B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Classic plays are often approached as cultural artifacts: texts to be presented, preserved, interpreted, and admired for their artistic merit or historical importance. They are staged to entertain, to educate about theatrical craft, or to fulfill curricular requirements in literature and drama. They have been seen and appreciated by countless people. They are amazing works […]

We often talk about climate change as a problem of carbon emissions rising and the technologies needed to bring them down. But that framing leaves out something fundamental.

Brett KenCairn, founding director of the Center for Regenerative Solutions and a longtime leader in community-based climate initiatives, has spent decades advancing nature-based solutions grounded in land restoration and local action. In his keynote at Bioneers 2026, he reframes the crisis as one rooted not only in emissions, but in the widespread degradation of living systems — and points toward restoration as a path forward.

This is an edited transcript of his talk.

Brett KenCairn: 

I come from Boulder, Colorado, a community with a unique relationship to climate change. We have 11 federal research labs, including the National Center for Atmospheric Research, established there in 1967. Our community takes climate science seriously, probably because around 3,000 climate scientists actually live there. There’s a bit of an inside joke in Boulder that we have more climate scientists than therapists and personal trainers.

Boulder was also one of the first communities in the world to step up when our federal government chose not to sign onto early international agreements to reduce emissions. We said we would. We committed to reducing emissions as a community, and then we started organizing — working with other cities across the country and helping build a broader global movement.

When I joined in 2013 to help shape the next generation of our climate action plans, I was given the opportunity to collaborate with teams all over the world: Helsinki, Stockholm, Rio, Sydney, New York, Seattle, Toronto. It was an exuberant time.

But many of those cities are now quietly stepping back from this work. There’s a real sense of despair and hopelessness among many of us who’ve been at it for years, because we can see that our strategy isn’t working.

What I’ve come to understand is that it was doomed from the beginning, built on a false premise and a half-truth. The premise was that this problem was purely about technology — about machines, about energy sources. That if we just changed those sources — built more wind farms, installed more solar, deployed more electric vehicles and heat pumps — we could solve it.

That’s the half-truth.

Climate Change Has Two Drivers

The other half is something we’ve known for more than 50 years. If you go back to the early days of global climate conversations in the 1970s, they all pointed to the same thing: Climate change has two legs. Yes, one of those legs is fossil fuel emissions. Nothing I’m saying diminishes the importance of reducing them. But even then, we knew there was a second leg: the degradation of land, the desecration of living systems.

Because the atmosphere isn’t just a geochemical machine governed by CO₂ in and CO₂ out. It’s a life-mediated system. Life created our atmosphere — for life. And the breakdown of these living systems is what’s been driving instability within them.

When the world came together in the 1990s at the Rio Earth Summit, we understood that there were three existential threats we needed to address. Climate was one, and we created the Convention on Climate Change — the IPCC we’ve heard so much about.

But there were two other conventions established at that summit. Biodiversity was one. The other was meant to be called the Convention on Land Degradation, but that didn’t sound compelling enough, so it became the Convention to Combat Desertification. Unfortunately, that framing led many of us to think, well, that’s a problem somewhere else; maybe Africa, but not here.

But I can show you places right outside Boulder that are desertifying right now. Because even then, we understood that this crisis was also about land degradation.

But then we started to forget. We need to understand why we made those choices. But what I will say is this: It’s time to change our strategy, because the one we’ve been using doesn’t offer much hope.

Let me summarize this in a way that might feel familiar.

If I asked many of you what’s causing climate change and how we solve it, you’d probably describe it something like this: Over the past few centuries, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been rising. And as fossil fuel use has increased, emissions have risen right alongside it.

Those two trends line up so closely that it feels obvious, like clear cause and effect. It’s easy to say: There’s your answer. The smoking gun — or in this case, the smoking stack. 

When you understand climate change through that relationship, it naturally leads you to believe the solutions are technological. And if you’re a financier, if you like technology, that’s a very appealing frame to work within.

But we’re starting to learn that there’s another driver here. The science is finally beginning to catch up.

A 2017 report by Jonathan Sanderman and others looked at soil loss over the past 12,000 years. For most of that time, soil loss was minimal. But with the rise of early empires and the expansion of agriculture, you start to see it increase. And then, in the last century, it accelerates dramatically.

What Sanderman and his colleagues found is striking: Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the excess carbon in the atmosphere didn’t come from burning fossil fuels. It came from the loss of soil carbon — from degrading the land itself. And it’s not just about carbon. 

When we lose soil, we also lose the capacity of living systems to hold water. We’ve forgotten that the most abundant greenhouse gas driving warming isn’t CO₂. It’s water vapor. So as we degrade the land, we’re not only releasing carbon, we’re also releasing vast amounts of water that would otherwise be held in healthy ecosystems. And that, too, intensifies climate instability.

