We Need a New Climate Story
Nature is Climate
Biodiversity loss is not just the result of climate change, it is a primary driver of climate change. Only solutions that prioritize this web of life will create a truly livable climate for all.
The Northeast Miniforest Summit featured more than a dozen speakers across two virtual half-days and an in-person bus tour, bringing together practitioners, researchers, and leaders from diverse fields to unpack the Miyawaki Method from root to canopy.
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Restore Nature – Cool the Planet
Only nature has the ability to both cool the planet and lower greenhouse gas levels. Our planet is already too hot and too dry to maintain a stable climate and support life. These 4 Climate Keys are interlocking pieces of the cycles we must repair to quickly stop warming and start cooling the planet.
Cool
Healthy ecosystems full of biodiversity create direct cooling effects for our hot planet. More Nature = Less Heat.
Hydrate
Keeping water in the ground supports plants, crops and people. Beavers, insects and microbes are part of the Infiltration Team
Plant
Planting for biodiversity creates healthy ecosystems. Forests sequester carbon and use water vapor to move heat away from the Earth
protect
Indigenous leadership and wisdom can help us. Stop deforestation, industrial ag, mining, and pollution that kill off biodiversity.
Replace with regenerative practices
Q: What about atmospheric Carbon Dioxide – you know – the greenhouse effect?
A: It’s an important part of the story, but not the whole story. Learn More.
Who We Are
Bio4Climate Tells the Hidden Stories
For nearly a decade we have looked behind, around, and under the prevailing climate narratives for the missing pieces of the puzzle. We continue to bring you authors, ecorestoration specialists, and scientists from around the world who explore the interlocking systems that create a livable climate.
Stay on top of the Climate Conversation
Through education, policy and outreach, we promote the great potential of inexpensive, low-tech and powerful Nature solutions to the biodiversity and climate crises, and work to inspire urgent action and widespread implementation of many regenerative practices.
This Week
News and Insights
Shaping a Vocabulary for Ecological Design - Stir World
If the point of science might be to understand and inform how we live and coexist, then design shapes the very choices we make in response. More than Human is an exhibition at the Design Museum in London that reimagines how we might design with care, connection, and respect.
“The show is ‘hopeful’ because it imagines an alternative relationship between humans and the living world, one that is respectful and supportive, one where natural bodies have rights, one where the needs of other species are catered for, one where design plays a new role in supporting the health of ecosystems.”
Jim Laurie's upcoming course explores the rights of nature. How do we translate those rights into material practice be it art, policy, advocacy or restoration? How do you?
Why We Need Forests
Their Vital Role in Climate Dynamics, Rain, and The Biotic Pump
Anastassia Makarieva on The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
In a newly release podcast episode, Nate Hagens from The Great Simplification sat down with friend of Bio4Climate Dr. Anastassia Makarieva to go deep on the critical yet still overlooked role forests play in maintaining ecological balance and climate stability. Through the lens of the biotic pump theory she helped author, Anastassia highlights the importance of moisture and rainfall cycles, the dangers of ecosystem tipping points, and the escalating risks of deforestation.
Events and Community
Boston | Inaugural Massachusetts Sustainability Day
On September 9, Bio4Climate joined more than 350 participants for the inaugural Massachusetts Sustainability Day at the State House in Boston. The afternoon of exchange saw legislators, senators, representatives, advocacy groups, municipalities, state agencies, and members of the public come together to share ideas and showcase solutions for a more sustainable future.
Coming on the heels of the Governor’s announcement of new Biodiversity Goals, Sustainability Day was the perfect opportunity to center Bio4Climate’s message that biodiversity is climate infrastructure.
Boston - Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change
Thursday September 18 7:00 pm
The city of Boston and other coastal cities are facing major impacts of climate change. What can we learn from Indigenous communities? Could Traditional Ecological Knowledge be one of the many tools to help us become more resilient?
The Museum of Science hosts an evening of powerful dialogue exploring how Indigenous communities are leading efforts to protect land from the growing threat of wildfires. Speakers will delve into traditional and contemporary fire management practices, the deep-rooted relationship between fire and land, and what it means to be human in the face of climate change.
This speaker series is a collaboration between the museum, Amira Madison (Aquinnah Wampanoag), Hartman Deetz (Mashpee Wampanoag), the Harvard University Native American Program, and the Salata Institute.
What if we can balance our climate quickly, naturally, affordably?
Virtual | Thursday, September 18 | 12:00 PM ET
Dr. Katie Ross leads this free workshop, offered in partnership with Climate Land Leaders and Biodiversity for a Livable Climate.
We’ll discuss - and potentially be awed by - how the living skin of our landscapes and oceans create our climate from the ground up. Spoiler alert: it’s through the profoundly fascinating intelligence of nature, and how water flows from soil to branch to leaf to cloud and back again, powered entirely by the sun and life. This session will also offer time for you to look at your own patch of Earth and develop questions and insights for climate-restoring actions in your community.
