Monthly Archives: June 2021

Ep. 0621–Carrie Radloff: MidWest Environmental Activism

Simpler OneEarth Living Podcast
A co-production of Simple Living Works! and The Common Good Podcast (Jubilee OneEarth Economics)

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SHOW NOTES

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Carrie Radloff

It’s far too easy to assume that not much good is happening in states that are fertile ground for the growth of right-wing ways of doing things. The states of Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota have been just such fertile soils. And yet, precisely in the area where those three states come together along the Missouri River, this effective activist on environmental concerns helps us break through this stereotype that not much good can happen in areas dominated by right-wing politicians and profit-hungry corporations. 

Carrie Radloff is an unassuming, persistent Iowan devoted to saving life in the environment of her area. She grew up in northwest Iowa on an acreage that has since been certified as a Century Farm. Her family was very involved in Boy Scouts, and by exploring the land and being raised under the “Scout Law,” she developed appreciation and respect for the environment and all living things. She attended Westmar University in her hometown of Le Mars, and was selected to be a Melton Fellow which allowed her to travel extensively and work with and learn from people from other cultures, including Europe, Africa, China, India, and Chile. Volunteering is the center of Carrie’s life. In addition to the decades-long involvement with the Melton Foundation, her previous service includes terms on the Leadership Siouxland* board and Iowa State University Extension’s Council for Woodbury County. She now focuses on environmental issues. She helped found Loess Hills Wild Ones in 2017. She chairs the Northwest Iowa Group of Sierra Club and serves as its delegate to the Iowa Chapter’s Executive Committee. She’s a current member and former chair of the Sioux City Environmental Advisory Board. Carrie worked for 15 years in higher education at Western Iowa Tech Community College and the Tri-State Graduate Center, where she helped coordinate training for nonprofit employees and leaders. After that, she was an ACA health insurance navigator and a wind energy advocate. Carrie earned a B.A. in International Communication and Mass Communication, an M.A. in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Development… She completed Leadership Siouxland* and Climate Reality Project training, and is a Master Gardener and Master Conservationist. She enjoys connecting and coordinating ideas, information, and people in order to achieve shared goals as efficiently as possible, and is proud of the many things she and her colleagues have accomplished over the years. Carrie lives in Sioux City, Iowa, with her husband.

The motto of WildOnes.org: Native Plants / Natural Landscapes — Healing the Earth one yard at a time. In contrast to her other environmental work, Wild Ones focuses on one thing: getting more native plants into the ground. Native plants are the Swiss Army Knife solution to so many issues, and more people need to hear that message.

*Siouxland is the name for greater metropolitan Sioux City, IA, including South Sioux City, NE, and North Sioux City, SD.

Earlier Episodes

Ep. 0521–Neddy Astudillo: Adding Environmental Actions to Our Spiritual Practices

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/neddy-astudillo-067b449a

https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/astudillo-receives-presbyterians-for-earth-care-annual-eco-justice-award/

https://justiceunbound.org/one-body-with-earth-a-wake-up-call/

SacredPeopleSacredEarth.org

GreenFaith.org

LivingTheChange.net

The climate emergency isn’t coming, it’s now … and it’s been with us for some time. Though slow at first, congregations, faith organizations, and faith-based campuses are now hurrying to develop actions that help save life on our planet. We see a growing awareness that creation is under enormous stress, induced by humans. The awareness includes that the huge changes that need to happen have a deadline. 2030, the year that hundreds of international scientists have agreed is the deadline for actions to keep Earth from heating over 1.5° above pre-industrial levels.

All faith-connected organizations need to lay out boldly that meeting the deadline requires costly discipleship. What we eat, where we bank, what we invest in—all of these are now spiritual practices. None of them is separate from faith. 

We can all commit to do something really meaningful. . . And, please promote this important conversation to others.

Lee first met Neddy Astudillo on a farm in northern Illinois. This organic farm has a great story told in the movie, The Dirt on Farmer John. Neddy and her spouse, Tom Spaulding, started a Learning Center on the farm to teach all that goes into healthy soil, organic growing, and farming without pesticides or chemicals. That Learning Center has evolved to train new farmers in organic, regenerative methods. Revolutionary! But our conversation with Neddy today has a little different focus. 

As an eco-minister and eco-theologian, Neddy directs Green Faith in Florida and in Latin America. Be sure you go to the GreenFaith.org to learn far more about Neddy’s accomplishments and hopes. How they frame their work:

Religious and spiritual communities everywhere generate a moral awakening to the sacredness of Earth and the dignity of all people. Together, we are building resilient, caring communities and economies that meet everyone’s needs and protect the planet. The era of conquest, extraction, and exploitation has given way to cooperation and community.

The good life is one of connectedness—with each other and all of nature. It is a world of flourishing life that replaces despair with joy, scarcity with shared abundance, and privilege with justly distributed power.

Please tell us your thoughts on these subjects. Leave a message on Jubilee OneEarth Economics and/or Simple Living Works! Facebook pages.