There’s another relationship here, too: how fossil fuels, used through machinery, have reshaped the land itself. You don’t have to look far to see it. Just look at our own backyards. Take the Great Plains, once one of the most extraordinary ecological systems on the planet. In the span of just 10 years, we plowed up 30 million acres. 

And it wasn’t just in the United States. This was happening all over the world. So while we’ve told ourselves the story that climate change is about industry and fossil fuel combustion, it’s also about the widespread degradation of the living world.

And the scale of it is immense.

The UN estimates that around 70% of the Earth’s terrestrial systems are degraded. A report last year suggested that roughly half of the planet’s biological capacity has already been compromised. 

We’re living on a planet operating at roughly half its basic photosynthetic capacity — what scientists call “net primary productivity.” We don’t even know what it feels like to live on a fully functioning planet anymore. Although we’ve heard the stories.

We’ve Recovered Before, and We Can Again

Remember the stories about the passenger pigeons? Wow, when they took flight, the sky would go dark? That the rivers were so full of salmon you could walk across them? That you could stand on the Plains, look in any direction for miles, and see the land moving with millions of buffalo?

That’s what this planet looked like when it was operating at its full capacity. And that’s what we have to bring back. It’s the only real hope we have to address the climate crisis.

Now, it can feel hopeless. But there have been other moments when it felt that way. If you haven’t watched documentaries about the Dust Bowl, you should. Try to imagine what it was like on the Great Plains after we plowed up 30 million acres and turned it into a monoculture of wheat, and then the dust storms began. At first, just a few each year. Then dozens. People describe walls of dust, miles high, rolling toward them — like hell itself descending. It must have felt hopeless.

But we lived in a time when we still believed we could do something about it. When we believed we could return to the land and repair what we had broken. Millions of people went back to work restoring it. We made a living putting the world back together. And we did it.

In the span of a decade, we stopped the destruction. Within another decade, we began to restore what had been lost.

What happened during the Dust Bowl affected nearly a third of this country, but it also showed what’s possible at scale. The work people did together was extraordinary. Billions of plants were put back into the ground. Thousands of miles of contouring and check dams were built. It was simple, practical work, but deeply impactful. And it’s exactly the kind of work we need to be doing again.

I recently heard a presentation from Elizabeth Heilman at Wichita State. She shared that in parts of Kansas, regenerative agriculture has now been adopted at a remarkable scale — something like 70% of a county has returned its land to living cover, to deep-rooted systems. Do you know what they’re seeing? They’re changing weather patterns. 

We can do this. We’ve done this. We are doing this right now.

The Real Shift: An Economy That Repairs the Planet

This won’t happen just because we shift consciousness, or do more education, or launch another communications campaign for the planet. It will happen because we change the economy. We have to make it possible to make a living repairing the planet.

There’s promising research showing that if we restored just a third of degraded land globally, we could stabilize the climate while also reversing biodiversity loss. And according to the World Economic Forum, that kind of effort could generate 190 million jobs and $3.5 trillion in economic activity.

That’s the future we need to demand. So where do we start?

• First, we have to prepare and plan, just like in the 1930s. When systems begin to unravel, it’s too late to start from scratch.
• Second, we need to test and prove what works. Pilot these approaches now. Get them underway.
• Third, we need partnerships at every level — across neighborhoods, jurisdictions, countries. And we have to learn quickly and scale what works.
• And finally, we have to remember: This is a political process. I know it’s more fun to talk about whales and growing things — I like that too — but this is political.

Yes, this is daunting. I know, especially for younger leaders, it can feel overwhelming. But you can start now.

In my own community, we’re starting with a simple idea: Remove the barriers to participation. We have to de-professionalize land stewardship. This isn’t complicated work. It’s something many of us can do. But when only professionals are allowed to participate, most people are left out.

First, we need to move beyond volunteerism. That was a 20th-century model. People’s time and knowledge deserve to be paid. Even modest support — 10 to 15 hours a month at a living wage — can sustain these systems. Water the trees, mulch, care for the plants. That’s enough to keep things going.

Second, we need the infrastructure to do this at scale. We’re training local contractors, especially small and minority-owned businesses, in things like wildfire-resilient landscaping, rain gardens, and biodiversity restoration. Then the public sector can seed that capacity through small contracts.

Third, we need to fund this work at scale. Through partnerships, we’ve seen how communities can generate tens of millions of dollars through local funding measures to invest in restoration.

That’s what we need to be doing everywhere. And we can. So join in.

Start by growing something. A flower, a medicinal plant, food. Then learn how it grows alongside other plants — what it needs, what it supports. And then start to see how that small system fits into something larger. Before long, you’ll find yourself part of a much bigger community — one that’s ready to welcome you and help you find your way.

The post Climate Change Has Two Drivers. We’ve Been Largely Ignoring One. appeared first on Bioneers.

Wetlands, forests, peatlands, and mangrove swamps support native biodiversity and sock away large amounts of carbon. They also bog down invading armies, history shows.