Katie Ross is an independent writer and researcher, with a background in ecology, renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, transdisciplinary research, and transformative sustainability learning.
Knowing how stories hold, transmit and transform paradigms, Katie is keen to share stories of landscape and ocean regeneration. Check out her most recent blog here, in a partnership with Climate Land Leaders.
Courses
Join us this fall for two new courses to explore how rewilding our thinking, about rivers, wildlife, and entire ecosystems, can reshape our climate future.
Is a River Alive? Can rivers, forests, and other ecosystems be recognized as living beings with rights?
Jim Laurie leads a new 10-week journey guided by the questions and travels of author Robert Macfarlane. Each week we’ll connect these stories to larger ecological truths: that rivers, forests, wetlands, and fungi-rich soils function as one interconnected system, critical to rehydrating continents and cooling the climate. examine how biodiversity infiltrates water into soils, how plants cover and protect landscapes, how fungal networks sustain resilience, and how living shorelines can buffer rising seas.
This is a 10-week course that meets every Wednesday, September 24–December 3. Classes are offered 12 – 2 pm ET or 7 – 9 pm ET on Zoom.
Are Causes of Sharp Wildlife Decline Also Driving Climate Instability?
Wildlife & Climate, taught by Hart Hagan and an exciting roster of guest experts, explores the actual connections between wildlife and climate change and gives us a real and viable framework for living with nature, restoring habitat and addressing climate change.
Get Involved
Water is Love Film Screening
Celebrate World Water Week with Bio4Climate in Cambridge, MA. Join us in person on Wednesday, August 27 from 6:45 to 8:30pm for a screening of the inspiring film, Water is Love, with brief discussion and snacks at the Cambridge Library Main Branch, 449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Water is Love follows a group of youth facing climate change challenges leading to a journey around the world with shared stories of regenerative practices such as ecosystem designs to create water retention in communities, villages, and regions.
The film weaves together traditional ecological knowledge, the role of water in shaping climate, and the urgency of restoring…
‘ROADLESS RULE’ A RECKLESS ATTACK ON CLIMATE REGULATORS
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. – Beck Mordini, Executive Director of Biodiversity for a Livable Climate issued the following statement on the White House’s decision to declare “open-season” on 58 million acres of native forests, paving the way for road and development construction.
“Just as tens of millions of Americans are experiencing a lethal, record-breaking heat wave, the federal government has launched a reckless attack on one of our most vital natural climate regulators. Forests aren’t just a collection of trees, they are complex, living systems that manage water, cool the planet, and sustain biodiversity across…
Water—The Missing Climate Solution—July 10-31
What if there’s a powerful solution we’ve been overlooking—one that could actually help cool the planet, starting right where you live?
The untold story begins with water.
Water is the most overlooked climate regulator. Through the cycling of water—plants, clouds, grasslands, wetlands and forests help stabilize Earth’s temperatures. When these systems are healthy, they cool the planet. But clear-cutting, tilling, development and other destructive land management practices have dismantled these natural cooling mechanisms.
We can bring these powerful cooling systems back to life. Join us for Water…
Global Eco-Restoration and Power Dynamics—Critical Ecosystems in Brazil, Senegal and the U.S. – JUNE 10 – 12:00 noon ET
Climate disruption is increasing and with it so is polarization, both within the US as well as among nation states. Now more than ever it is incumbent upon us to highlight successful efforts to create a more sustainable, just, and peaceful world.
Important initiatives in regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, soil restoration, and related practices are making significant contributions to climate adaptation, often contributing to the resilience of communities and international collaboration.
This webinar, a joint project of the Massachusetts Peace Action’s Peace & Climate group and Bio4Climate, will focus…
Thaw and Freeze: The ecological, geological, and human stakes of a warming Arctic
A rapidly changing Arctic is reshaping everything. Polar bears navigate shrinking expanses of sea ice, thawing permafrost threatens coastal villages, destabilizes infrastructure, and exhales methane, and warming temperatures push more species northward into a greener arctic. These transformations are profound, and their impacts can extend far beyond the region’s ecologies that depend on them.
What do these changes mean for wildlife, humans, and the climate? How is all of this going to play out in different regions and ecosystems around the world? Does understanding these changes and seeing them with your own…
Regenerating Life: Upcoming Screenings
Regenerating Life is a groundbreaking film that reframes the climate crisis by focusing on nature’s power to heal our planet. It reveals how the biosphere egulates Earth’s climate and how its destruction has driven global warming.
The film highlights regenerating ecosystems like forests, fields, and wetlands, restoring the water cycle, and embracing sustainable practices like regenerative agriculture that draw CO2 from the atmosphere, cool the planet, revive freshwater systems, and create abundant food and thriving communities.
Visit Hummingbird Films for upcoming screenings.
Tell nature’s climate story, the story of connection and life.
― Beck Mordini
Transformation in Mexico
Eco Restoration Works
Watch what happens! A degraded landscape in Mexico is transformed by regenerative management. It took only two years (the arrow points to the same tree).