GreenplanetFM Podcast

Celebrating Voices of the Sacred Earth; Feb 8,9 & 10th of Feb 2013Kawai Purapura - Mills Lane, Oteha Valley Rd, Albany on the North ShoreWith Jenny Cottingham, Dyana Wells, Te Ngako Ngaropo & Dr Jyoshna La Trobe'Sacred Earth Festival' & Symposium & Gathering of All BeingsKIA ORA: You are invited to celebrate the sacred in a festive setting of community and sharing of gifts, knowledge, spontaneity and song within a context of expansive enjoyment and kinship.We ask that you commit to something DIFFERENT this weekend and involve yourself by either observing, listening, or participating in open, light hearted discussion and join in an event that brings forth a collective of NZ's top story tellers; of Maori, metaphysical ecologists, healers, artists and indigenous ideals of how as one seamless organism we can anchor a vision of a bio harmonic lifestyle and community.With a holistic understanding that integrates scientific principles people are awakening to the need to creatively build community into a dynamic field of possibility. And that 'cultural creative's' need to be communing together. By showing up at this event, this in-breath of connectivity will carry you deeper into your heart and the fabric of your being and, of all being.http://voices2013.kawaipurapura.co.nz/wordpress/

Attending, speaking & workshops:Presenters & Wisdom Keepers

Barry Brailsford MBE: Author and StorytellerBarry, the vehicle for 'The Song of Waitaha', has spent much of his life researching, learning and sharing the history and ancient lore of the Maori and Polynesian people. He is an elder story teller of ancient times.Makuini Ruth Tai: Aroha Ambassador For Peace and Kaitiaki Pa Manawa.Makuini sees herself as an Aroha Light Language Scholar and linguist as well as an Aroha Ambassador for Peace and Goodwill. Being a bridger in languaging ancient lore - towards a more expansive understandingDr Richard Nunns QSM: Taonga Puoro (Maori Musical Instruments)Dr Richard Nunns QSM is a living authority on Nga Taonga Puoro (Maori traditional musical instruments). He has been described as one of New Zealand’s most remarkable musicians.Michael O’Donnell: Artist, Environmentalist, Storyteller CatalystMichael of Tarariki Pottery Paeroa is an artist, environmentalist, storyteller and catalyst. In his own unique way he has learned to walk the path of the old peoples of New Zealand and Ireland.Franchelle Ofsoské-Wyber: Matakite (Medicine Woman)Franchelle is a New Zealander of Russian and Native American Cherokee descent, born with highly developed clairvoyant and healing gifts and comes from a lineage of medicine men and women.Atarangi Muru: Maori ‘Hands On’ Healer, LecturerAtarangi is a Maori Healer and is affiliated to the Ngati Kuri, Te Aupouri and Te Rarawa tribes. She was raised in the small, remote, coastal community of Ahipara Northland.Gary Cook: Researcher, Author, Temple KnightGary is a leading writer on the special nature of the mystic realms that are to be found in New Zealand and the South Pacific and leader of The Secret Land project. Showing his new video Friday Night called 'Voices of the Forest.'Te NgakooterangiHe will share knowledge around ” Revitalising the authentic spiritual power of the Tōhunga Ahurewa (Traditional Māori Spiritual Practitioners) in a modern world” (Masters thesis) – and “A new perspective towards reconstructing the traditional “Whare Wānanga” (Māori Spiritual Wisdom Schools) in a contemporary context” which is his PhD topic.Ojasvin and Iris Davis: Grandmother’s Healing HakaOjasvin Kingi Davis is Maori from the people of Ngaitupoto, Ngatihine, Ngapuhi of Aotearoa, New Zealand. His bloodline and family traditions reaches back to the stream of Waitaha and Waiomu.Antion: Guitarist, Sikh, Sacred Sound CelebrationAntion: 60’s world-class guitarist of rock star fame, he was the first Kundalini Yoga teacher in UK and Europe in 1970, the first non-Indian to sing sacred Kirtan in India’s Golden Temple, and the first non-Hawaiian to be honored as a master of chant.Elandra Kirsten Meredith: “Hawaian Chanting For Healing”Elandra LMT, BA: is a Yoga teacher of 40 years, a 16-year director of a West Coast Yoga Center, author of five Yoga Manuals, midwife, and international founder/director teacher-trainer of her own healing work, Lomi Chi Holographic Healing.Dr Jyoshna La Trobe: Composer, Ethnographer, Workshop LeaderJyoshna is a composer, ethnomusicologist and international workshop leader who has authored over 25 albums of original and ethnographic albums. Jyoshna’s speciality is devotional music of India, and completed her PhD on “Kīrtan and Ecstatic performance in Bengal, India”, becoming the first westerner to gain a doctorate in Rarhi Bangla Kirtan.Plus: Tania Batt, Lyn Kriegler, Jimi Dale, Georgia Wood, Shakti Band, Gus Simonovic, Brant Secunda, DJ Anirvan, Gamelan Padhang Moncar, Bhadrasena, Margaret-Mary Hollins, Daring Donna, Elisabeth von Madarasz, Nicky Hammond, Kereru, Kerry Strongman, Bill Watson and Michael Fleck plus many, many other musicians.These are just some of the speakers, presenters, healers and artists that will be present from the 8th, 9th and 10th of February 2013.Kawai Purapura - Mills Lane, Oteha Valley Rd, Albany on the North Shorewww.kawaipurapura.co.nzPh 09 415 9468Tickets Required.

