Steppin' Out Of Babylon: Radio Interviews

Clayton Thomas-Müller of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, Canada, is the indigenous oil campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. He works across Alaska, Canada and the lower 48 States of the US with grassroots indigenous communities to defend their human and environmental rights against transnational oil corporations. Clayton has been recognized by Utne magazine as one of the top 30 under 30 young visionary activists in the U.S.. Sue Supriano interviewed him at Bioneers where he was a presenter.Thomas-Muller says that 35% of all fossil fuels found in North America are on or near indigenous lands so corporations and government organizations concentrate on exploiting them and socio-economic conditions are worsening for the people who live near the sites of these nonsustainable energy sources such as oil and gas. Like so many people, some of the leaders go for the money offered them by the corporations and government agencies and things get worse and worse in terms of the

Greg Watson is Vice President for Sustainable Development and Renewable Energy at the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. He works with the Renewable Energy Trust Fund and leads the Offshore Wind Initiative for them. Watson has been Executive Director of The New Alchemy Institute, The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and the Nature Conservancy Eastern Regional Office. He was also Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture.This show focuses on the issue of the rapidity and seriousness of effects of climate change and the urgency of getting renewable energy in place of fossil fuel use since fossil fuel use makes climate change speed up even more and oil is peaking (becoming much harder to access!!) as well. Though people tend to have their heads in the sand about this issue even the New York Times is writing about it as insurance companies are canceling people's insurance. The companies understand that the amount of damage which will occur from the computer predicted growing i

Jeremy Narby is a Swiss-based PhD anthropologist and indigenous land rights activist who grew up in Canada and Switzerland, studied history at the University of Canterbury and received his doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University. He is the author of The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge and most recently, Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry Into Knowledge. Narby has worked for two decades with indigenous Amazonian people in efforts to guarantee their territories and cultures.In this interview, conducted at the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, Ca., Narby describes how he went to the Amazon as a Marxist activist graduate student working with with issues of land rights for indigenous people of that region and how his eyes were opened by the shamans who used the very strong ayuasca and tobacco plants of that area as they have been doing since anyone can remember. He discovered that they knew about DNA and many many other things that modern western science is only recently coming to unde

Jeffrey M. Smith exposes the risks of genetically modified food in his book, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating. He has been a guest on Steppin' Out of Babylon in the past. In this show he focuses especially on his recent experience in Southern Africa from where he returned only hours before the interview.Smith holds up the people of Zambia as heroes in that they refused the genetically engineered corn offered them by the US even though such a large number of Zambians are infected with AIDS and their immune systems are weak due to a variety of reasons, including hunger. Eventually they accepted asking that they not receive the seeds, but milled corn, so their corn would not be polluted by the GM seeds. The US refused and a US official is quoted as saying they want to pollute the Zambian seed supply to make the farmers dependent on buying Monsato genetically engineered seeds. Fortunately South Africa milled the seeds first so

Malik Rahim lives in Algiers-- a section of New Orleans that was not hit by Katrina, the huge hurricane that destroyed so much of New Orleans although it did flood somewhat because some levees broke. Rahim talks about his experience of the scandalous lack of response to help people who were suffering from the effects of the hurricane and floods-- especially poor Black people. In fact, due to these racist policies many people died needlessly. We may never know how many. He tells the story of a dead body lying rotting for days in front of the health clinic and how the army even put a tent over it, but didn't remove it for a week or so. Horrendous stories!Rahim stepped forward as an organizer since there was no person, people, or organizations doing the job. He was a Black Panther in the past and knew the importance of organizing. One of the first things that he, along with others, did was to set up a health clinic out of his mosque. Of course the needs of evacuees who were coming to Algiers was very great and n

Mike Ruppert, Editor and Publisher of www.fromthewilderness.com and author of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil spoke at SolFest at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland, California in August 2005 where this interview occurred. Ruppert, a former Los Angeles narcotics police officer, has been a teller of truth as he sees it for many many years. He was shot at, his life was threatened and when he reported it to LAPD Chief Darly Gates, Gates responded (through an aide) that he was too busy to see Ruppert, and that he'd see him in a week to 10 days if he (Ruppert) was still alive. At that Ruppert resigned from the LAPD. He has retained, and possibly strengthened his committment to telling the truth.He was one of the first independent investigators to look into what really caused the tragic events of 9/11/2001 and has continued to be a leader in the movement to uncover the 9/11 cover-up. From the beginning of this investigation and discussion he has claimed that

Gary Braasch spoke at the Green Cities Conference in Oakland, Ca. in May 2005 where this interview took place after seeing his presentation which included his incredible photos. Braasch is a photo journalist who has been photographing and documenting ecosystems of the earth in all their beauty and complexity for many years. Since he visited many of the same places from the Arctic to Antarctica, from the glaciers to the oceans, across all climate zones year after year he noticed the extreme changes in temperature and its effects on the landscape. There is no doubt that rapid and extreme climate change is real, is accelerating across the globe and will affect more people than does war. Some of the animals and plants with whom we share the planet are adapting and some are going extinct. We humans are animals as well and our fate is in question as the climate and ocean temperatures warm. It is believed that the recent enormous destruction of the hurricane that hit Louisiana and Mississippi is a result of global w