If you’re not so sure you can plant or tend any trees, can you consider making a donation to the OneEarth Jubilee Tree Fund? In 2021, we will be getting trees in the ground in the San Diego region as well as two regions in Mexico. This  Fund also gives you a chance to compensate for the CO2 your travel and energy use put into the air. The trees you fund will take it out of the air. Either by planting or donating, we encourage action. The crises underway on our planet require us to act differently, to act in cooperation with nature as our ally. You can donate by check, payable to Jubilee Economics Ministries (designate that it’s for the Tree Fund), or online at www.oneearthjubilee.com/donations.

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Ep. 0421–Arborist Robin Rivet on Reversing Climate Crises through Informed Tree Actions

As we look for powerful allies in the continuing urgent work of reversing the climate crises, let’s call her Tree. What does Tree do? She is pulling CO2 out of the air, cooling where you live, saving energy, giving us healthy food, and that’s just some of what she does. You don’t need to pay lots of money to enlist Tree’s help either. Maybe none at all. In this podcast conversation, Robin Rivet gives us a do-it-yourself way to help save life on our planet.

If you’re leaving 10 miles far from the pollution of town, you’ll be able to still breathe the contemporary air whereas learning your lessons. discount cialis You can’t afford to hurt anyone as you drive, levitra online no prescription see for more so accept that you need proper training before you take the car out. Kamagra jelly is a medicine but this medicine is beneficial as purchase levitra you get to enjoy several loves making session by using one single pill. Serotonin is also crucial for the proper development of the ENS where, among its many roles, it acts as a catalyst to prevent cheap 25mg viagra appalachianmagazine.com premature ejaculation.

The content Robin gives us helps us know we—you and I and our organizations and congregations— CAN do something to reverse the multiple climate disasters by addressing the annual net loss of trees on our planet. If our banks lost that much wealth year after year, we’d be deeply concerned. Let’s see if we can match that level of concern when we learn of the tremendous loss of environmental wealth, or natural capital as it is also called, in the annual net loss of trees. Robin will tell us more about the wealth and treasure in our trees—a kind of wealth our systems and our eyes have not been trained to see.
Just to keep our conversation with arborist Robin Robin in perspective, listen for how it contrasts sharply with the news recently that billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Besos, and Elon Musk have committed to working on reversing climate change through grand technological and market-driven fixes. We do well to be wary of such promises. Markets have a history of being exploitive and technology’s history has extracted enormous amounts of resources from nature. They’ve gotten us to the climate mess we’re in. Gates, Besos, and Musk have all acquired extreme and excessive wealth from markets and technology. But they’ve taken nature’s wealth—commonwealth that belongs to all of us—to do so. No doubt there’s more money to be made from our planet’s climate crises. But will it be for the common good? The history of the industrial age gives little support to the thinking of the approach recommended by these high profile billionaires. And this conversation with Robin Rivet takes us in a refreshing different direction.

If you’re not so sure you can plant or tend any trees, can you consider making a donation to the OneEarth Jubilee Tree Fund? In 2021, we will be getting trees in the ground in the San Diego region as well as two regions in Mexico. This  Fund also gives you a chance to compensate for the CO2 your travel and energy use put into the air. The trees you fund will take it out of the air. Either by planting or donating, we encourage action. The crises underway on our planet require us to act differently, to act in cooperation with nature as our ally. You can donate by check, payable to Jubilee Economics Ministries (designate that it’s for the Tree Fund), or online at www.oneearthjubilee.com/donations

More Info

 

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Ep. 0321–Mike Little: The Power of Money—Making All Our Money Accountable to Our Faith

How Lee’s benefited from Faith & Money Network. Visit FaithAndMoneyNetwork.org

Remembering ways JEM and F&MN have collaborated

Linking money to faith, when it affects ALL our uses of money and not just our giving, is itself a radical position.

Having this conversation now while the U.S. economy is being exposed for its inability to deal with grotesque income and wealth gaps—to wit, the stock market is at all time highs but the people without work and others who are underpaid are much too high for our economy to meet the standards of faith, financial morality, or an economy to hold up as a model.

The education and training that F&MN does

Your signature quote: “A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life.” — Wendell Berry. How is F&MN linking change of thinking values to change of practice?

Instances in which someone’s change of practice goes as far as  changing the economic and faith paradigms by which they live, e.g., is Christian faith naturally linked to the values of capitalism’s economic model? Do you see people shifting their faith and economic models?

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Ep. 0221–Economist Barry Shelley: Economic Assumptions and Initiatives for Change

The U.S. economy stumbled badly under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic. The new administration in Washington has inherited the worst jobs market in modern times. The challenge to find paths of recovery for households, small businesses, states, and more has been engaged. Here on the Simpler OneEarth Living podcast we pursue an economic model we call OneEarth Jubilee. Today we talk with an economist Barry Shelley, senior lecturer at Boston University, about assumptions that underlie the current national economy and initiatives people are taking that show different assumptions and economic models are possible.

In Jubilee Economics Ministries we benefit greatly from Barry because he is an economic advisor to JEM’s understanding and practice of an alternative economy rooted in creation more than wealth accumulation or maximization of profits. This conversation with Barry focuses in three areas: (1) the underlying assumptions of the prevailing economy and the challenges in moving our economy in new directions, (2) the discussions happening among professional economists about changes and different economic models, and (3) local initiatives he considers important in showing that alternative sub-economies can be created within the larger, prevailing economy.

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Invitation to Sign OneEarth Jubilee Covenant for the 2020’s

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