Discussing his perceptions of our great sustainer our planet, the biosphere and a deeper look at sentience as well as animism, including new information that all minerals on earth are evolving and that essentially everything in existence is evolving.Progressing the possible transition of our earth society awakening and embracing a broader awareness both on the inner and outer planes and actually shifting to become a high energy, synergistic, co-operative and co-creative society.Called the Noosphere, Greek for 'MindSphere' that Teilhard de Chardin the visionary Jesuit, evolutionist envisioned, that humanity upon awakening to higher aspirations and virtues, 'consciously' break free from the inextricable economic, ecological and societal malaise that we face on earth today and enter a new realm of being.

As climate change becomes more obvious we humans have entered majorly into the equation and in 2,500 years have gone from 250 million people, to 7 billion plus.

Our economic juggernaut has now cut down huge swaths of forests, drained wetlands and swamps, sprayed chemicals over the land, (that end up in the ocean) then put tarmac, concrete and roofs over Gaia's breathing earth, built 900 million cars, 300 million plus motor bikes & scooters, a 100 million trucks and busses, multi thousands of airplanes and with the intensifying military and their wasteful vehicles that ...

Gaia's embedded natural systems of atmosphere, oceans, land-mass and forests, can't react in time to bring balance, and 'she' in this extremely short period of time is being totally overwhelmed!Hence climate change exacerbated by frequency and weather modification, plus military experiments as well ... is making it too tough for her to bring her house and biological systems into dynamic order.Having a fever, she oscillates from extreme hot to extreme cold endeavoring to bring about balance, and in a fever she becomes hot and dry, then instantly sweats and she floods. Then shivering cold spells to hot drought like periods again ... and again… Winds could be anything from burping to possibly flatulence. Boils and pimples akin to volcanic activity. In a fever of this magnitude - that we know of no outcome - all manner of strange phenomena happens and IT IS HAPPENING NOW!Listen to a softer side of Tim as he shares his love for the natural world, of 'connection' and how we urgently need to face ourselves if we as an earth community are to 'come together' as a global family within the context of unity consciousness.Tim's very old web site of 1996: http://www.ourplanet.orgFacebook: http://www.Facebook.com/greenplanetfmTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/greenplanetfm

Arden Anderson, Ph.D. D.O. holds a Bachelor’s degree in agricultural education, a Ph.D in biophysics and a D.O. in medicine. He currently works in general preventative and nutritional medicine, while still consulting for some of the largest and most progressive farming operations in the world relating to biological agriculture.His keywords are: holistic farming, sustainability, healthy bacteria in the human gut and in the soil of the earth. Plus the correlation between personal human health and planetary health.He has visited NZ numerous times and has a growing following within the farming and horticultural sector here.When young his father let his cows out of the barn to graze the pasture, so as to eat herbs and what we would term weeds and as a result they became more healthy and produced a healthier milk.