Omar Freilla is the Founder/Director of Greenworker Cooperatives in the South Bronx, New York. He was in San Francisco speaking as part of the Social Equity track arranged by the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, Ca. during United Nations Environmental Day/Week in San Francisco in June 2005.Freilla speaks about the particular issues of "environmental justice" in the South Bronx-- how those things we take for granted and are "out of sight, out of mind" such as sewage from flush toilets and garbage and toxic dumping negatively effect the community of the South Bronx. He mentions the waste water company Synagrow in the S. Bronx which takes sewage sludge, heats it, puts it in pellets still loaded with heavy metals and sells it as fertilizer including for oranges for Florida Natural and Tropicana juice companies. This company has the nerve to be applying for organic certification. He also goes into how 50,000 tons of trash per day is produced in New York as well as 14,000 tons of construction and demolition debris. Mu

Thais Mazur is the author of the recent book, Warrior Mothers: Stories to Awaken the Flames of the Heart. Mazur herself is a warrior mother. She's a dancer, martial arts teacher, investigative journalist, radio producer, activist and the mother of a young child. She has been granted awards for her work as a choreographer and is the artistic director of the acclaimed Women in Black dance project.In this show she talks about her book, Warrior Mothers, and goes into the stories of several of the 25 women in her book. They represent a range of age, ethnicities, backgrounds and issues. The stories are very very moving and inspiring and most definitely "awaken the flames of the heart". The serious issues facing us today concerning climate change and peak oil, loss of democracy, etc. are discussed. Mazur describes the good work being done in the community of Mendocino County in Northern California where she lives. An institute of sustainability is being developed and more and more people are working together to live

Dave Room is the Director of North American Operations, Post Carbon Institute. He is a social entrepreneur and post carbon activist with a strong interests and experience in environmental affairs and the use of technology for communications and collaboration. He manages Post Carbon Institute's US operation, organizes events, write policy, conducts local outreach and speaks at numerous events. He is also editor and interviewer for Global Public Media, the umbrella foundation for Post Carbon Institute. He is co-authoring a new book (with Julian Darley and Celine Rich of Post Carbon Institute)-- Relocalize Now! Getting Ready for Climate Change and the End of Cheap Oil. He has a Masters Degree in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University.This show is a speech Room made at the Lifeboat Conference put on by the Titanic Lifeboat Academy in Astoria Oregon lifeboat.postcarbon.org. He defines the issue of societal changes coming up and some inspiring and creative ideas for how we can make the most of these

Kevin Pina is an independent journalist and filmmaker who is from California and has been living in Port of Prince, Haiti for last 5 years. He has formed the Haiti Information Project and has trained local Haitian reporters as well. They are all very brave as they film on the ground and report what's going on with the poor and disenfranchised people in this Caribbean island country, especially since their duly elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was removed from his office and the country, to be replaced by a government that seems to be making life much more difficult for Haiti's people, the majority of whom are poor and suffering.In this show Pina gives history, analysis and up-to-date information about what is going on in July 2005 in Haiti. It seems the United Nations "peacekeeping" force is breaking into people's shacks in the poorest areas of Port of Prince, and sometimes even killing people, including young children, with shots to the head. Pina has very graphic, sad, shocking and awful film of t

Dominie Cappadonna, Ph.D. describes herself as a lifelong explorer of many dimensions of our human and nature experience. She has been teaching for the past 27 years in the fields of Transpersonal Psychology, Ecopsychology and Education. Currently she teaches at the Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado, as well as the California Institute for Human Science and other places. She has published many articles and is currently working on her first book, True Nature: Essence Teachings in Nature. She is committed to engaged spirituality in all its forms and humanitarian projects (eg., in Cambodia and Brazil) with people exploring life transitions and rites of passage. She works as a psychotherapist as well as teaching. She says about the new field of Ecopsychology that it recognizes that human health, identity and sanity are integrally linked to the health of the earth and must included sustainable and mutually enhancing relationships between humans and the more than human world.Cappadonna has done an amazing amount

Matt Savinar, has spent his life in California where he is a licensed attorney. He has recently focused his time and energy letting people know about how life as we know it is about to soon change due to the coming end (it might be here already, in fact) of cheap and easily available oil on which our industrial society is built. His website is www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net and there you can find most of the information, facts and figures about the end of oil and how we can prepare for our new lives. His website has been the #1 "Peak Oil" site on Boogle since January 2004 and has been instrumental in rasising the awareness of "peak oil". He is also the author of The OIl Age is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil, 2005-2050 In May of 2005 when US Representative Roscoe Barlett presented a report on Peak Oil, stressing the gravity and urgency of the coming crisis, he quoted extensively from Savinar's book.This show is the speech Savinar gave at the Lifeboat Conference in Astoria, Oregon this Ju

