Biodiversity 12:
Earth Alive – Exploring Our Home
A 12-week course with Jim Laurie
February 26 – May 14, 2025
“Earth Alive – Exploring Our Home” will be the twelfth biodiversity course taught by our Restoration Biologist & Futurist Jim Laurie.
Earth is a living miracle in our corner of the Universe, full of symbiotic connections which cover the lands and oceans with a wide array of diverse ecosystems. We will be exploring how plants and wetlands create the atmosphere and rainfall. How did the grasslands co-evolve with huge grazing animals to build a deep rich soil sponge? How do fungi and microbes work together to mine the rock for life creating minerals like phosphorus, magnesium, and iron?
Humans have been very successful on this planet and we are learning so much about these intelligent living processes, but our rapid transformation of the Earth is creating a crisis for many species including ourselves. How can we deal with wildfires, heat domes, and increasingly powerful hurricanes? Can we solve the plastics pollution problem including PFAS?
You will meet many veterans of our Symbiosis Team and share thoughts in our breakout sessions. If this is your first course, you will make new friends and the team members will help you catch up. The only requirement is curiosity and a desire to learn.
Format
This is a 12-week course that meets every Wednesday, starting February 26, 2025 and will run until May 14, 2025. Classes will be held from 12 – 2 pm ET and 7 – 9 pm ET on Zoom. Students can choose either class time to accommodate their schedules.
The course will have reading assignments, slide presentations, videos, and breakout sessions to discuss topics raised in class and to get to know your classmates. Instructor Jim Laurie’s goal is that each person shares something and learns something new in each class. There are many “old timers” who have taken several courses, but we also have new people in each course. The Old Timers are eager to encourage the “Newbies” and help them catch up and feel comfortable as part of the Symbiosis Team.
Books for the Course
Main Book
Our primary book for the course will be Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life by Ferris Jabr. The author has traveled from Siberia to Hawaii, from Rhode Island to the Amazon, to meet the concerned citizens and scientists working on these questions.
Jabr explores how humans and all living things are not just inhabitants of Earth—we are Earth. All of life on Earth has co-evolved over billions of years, transforming the planet from an orbiting rock into a cosmic wonder—that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates its climate.
Optional Book
We will also read from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s newest book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World as she explores the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world. She asks what we can learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to move from an economy rooted in scarcity, competition and hoarding of resources to embody the principles of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude in our daily lives.
Your Instructor
Jim Laurie discovered the magical power of nature in his work as a biologist in the chemical industry to clean toxic wastewater with “Living Machines.” His career turned to restoration biology and teaching. You will enjoy his interactive and thought provoking style which makes science accessible, while still being comprehensive.
Are you ready to transform your understanding of how life on the planet works and how we can play a role? Join us as we follow the transformation of leading writers and thinkers to a deeper understanding of natural systems, our role, and the ability of nature to cool the planet.
While each course builds on our understanding, you do not need to have taken any of the previous Biodiversity Courses. Whether this is your first or tenth course, please join us if you are curious about nature and its power to restore ecosystems to abundance. The veterans of previous classes will help you catch up in your learning. We are developing into a “Symbiosis Team” to ameliorate or reverse the impacts of Global Warming. Everyone has much to learn and share and there is much to be done. We need and appreciate your enthusiasm on the team, and encourage people to join at the level that they are able to. Sliding scale pricing is available, as are scholarship options. To join us, register below!