That any health or animal disease has to be correlated to soil science and the quality of the make up of the soil, its balance and the microorganisms and the nutrition in that soil.He studied under Dr Phil Callahan the author of 'Tuning into Nature' that showed that insects only attach sick plants, which was blasphemy to the chemical industry as that conflicted with their addiction to selling chemicals.Arden Andersen, said he went to university to understand soil, its nutritional value, balance, then to animals and health, finally to humans and our health. Which he calls biological and holistic medicine and that everything is connected within the web of life.We learn that manufactured urea and ammonia nitrate does produce at first, fantastic results when it comes to growing grass BUT, the actual dissolved solids and the tangible feed value goes down. You gain on the swings but lose on the round-abouts.Some salient points from this interview:

Calcium is the foundation for a healthy pasture and the biology in that pasture and environment as well.Fontera is NZ's largest buyer of micronized calcium carbonate, and they are adding this to the milk as our NZ cow herds are not obtaining it from the feedstock they eat. It is a deficiency in the soil.In the USA cows live to only 18 months old - and then 'burnt out' sent off to the abattoir, where once they lived for up to 12 years of milking and giving birth to calves.He emphasizes that we must look at our human gut microflora, if we use anti biotics we will kill off all the good guys, so it is with what we do on the farm with our soil. Heavy fertilizer usage is unbalancing the land - all the way to the cow manure, that does not break down fast, due in many cases, to the use of antibiotics!Listen to how organic dairy farms in the USA survive without chemicals and antibiotics and are one of the fastest growing areas in the milk industry in America. Organic Valley Coophttp://www.organicvalley.coop/about-us/overview/our-history/That in America there is now between 4% and 6% of all milk being organic.It is important for people working with the land producing crops and grass to take brix readings. These tell you quickly how healthy your plants are.Also, Arden is very up to date with GE and GMO's. He categorically states that GE is not needed, and that to have GE crops to save the world from starvation is an absolute lie.Non GE crops resists droughts in the USA far better as in the huge drought of last year when GE crops failed for need of far more water to grow. Also, yields of GE crops are nowhere near as good.http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/arden-andersen-phd-do-the-root-of-good-nutrition

Why has Graeme Sait not been recognised by the Nobel Committee in both Sweden and Norway? His knowingness could revolutionise farming globally and reclaim back our biosphere.

The Philosophy of Farming and Our Intimate Relationships with the Land and Biota. One day we will realise that our life has to embrace the 'Ecology of Commerce' and this will be one of the greatest break throughs in consciousness. Can one man make a difference? Is it possible that one persons knowledge and enthusiasm can produce a counter tipping point to farming and land management into a new upcycle, where in a few short years, soil across our whole country can be revitalized, rivers, lakes and aquifers cleaned up, less live stock, (cows) needed but enabling far higher productivity? More Co2 from the atmosphere being sequested by the microflora, the mega trillions of bacteria and fungi that live and comprise the soil? Resulting in more sustainability across the ecosphere?Why? Because science is belatedly realising that the answer is found in the soil - healthy soil.Correlate this with the gut flora that we have in our colon and intestines, where 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) microorganisms breakdown the food we ingest.We’ve only recently begun to understand the extent of the gut flora’s role in human health and disease. Among other things, the gut flora promotes normal gastrointestinal function, provides protection from infection, regulates metabolism and comprises more than 75% of our immune system.

