ONE MAN'S JUNK:

Eriksen_junk_3Eriksen_junk_raftBill_McKibben

Eco-explorer, Dr. Marcus Eriksen, will bring "bottle boats" to the River City for the 2012 conference, and Bill McKibben headlines the national plenaries.

Bluegrass Bioneers 2012

Presented by BEgreenCreative & the UofL Sustainability Council

Bluegrass Bioneers is the southeast's Beaming Bioneers incarnation and is based in Louisville, KY. Louisville is proud once again to be a Bioneers satellite city - one of the few within our region. If you are within range, come on in and participate. See a list of all the Beaming Bioneers sites around the country and world.

The fourth annual Bluegrass Bioneers will combine national plenary speakers and experts on the "big screen" from the national Bioneers Conference in California with live local & regional speakers, experts, and performances for an entertaining and enriching event that encourages innovative, creative solutions to help Louisville and the rest of the world build a more just and sustainable society.

On a national level, Bioneers is an inspired and inspiring annual 3-day conference in Northern California of more than 3,000 social, scientific, and environmental innovators working to create a more just and sustainable world for humanity. The website is www.bioneers.org and the organization's tagline is "Revolution from the Heart of Nature."

PREVIEWS:

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LOCAL:

"Message in a Bottle" Plastic Pollution Boat Race & Art Contest

As part of the 2012 Bluegrass Bioneers, a plastic pollution awareness event will be held at 11:00 am on Saturday, October 20, 2012 at Carrie Gaulbert Cox Park, 3730 River Road, in Louisville, Kentucky. Local high schools will be invited to build boats out of 2-liter bottles and other recycled materials to enter in a boat race on the Ohio River. Area students will place notes inside the bottles reflecting their thoughts on how plastic is affecting our environment, and what they can do to make a difference. The event is free and everyone is welcome to attend the race.

In conjunction with the boat project, several art and poster contests will be offered to local schools. The contests will focus on the three R’s (reduce, reuse, and recycle). Students will recycle trash to create posters and 3D sculptures. Winning works of art will be displayed throughout the 2012 Bluegrass Bioneers conference on Nov. 2nd-4th at the University of Louisville, and the grand prize winners will be recognized at an awards ceremony at the conference which is open to the public. The plastic bottle boats from the race will also be on exhibit at the conference. It is our hope that these activities will raise community awareness about how plastics are affecting our waterways and ocean.

Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation will captain the main boat, the “Bottleship Louisville,” and will give a presentation on his experiences fighting plastic pollution. “Plastic pollution is one of the most challenging environmental issues we face on our planet,” Eriksen said. Previously, he has built and sailed plastic bottle boats across the Pacific and down the Mississippi River. You can read more about him and his adventures at 5Gyres.org.

Dr. Marcus Eriksen

Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Co-Founder of 5 Gyres Institute

 

Marcus Eriksen received his Ph.D. in Science Education from University of Southern California, and his M.A. and B.S. from the University of New Orleans. During this academic career Marcus worked many different jobs, ranging from Research Assistant in University of New Orleans Vertebrate Paleontology Lab to Educator and Exhibit Supervisor at the Los Angeles Zoo, Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, and New Orleans Audubon Park and Zoological Gardens. He teaches and conducts research in earth science, lectures at schools and museums and supervises an annual field course in paleontology in Wyoming. Currently he is AMRF's Director of Research and Education and hosts "Commando Weather," a series of public service announcements about the science of weather, for the Weather Channel. In 2006, he won the H. David Nahai Water Quality Award in Education, presented by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

In 2005, Marcus created Watershed Wonders, an educational video series packaged with curriculum materials for Junior and Senior High Schools. Episodes include "Bottle Rocket down the Mississippi River," "Coastal Wetlands and the Journey of Fluke," and "Cola Kayak and the Los Angeles River." Marcus recently published his first book, titled "My River Home" (Beacon Press, 2007) chronicling his experience as a marine in the 1991 Gulf War and a rafting journey 2000 miles down the Mississippi River on a raft of plastic bottles.

In 2008, Marcus rafted across the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii on JUNK, a raft floating on 15,000 plastic bottles, 30 sailboat masts lashed to form a deck, and a Cessna airplane fuselage as a cabin (junkraft.com).  The journey, 2,600 miles in 88 days, brought attention to the issue of plastic trash filling the world’s oceans and solutions.  JUNKraft  was followed by a 2000-mile speaking tour from Vancouver, Canada to Tijuana, Mexico with his wife, Anna Cummins. Recently, Marcus and Anna co-founded “5 Gyres Institute”, to study and communicate plastic pollution in the 5 large ocean gyres in the world. Marcus was elected a National Fellow of the Explorers Club in 2010.

 

NATIONAL:

Bioneers 2012 national plenary speaker, Bill McKibben,

in Albuquerque 2008.

Bill McKibben

Co-founder,350.org and renowned journalist, activist, author


Described as the 'planet's best green journalist' (Time magazine) and 'perhaps America's most important environmentalist' (Boston Globe), is the award-winning author of a dozen seminal books on the environment, including The End of Nature (published in 1989), generally regarded as the first book for a general audience about global warming. He is the co-founder of the highly effective global climate campaign 350.org, which last year led the largest civil disobedience action in 30 years in this country, in which 1,253 people were arrested in an effort to slow construction of the Keystone Pipeline. He is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont.  (www.350.org)

He will describe the 350.org's campaigns, including stopping the Keystone XL pipeline for the most climate-wrecking "dirty" oil from Canada's Tar Sands. Against all odds, McKibben and 350.org halted what seemed like a sure thing - at least for now. Bill's reporting helped expose the faulty review process by the State Department and the crony capitalism behind it. 350.org will also participate in a Campaign Connection to help you make a decisive difference.