Evon Peter is the Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich'in people in Alaska. He is an amazing young man who, though he grew up carrying water to his one room house which was remote and without energy from gas or oil (no electricity, etc), now travels the world speaking about his people and all indigenous people and the welfare of all living things. He especially makes a plea for us in the United States to stop the US and the oil companies from drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Region. This bill is in the US Congress as we write right now. Evon Peter from his website www.nativemovement.org:"The relationship between the Indigenous Peoples of Alaska and the United Stated needs to be addressed. This relationship is out of balance. Indigenous Peoples are struggling for basic human rights, quality education, and jobs. Yet, the colonial governments and European-based corporations are making billions of dollars in profit from Indigenous land and resources in Alaska every year.Our place as human beings in the world is out of bala

James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. He is also the author of three other nonfiction books, The Geography of Nowhere, Home from Nowhere, and The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, as well as nine novels. He has been an editor with Rolling Stone and his articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Atlantic Monthly.In this interview he addresses the issues of the decline of the cheap energy from fossil fuels on which the industrialized world is built. He predicts epochal changes to our social relations, economy , and political system that are today are unimaginable for us to grasp, though it would be to our benefit to do so in order to develop a smoother transition to the post industrial age. Climate change is also part of the emerging catastrophes leading to this emergency which will change everything. Life will become more local, globalism and the consumer economy will wither, we will struggle to

John DeGraaf is known for being the author of Affluenza- The All Consuming Epidemic which is both a book and a film. DeGraaf is presently working on TV films on hunger, Fair Trade, and he also works with the Take Back Your Time Campaign which is the first national initiative of the Simplicity Forum, and an unofficial think tank for the Simplicity Movement. This interview took place at a Simplicity Conference in Oakland, California.DeGraaf talks about how we Americans are overworked as a society due to obsession with consuming. We tend to be stressed, our health is affected, as is our family life. And the sad thing is that our workaholism and consumerism does not lead to happiness. In fact, studies show that we're at the bottom of the list of quality of life indexes for industrialized nations. Since 1980 our health and happiness indexes have been falling until we are tied at 27th with non-industrialized countries such as Cuba, while the US is even below Costa Rica, also a "poorer" country monetarily. It is cle

US Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (Rep, Maryland), was interviewed by Dave Room of the Postcarbon Institute. Bartlett, a former teacher among other things, is the only person in Congress who speaks on peak oil and says that he's willing to repeat and repeat until Congress understands, which at the time of this interview almost no one did. He mentions that his assistant, Dr. John Darnell, is also a scientist and very well informed about peak oil. He suggests to call your Congressman and ask about "peak oil" so they will know of our concern.Bartlett's impetus to speak has been his long concern for the prediction of MK Hubbard that the US would peak in oil in 1976, and Hubbard was correct. He predicted that world oil would peak in 2000 and the fact is that oil is probably peaking right now. It is obviously a limited resource and is diminishing. It's made even worse because the demand for oil is growing along with the diminishing supply. When that larger need (China is biggest demand), along with less oil availabili

Myrna Bullock is a noted artist, teacher and spiritual activist with decades of experience in dance from around the world. In 1998 she and her husband, Tim Bullock, walked the year-long Interfaith Pilgrimage of the Middle Passage: Retracing the Journey of Slavery. Based in part, on this life altering journey, Myrna and Tim developed the long-term project, AIDS Pilgrimage Africa: A Walk for Global Healing, as a spiritual and physical response to the ever-growing pandemic of AIDS on the African continent. The mission of this project is to create a community of healing energy to share with the people of sub-Saharan African as they (and whoever joins them) walk in prayer and meditation, as well as transforming the people who walk and work with them through self-discovery by facing their personal issues and beliefs.They have been stopping to work in communities and do concrete projects of education and healing. Myrna Bullock speaks about their experience in Africa, and what it's like to live with almost no water,

Richard Register is the founder of Ecocity Builders, a nonprofit organization based in Berkeley and Oakland, California. Register has been working with this organization and these issues for many many years. He is also the founder of the organization, Urban Ecology, based in Berkeley, and is the author of many books including Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature, Ecocity Berkeley, and chief editor of Village Wisdom, Future Cities, and many articles. He is the founder of the International Ecocity and Ecovillage Conference Series as well. Conferences have been held in North America, South America, Australia, Africa and China.It is evident that Register is very focused on the incredibly important issue of sustainable development solutions. Since most of the population of the world lives in cities, how we can live in cities in balance with nature is a crucial issue of survival at this time with declining oil, climate change, species extinction and the other challenges we humans and other living thing

Jan Lundberg interviews (1) Jennifer Banka Schneider and (2) Kerry Liz McKee, peppersprayed as passive resisters in sit-ins to protect ancient redwoods, and (3) Bill Simpich who is a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the civil rights lawsuit against law enforcement agencies and the County of Humboldt, California. The police swabbed pepperspray in the eyes of nonviolent forest defenders who were locked together with heavy steel sleeves that immobilized the protesters. Despite this summary punishment that the ACLU has called "tantamount to torture," the protesters did not back down and are having their third trial in federal court in San Francisco which began April 12, 2005. Jan Lundberg's daughter Spring is one of the plaintiffs in this case, and his band The Depavers (www.culturechange.org/depavers.html) provides a short song, Mother Earth First, at the end of the half-hour program.