Dysregulated gut flora has been linked to diseases ranging from autism and depression to autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s, inflammatory bowel disease and type 1 diabetes.When we tie these two relationships of the microorganisms of the soil of our planet and the our gut microflora in our intestines, we note that both are becoming more acidic as a result of the 'input's we use. We are using too many chemicals and other ingredients, thus both are becoming infected with declining health.When we treat the land and our body temple with the respect and reverence they are due, gigantic changes can happen that benefits the whole, and that change can happen fast!Yes, there is another game changer coming through, at a grass root level and its called biological farming, which is bringing a holistic perspective of balance, to how we relate to all aspects of bringing forth the earths bounty. Resulting in healthier more vibrant pastures, vegetables and fruit, which in turn when eaten as food, a far more healthier body, be it an animal or human - results.This is based on recognizing all the biota above and below the soil and its dynamic balance and how all the many cycles of nature interrelate. That being a holistic perspective of the web of life.Listen to a revolutionary land management system that is being taken seriously by thousands of South African farmers, Woolworths throughout South Africa and Dole Corporation in the USA. With the uptake of millions of acres in Australia and now more NZ farmers awakening to its profitability and potential in this country, this method opens the door to a more organic world view.Including new ways for humans to eat and drink locally grown sustenance that can help us lose weight, become more vital, add years to our life and grow young again.Graeme Sait ex New Zealander, Australia's Key Note Speaker on Holistic Health, soil, animal and human nutrition. http://www.nutri-tech.com.au

GreenplanetFM listeners this week have a rare opportunity to get their heads around carbon trading. Is it just a bullshit scheme carefully designed by left and right western governments to get corporate polluters off the hook? Or ought we to give the market approach a fair go? Or have we waited too many years already waiting for carbon trading to improve the climate??Dennis Frank interviews someone with a career history as both a carbon trader and analyst doing carbon accounting of biomass processing systems in many countries. Ruy Korscha Anaya de la Rosa has been one of the people performing the measurements and calculations of carbon emissions in a variety of environmental contexts.Ruy has worked as project manager of a number of greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in developing countries. He graduated MSc in Sustainable Energy Technology from a university in the Netherlands. He's currently a PhD candidate at Massey University in Wellington, researching the global-warming mitigation potential of biochar systems and the implications of biochar in carbon markets. He has lived in this country 3.5 years.

Carbon markets include both carbon-offsetting and cap-and-trade. The Kyoto Protocol produced a carbon-trading system based on carbon-equivalence polluting rights, rather than the original pollution-fines system agreed by the G77. The change was made to secure the agreement of the USA. Ruy says carbon-offsetting is vulnerable to fraud & speculation. Cap-and-trade was designed to permit business as usual under the guise of greening industry.We must differentiate global-warming from climate-change. Climate-change is natural and it occurs gradually all the time. Currently however, it is being forced by global-warming that is the result of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere – primarily by polluting industries. The inherent resilience of Gaia as a biosphere in dynamic equilibrium is consequently endangered. The inexorable trend of global-warming is driving the planetary system towards tipping points which we are now likely to encounter within our life-time. The global climate will then tip away from the stable state that has existed since the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago, bringing an end to agriculture that we rely on to feed us.Ruy says the Kyoto Protocol Clean Development Mechanism website provides different methods to account for carbon emissions (presumably depending on technology & environmental situation), that provide the operational instructions for carbon accountants. But most of the CDM methodologies were designed to just measure combustion, so he has progressed to the LCA framework. LCA stands for life cycle assessment, which is the technical methodology used to evaluate environmental impacts of products (goods and services) along their whole supply chain, from "cradle to grave". Thus it is a more holistic perspective, Ruy says. What's more, it is the true cost accounting that the greens have been advocating since the 1980s.His career path as a professional insider has made this accomplished young man wise for his years, and he tells us of serious concerns he now has about the way things are going. He says his field is still too young to have experts. It lacks transparency and paper standards are not being put into practice. To those of us familiar with United Nations chronic bureaucratic dysfunction, this is no surprise. He has also arrived at our long-standing view that addiction to economic growth is the real source of the greenhouse gas problem.He comments on James Hansen's alternative solution to that problem: fee & dividend, which is similar to what Al Gore has proposed. He identifies a flaw in Hansen's design. Dennis & Ruy discuss Hansen's critique of cap-and-trade. The floor of that market seems to be designed to ensure perpetual pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the amount fixed to equal current production when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. Ruy tells us that reading Hansen's book influenced his thinking, as did his climate change concerns for his 3 year old daughter.Ruy is part of Transition Towns Wellington & the Wellington Time Bank, 350 Aotearoa and Generation Zero.

