Becoming an Earth Regenerator (with Joe Brewer)

How about these goals: 

• Avoid human extinction
• Cultivate healthy economies of living systems at local landscape, continental and planetary scales
• Emerge into these systems on the other side of whatever crises and collapse(s) are ahead

What would that take?

Joe Brewer has dedicated his life to this question, and to a "living laboratory" of bioregional regeneration and community collaboration. He is the founder of Earth Regenerators and co-founder of the newly established Design School for Regenerating Earth.

I have learned so much from Joe. He's been a source of information, inspiration, techniques and strategies, and also the reason I've found many other people I'm now so grateful to be connected with (including Charles Upton, whom you heard from in Episode 21). 

Joe gave me a big grin and two thumbs up when I said that I frame these conversations in the language of Joanna Macy, so we have that in common. His roots of study spread wide in many other directions, though: He's a complexity researcher and transdisciplinary scholar who has studied cultural evolution, physics, atmospheric sciences, and cognitive linguistics, among other things. Joe is also a father, and someone who is trying to embody the pathway to Earth Regeneration. I know through community photos and stories that he's out there digging swales and planting trees, and participating actively in all the realities of community cooperation.

I've been looking forward to having a conversation with Joe Brewer for a long time, and I'm excited to share it with you now.

Click Play now to dive into:

• working for regeneration on the scale of larger landscapes, even if we live in cities (how did water move through this bioregion before these cities existed?)
• in thinking about sustainability, how much depends on the regenerative capacity of the land
• having children, being with children, and being there for children, in these times (I loved this: "children are such a profound source of human emotional regeneration")
• the tapestry of local projects being woven together in the High Andes Tropical Dry Forest ecosystem of Barichara, Colombia - a living laboratory for a bioregional-scale regenerative economy 
• the human species being in ecological overshoot, what that probably means about the future, and what Joe is "actively hopeful" for, in light of that
• how to have effective, cooperative groups - both the knowledge about how to do that, and the actual practice of doing it
• and Joe's words of advice on following your heart, and being ready for people to be confused

I continue to learn so much from Joe and the Earth Regenerators community. Maybe for some of you listening this will also be a doorway into what's next for you, in your journey toward embodying life-sustaining, life-honoring, regenerative ways to live in the web of Life.

Come to the show notes for links to connect with Joe Brewer, check out the Design School for Regenerating Earth, and learn about other topics we touched on: turningseason.com/episode33