Heartland Bioneers Conference brings speakers via satellite

After Kris Schachel attended two Bioneers conferences concerning major environmental issues, she saw such an importance she wanted to bring it to Carbondale.

“My intention this whole time has been basically to bring it here so other people could get the same experience out of it,” said Schachel, coordinator for Southern Illinois Center for a Sustainable Future.

With the help of John Dunn, University vice chancellor and provost, SIUC agreed to co-sponsor the convention with an allocation of $2,000, making the event free for all SIUC faculty and students.

Heartland Bioneers will be a major environmental conference concerning key issues in the area and nation as well as possible solutions. The conference will take place Friday through Sunday at Lawson Hall and the Student Center.

The conference will feature keynote speakers via satellite from San Rafael, Calif. including Wanjira Mathai, leader of world-renowned Green-Belt Movement in Kenya. Mathai’s mother Wangari Mathai won the Nobel Prize for her work founding the Green-Belt Movement.

According to the Heartland Bioneers Web site, some of the issues covered at the conference will include socially responsible investing, deep ecology, carbon mitigation and coal gasification, unregulated recreation issues in the Shawnee Forest and Cache River management.

Dunn and Schachel will lead opening remarks in the conference.

The first speaker beaming in from satellite will be naturalist, entrepreneur and inventor Jay Harman. Harman holds many patents on friction and cavitation-reducing marine technologies, which save fuel, and has received awards for his lightweight, high efficiency watercraft.

Amory Lovins, physicist and co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, will also be one of the key speakers. Lovins has been working on new automotive technologies that require significantly less fuel.

Schachel said 60 people are already registered for the conference as of Wednesday, and 100 more are expected to walk in. The goal for the conference is 200 people.

The main Bioneers conference in San Rafael, Calif. will be host to more than 3,500 people and feature more than 60 speakers. Fifteen of the most important will be viewed at the Heartland Bioneers Conference.

Kenny Ausubel, New Mexico-based journalist and social entrepreneur, founded the Bioneers conference in 1990 as a way of bringing together people from unrelated fields and professions to better discuss environmental issues and solutions.

“I think it is going to be an extraordinary time because that has been my experience,” said Schachel.

Factoid:Registration and sign in will start at 11:00 a. m. at the Student Center near the Hall of Fame above the craft shop, while the event begins at 3:00 p.m. in Lawson 171.