Lynda Wharton, Acupuncturist and Naturopath, talks on holistic health with a special focus on women’s health (that guys need to hear too!!) interviewed by Lisa Er.Without our health, life is not as exciting and fun as it is when we are healthy and active.How many people have health challenges and what are the reasons behind these challenges? Are we eating well, or are we subjected to pesticides and chemicals, and genetically engineered ingredients in processed food; or are our immune systems hammered by the cumulative effects of life as we live it?Often the choices we have to make in healing ourselves concern lifestyle and diet. First however there is the choice as to whether to visit complimentary therapists or allopathic doctors and practitioners.

It appears at times as if there is all out war between the two systems. Many allopathic doctors and their supporters are quick to label both old traditional cures and new treatments as quackery, especially if they are not ‘peer reviewed’.

Supporters of holistic health might accuse western medicine of only treating one part of the body, and not the body and mind as a whole. Opinion is that many pharmaceutical medicines have side effects that are more harmful than the disease itself and are designed to make money for the pharmaceutical corporations, suppressing dis-ease rather than curing it. One in four New Zealanders have visited a complimentary practitioner at some time, however.Dr Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief (and GreenplanetFM supporter) writes about how what we think and our underlying beliefs have a significant role in our health. He says “Stunning new scientific discoveries about the biochemical effects of the brain’s functioning show that all cells of your body are affected by your thoughts”. This gives a seriously new meaning to the phrase think positive, and creates a scientific link between holistic and allopathic treatments.Looking at the cause of a dis-ease, and finding the right solution for each individual person may be time consuming and can even cost more than we want to pay, but without looking at the cause how can we be sure to have overcome the illness that we may have inadvertently created for ourselves. And isn’t life so precious that it is worth all we have to be both physically well and emotionally happy?Lynda Wharton explains that her aim is to uncover the cause of disease, and through education, lifestyle modification and non-invasive natural therapies, remove any obstacles to cure. Through harnessing the body's innate self-healing potential, to restore optimum health and vitality, she has had much success. She talks of the commonalities that she sees in the clinic and of the informative book that she has written: “Wellbeing - An essential guide to vibrant good health for women".Many of Lynda’s patients are women and she speaks of the Super Woman Syndrome that is prevalent in western society. She describes the lifestyle, talks of the results of this, and suggests some preventatives.Lynda also is very informative about breast cancer, and as one in 7 women in New Zealand experience some sort of breast cancer, this is an important interview to hear.Lynda’s web site is http://www.lyndawharton.com

Dr Mike Joy, NZ 100% Pure! The challenges of truth telling in a commercially driven world.Note: Since the Key National Government came to power, the word 'sustainable' has been deleted from governmental and departmental vocabulary.Meanwhile ...New Zealand is currently running at 162nd in our environmental performance out of 180 countries globally.It is extremely difficult to access data on water quality in this country as it is 'locked away' from public scrutiny, even the Ministry for the Environment does not write it up for public consumption.Researchers have to spend hours and days searching out any little snippet of information that is buried in Regional Council reports, because these reports too, are filed away from community analysis.The reason for this impediment is because there is no Agency in this country that deals with such basic and important factual statistics and information and if this accumulated data was in the public domain, the Ministers involved would look so bad that the charade of 'Clean Green NZ' would be coherently shredded.

