -- in our local landscapes where on-the-ground efforts can come together around shared goals. In this talk, Joe Brewer of the Design School for Regenerating Earth will share insights and experiences about how to organize as "bioregions" and coordinate local efforts in service of restoring health to watersheds, coastal estuaries, mountain ranges, and other large-scale landscape systems. Special attention will be given to the watersheds of Connecticut and Massachusetts where local organizing is already underway.

About Joe and Penny:

Joe Brewer is a transdisciplinary scholar and polymath with a unique background in physics, math, philosophy, atmospheric science, complexity research, and cognitive linguistics. Awakened to the reality of human-induced planetary collapse while pursuing a Ph.D. in atmospheric science, he switched fields and began to work with scholars in the behavioral and cognitive sciences with the hope of helping create large-scale behavior change at the global level. He has spoken at many global conferences on the science of social change and the human dimensions of planetary sustainability and has given workshops on four continents about the workings of the human mind and the strategic tools for designing and enacting positive change in the world.

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In his book, The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth, Joe outlines the seriousness of the predicament we are in while also demonstrating that it really is possible to regenerate the Earth at the scales needed. The pathway he describes in his book is for us to organize ourselves around holistic, integrated landscapes known as bioregions, and connect those bioregions into a planetary network of learning exchanges.

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Joe is currently doing on-the-ground regeneration work in a 500,000-hectare (~1.5 million-acre) bioregion in the Northern Andes of Colombia and is a co-founder of the Design School for Regenerating Earth, whose mission is to live out this vision at the planetary scale.

Penny Heiple has a passion for serving life and our beautiful planet Earth. She recently moved to Barichara, Colombia, to live out her dream of regenerating the earth alongside her life partner, Joe Brewer. Penny and Joe do on-the-ground regeneration work and are helping to create a local regenerative economy in their bioregion, located in the great turn of the Northern Andes mountain range. Together they also co-founded the Design School for Regenerating Earth and are working with people from all over the world to organize themselves around holistic, integrated landscapes connected into a planetary network of bioregional learning exchanges.

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A native of Boulder, Colorado, Penny is passionate about integrating and applying unified science, integral philosophy, regenerative practices, and biodynamic healing and trauma resolution to everything she does. These passions combined with her comprehensive background in operations, project management, accounting, and administration means that she brings a unique combination of heart and organizational expertise to the Design School and her work on the ground in Colombia.