Nate Hagens

You're listening to The Great Simplification.

I'm Nate Hagans.

On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future.

By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming Great Simplification.

Today, I'm joined by systems change practitioner Brett Kencairn for an overview of the no regrets regenerative strategies need to build ecological and community resilience through a practice called living systems regeneration.

Brett Kincairn is the founding director of the Center for Regenerative Solutions and senior policy advisor for climate and resilience for the city of Boulder, Colorado's climate initiatives team, where he coordinates the city's nature-based solutions work.

Brett has extensive experience in regenerative ecosystems and economic design and implementation.

He has also worked across the Western United States in community-based initiatives.

Additionally, he is the co-founder of multiple organizations, including the Rogue River Institute for Ecology and Economy, Veterans Green Jobs, and Community Energy Systems.

In this conversation, we explore why overemphasizing carbon accounting is

has obscured the second and equally important leg of global heating, land use change and soil degradation.

Brett breaks down why land use change accounts for over a third of excess carbon and how acknowledging this reveals a clearer, more manageable path towards local ecological regeneration and stability.

Most excitingly, Brett shares some of the ways he and others have put theory into practice over many decades through community-led stewardship initiatives that are restabilizing land and local water cycles.

Ultimately, Brett and I discuss...

why fully embodying all this will require us to complexify and deepen our relationship with the rest of nature and each other even as we simplify our economic and material throughput at the global level.

If you'd like to learn more about the information presented in this episode, I encourage you to take a look at our show notes, which you can find on our website on all episodes on thegreatsimplification.com.

And in the link in the bottom of the description of this episode, the show notes include resources and references for topics covered in this conversation and are available for every episode in our catalog, including the Franklies.

This was a really inspiring conversation.

Please welcome Brett Kencairn.

Brett Concairn.