Yet, the latest statistics that are available for public information still go back to a 2004 report. Even though the 300 areas that are tested and sampled 'to this day' remain hidden from public view, and can not be accessed by scientists like Dr Mike Joy.

This vital information is being 'censored by omission' and the Ministry for the Environment and the 16 District Councils, only issue 'feel good' information on the better sites, (the upper high country where there is no population or industry) never the true story in the low land areas of farming, industry and population density. In essence, making a silk purse from a sows ear!New Zealand has pristine highland lakes and rivers, which the tourist brochures revel in, but it is the low land lakes and rivers that are horrendously degraded in this country.And it has been only in the last 20 years with the intensification of dairy herds that our water has really lost its purity. This due to the addition of far too many cows, as the population continues to increase.11 humans are equal to one cow in their capacity to ingest and excrete. A conservative estimate is equal to 66 million people inhabiting NZ, the same population as the UK.With the intensity of increasing cow numbers huge amounts of urine ends up in paddocks and in the process is changing the soil chemistry and seeping down into the water and into the greater catchment area, and this is not being factored into the pollution equation.Adding to this, commercially manufactured urea is being spread on the land from urea plants as well as the use of more phosphorous to speed up plant growth, however a by-product of super phosphate is cadmium. NZ is now dangerously close to toxifying its soils, plant life and live stock with excess cadmium that ends up stored in the kidneys and liver of live stock, that if the animals are over 18 months of age - it is illegal to sell kidneys and liver for eating. (This is news to me!)NOTE: New Zealand children are already exceeding the European levels of cadmium from our food chainScientists here in NZ like their counterparts worldwide are reluctant or prohibited from speaking out on environment or health concerns, for fear of losing their funding, or losing their job. They are under the hammer to keep their mouth firmly shut! Such is the power of the commercial imperative!Treasury, which is the tail that wags the dog in this country is bloated with economists and Mike posits the idea that if we could have another department alongside it full of ecologists, we would strike a dynamic balance.Mike says that what is happening in nature is that the fauna are now acting as the canary in the coal mine.The tiny white bait (inanga) in our streams are being seen as the indicators of the health of our water ways and they are all being threatened, 4 out of 5 are now on the endangered list, same for fresh water crayfish and our eels, and the eel story Mike tells is near on bizzare in the extreme.KPMG, one of the largest professional services companies on our planet, states in a new report that New Zealand has 5 years to clean up our clean green image, or we will lose it!Dr Mike Joy: The true story of New Zealand's ecological status.http://pundit.co.nz/content/mike-joy-answers-the-pm-with-hard-facts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bukH5h_pZRA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RBL7oQhDB-k

To initiate positive community change a number of people have come together as part of a larger cell or organism, to language the possibility of how individuals acting in accord as a small group can consciously reach agreement so as to shape our unfolding future here in our suburbs in Auckland and as New Zealanders.How do we as community find innovative ways that influences and enhances our daily lives for the common good, through insight, dialogue, strategies and novelty?How can they encourage others that they most definitely as a group of individuals can make a difference to the way we live, because it is becoming increasingly evident that we can not depend on our national government to lead.Nor the nations media, be it radio, TV or newsprint. The internet is our only savior at present. Lets keep it that way.

As you at a deeper level already know, we are intuitively aware of the challenges coming to meet us … from both a local and global context and they are increasingly impinging on our daily life as we endeavor to sustain ourselves and family through obtaining work and jobs, schooling and healthy bodies and the pressure for many is becoming greater as we also collectively put our environment under greater pressure … whilst the words of the great American Indian … Chief Seattle, who so astutely stated 200 years ago ring even louder today that … - 'what ever happens to the web of life, also happens to us.'And Albert Einstein, whose insights into the human condition are scattered throughout the length of the 20th century so aptly said, 'that we can not solve a problem with the same consciousness that caused it in the first place.'The imperative is we have to become more conscious …This is what individually we can do, find like minded people and form a little nucleus that can connect with other nucleus's and start to claim your area sovereignty back. e.g stopping chemical road side spraying, No GE in NZ, a just two issues.Its interesting 2400 years ago the Greek philosopher Plato mentioned that the downside of not involving yourself in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.No wonder he is still famous - he can read the future too!Have you ever written a submission? For we urgently need submissions to be forwarded to government, and as the GE debate has come back into prominence, NZ could be on the threshold of giving away its Clean Green image to a corporate scam to make NZ a genetically engineered experiment. This is coming from the Monsanto's of the world and that a few scientists here in NZ are pushing it and are refusing to follow the precautionary principle. This is not the NZ we want for our children!NOTE, our NZ weather forecasters, the scientists behind our weather consistently get their forecasting wrong, can we afford to have just one mistake with GE, not like the weekly misleading forecasts from our high tech weather office gives out?So take some time to listen to this group of people articulate what they are doing to awaken the community to the opportunities and challenges and ... that we most definitely can make a difference.By advising our elected servants in Wellington of your needs it will assist in keeping the integrity of NZ's sovereignty in this fast changing world. For as the people in America are finding out, they are continuously losing their freedoms and as Steven Spielberg despairingly said on TV some years ago, 'Americans are losing their freedoms and are voluntarily giving them away' and so are we, and we are doing it by leaving it to someone else to do the hard work, to take care of all children's future and very few are showing up and making the effort.Yes we have to become more conscious and thus more proactive if we want the truly clean green freedom loving country that is our home.

Dennis Frank interviews Kiwi biochar advocates Graham Smith (an Aucklander) and Trevor Richards (who lives in Kuala Lumpur).Biochar is a carbon-negative soil improvement technology that takes at least 25% of organic carbon out of the cycle and converts it into solid mineral carbon that remains stable in soil for thousands of years.It increases soil fertility and raises agricultural productivity, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers. It slows evaporation by helping soil retain moisture, which reduces nutrient-leaching and the need for irrigation.Decomposing biomass adds large amounts of methane and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and so does traditional wood-burning and composting. Burying biochar instead reduces the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.Sequestering carbon in the ground is now a sensible way to mitigate global warming, according to prominent scientists such as James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis.Biochar acts like a coral reef for microbes and fungi that are beneficial to soil and plants, enhancing root growth.

Just as coral reefs are the richest ecosystems in the ocean for biodiversity, so biochar in the soil likewise provides a base on which soil biodiversity develops, creating a more resilient ecosystem. Building soil biodiversity restores degraded soils & improves soil structure, reducing the need for pesticides by producing healthier plants.Charcoal is a high-carbon, fine-grained residue produced by pyrolysis of biomass. If you heat almost any biological material to a certain temperature, and restrict or exclude oxygen, pyrolysis occurs instead of normal combustion.

Pyrolysis is the direct thermal decomposition of biomass in the absence of oxygen to obtain an array of solid (biochar), liquid (bio-oil) and gas (syngas) products. The specific yield depends on the design of the process - it can be optimised to prioritise either energy or biochar yield.

The gas can be used similarly to other fuels, to generate electricity, either by backyard mechanics or by sustainable energy entrepreneurs. The United Nations Global Clean Stove Initiative is providing 100 million clean biomass cook-stoves for the developing world.Green technologies that convert waste to energy often produce biochar as a byproduct, and most processes that produce it use efficient renewable energy sources. Industry and communities can apply them to sustainably exploit waste biomass resources.

In Auckland Graham hopes to help set up a process using the proposed curbside collection of foodscraps as compost in combination with pyrolised greenwaste. Construction and demolition timber can be diverted from landfills, sawdust from sawmills and the output from chippers & shredders can be used.

Biochar further advances the green cause when used as a filter: not only to purify water but also to absorb nutrient run-off from farms, and to clean and regenerate rivers and lakes.Current forestry uses tree trunks only, leaving the branches and leaves to rot & re-enter the atmosphere as greenhouse gases - so it makes sense to turn that into biochar instead.

Just consider the difference for reforestation of the Amazon: slash and burn leaves only 3% of the carbon from the organic material in the soil, whereas slash and char can sequester up to 50% of the carbon in a highly stable form! That's from biochar's Wikipedia page.Dr. Tim Flannery is Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Macquarie University in Sydney, chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, and head of the Climate Commission in Australia. His 1994 book “The Future Eaters” is an ecological history of Australasia, and his 2005 book about global warming “The Weather Makers” made the New York Times best-seller list.

In his Amazon review of "The Biochar Revolution", he points out that biochar-making techniques are readily accessible to everyone - all of us, in our own gardens and communities, can contribute and make a genuine difference now without having to wait for our governments and institutions.

If enough people do so, the collective effort will generate sustainable benefits for everyone. He reckons that biochar may now be the most important initiative for the future of humanity!Graham and Trevor are part of a group currently facilitating the formation of the "NZ Biochar Interest Group", which will be affiliated to the International Biochar Initiative.

http://www.biochar-international.orgIf you are interested in finding out more, please contact: biocharnz [at] gmail.com

Maire Leadbeater has been at the forefront of political and social activism in New Zealand for much of her life. Such dedication is rare. Daughter of activist and writer Elsie Locke, and sister to retired Green MP Keith Locke, it is not surprising that Maire has been both encouraging of them, and inspirational herself.As a peace and human rights activist, and a former social worker, Maire was also the media spokesperson for the campaign for nuclear disarmament on the 1980s and early 1990s.She tells us of the blossoming nuclear free movement of that time, and how the flotilla of boats went out to obstruct nuclear war ships as they came into port, and how a small scale protest became a popular movement.It is inspiring that New Zealand, the mouse that roared, found the political will to stand up to world powers and say NO to foreign nuclear war ships and to nuclear weapons. We do not appear to have had such courage since.

East Timor, for example is a country that New Zealand let down by turning a blind eye to the atrocities that occurred there, that were perpetrated by the Indonesian government after its invasion of the country in 1975. These atrocities continued until 1999.Thirty seven years ago five journalists, the Balibo five, were killed while reporting there. Gary Cunningham, a New Zealander, was one of those five and yet our government never requested an investigation of his murder.Maire is author of ‘Negligent Neighbour’- a book on the plight of East Timor following the Indonesian annexation in 1975, which was published in 2007.Continuing to be active in the Auckland East Timor Independence Committee until 2000 Maire now represents The Indonesia Human Rights Committee as spokesperson. Their web site is www.indonesiahumanrights.org.nzAnother of our neighbours that the New Zealand Government has failed is West Papua.West Papua is striving for self determination and is under the Indonesian Government’s rule. Maire has written many articles on West Papua and the New Zealand government’s foreign policy.It is disappointing to find that in 2009 New Zealand’s Super fund invested around $8m in the Freeport McMoran mining company there, which has the world’s biggest gold mine and the third largest copper mine in the world. The profits do not trickle down to the West Papuan people however. Instead the indigenous people are displaced and the environment is being seriously polluted.New Zealand has been a political leader, influencing the world on the subject of nuclear war, and yet sadly it has descended into following the big boys and ignoring the plight and struggles of our poorer neighbours.Maire’s current favourite song is performed here by West Papuan George Telek Freedom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qhJWwwPDaZc

Maire Leadbeater, shows that working for change can make a difference, as she joins others in raising awareness of human rights abuses and injustices, and is vigilant in following them through to their conclusion, as in the Nuclear free movement and East Timor.*** Listen and be inspired by her dedication. ***