These are the facts behind a new national security strategy concept that researchers from the University of East London call “defensive rewilding.” The idea is that large-scale ecosystem restoration can help protect a country’s borders – deterring invasions, slowing enemy advances, and funneling adversaries into more easily defended corridors.

Climate action and national defense are often cast as competitors for the same limited pot of government funds. But in fact, ecosystem restoration can contribute to both aims, the researchers say.

Take peatlands, for example: they’re unparalleled at storing carbon. And absolutely terrible at holding up heavy-duty military vehicles.

Or dense, mixed-species natural forests: great for biodiversity, and also for hiding defenders from surveillance drones and loitering munitions.

Natural rivers with restored floodplains provide flood control and support aquatic life and fisheries. As a bonus, their banks are too soft and their channels too wide for military tactical bridges.

The Pripyat marshes along the present-day Ukraine-Belarus border were a major barrier to German advances during Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Also during World War II, coral reefs and mangrove ecosystems frustrated amphibious invasions throughout the Pacific theater. More recently, Ukraine’s flooding of the Irpin River floodplain in 2022 was a major factor in stopping the Russian advance on Kyiv.

The latter example did not involve established wetlands, but still illustrates the concept, the researchers say. They define defensive rewilding as “the intentional, pre- or mid-conflict enhancement and restoration of ecosystems to create militarily advantageous terrain, while concurrently delivering significant environmental benefits.”

 

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Defensive rewilding is not restoration as part of post-conflict nation-building, and it’s not mid-conflict environmental destruction for military advantage (known as WarWilding, like Saddam Hussein’s draining of the Mesopotamian marshes).

Rewilded ecosystems can function as a form of “deterrence by denial” – the enemy takes a look at how an invasion is likely to go, and decides to pass. Another plus is that it is “inherently defensive,” the researchers say: there’s no mistaking wetland restoration for saber-rattling, so rewilding can improve a country’s strategic situation without risking touching off a regional arms race.

Ecosystem restoration is often cheaper than constructing conventional defensive fortifications like anti-tank ditches – and rewilded ecosystems last longer and require little maintenance to boot. However, the researchers note, the ecosystem restoration has to be large-scale to really pose a deterrent.

Rewilding isn’t a national defense strategy on its own. It still takes good intelligence and solid strategy to prevent and repel invasions, and modern military technology means that natural obstacles will sometimes only slow enemy advances rather than stopping them entirely. The same wild landscapes that bog down invaders can frustrate counteroffensives, and ecosystems can be damaged in the crossfire.

Still, defensive rewilding represents a novel way of thinking and a potential win-win approach, the researchers argue. “From a fiscal perspective, this represents a shift from ‘spending’ on defense to ‘investing’ in resilience,” they write.

Source: Jelliman S. et al. “Defensive Rewilding: a Nature-Based Solution for National Security.” The RUSI Journal 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

What does it take for people to meaningfully participate in democracy? For millions of workers, the answer starts with something basic: being able to afford to live.

Saru Jayaraman, President of One Fair Wage, has spent decades organizing restaurant workers and advocating for fair wages across the country. In her keynote at Bioneers 2026, she made the case that economic justice is not separate from democracy or climate action, but foundational to both.

This is an edited transcript of her talk.

Saru Jayaraman: 

For 25 years, I’ve been organizing and representing workers in the restaurant industry. It employs 13.6 million people in the United States, many in the lowest-wage jobs in the country.

In past talks at Bioneers, I’ve shared that the subminimum wage for tipped workers was $2.13 an hour. Still today, in 2026, the largest employer of women, people of color, youth, immigrants, and really so many of us can legally pay just $2.13 an hour.

I’ve said again and again that when so much of America cannot afford to feed themselves or their families, they also cannot engage politically. There is no way people can take on issues like the climate crisis when they are working three jobs instead of one, and when those in power represent the opposite of what they need.

As I’ve continued to share this, I’ve faced a lot of pushback. In 2024, when we were raising money to put wage increases on the ballot in states like Arizona and Michigan, donors told me, “That’s cute. You’re trying to raise wages. We’re trying to save democracy.”

But raising wages is saving democracy.

Despite these repeated warnings, we’ve landed in a crisis that has been building for a long time. One clear example: Trump campaigned on and delivered “no tax on tips,” even though two-thirds of tipped workers don’t earn enough to pay federal income tax. But he at least recognized these workers as worth speaking to.

When that happened, I urged Kamala to engage this audience as well. The answer was no, again and again.

In the last election, many tipped workers either stayed home or shifted their support elsewhere. Not because they didn’t care, but because they felt unseen. We didn’t speak to them. We didn’t say, “Your lives matter.”

What the whole “no tax on tips” moment revealed is this: When you leave people out, you do it at your own peril. When large groups of people are excluded, they become vulnerable to being co-opted by the right.

In April of last year, a series of articles in USA Today documented a rumor spreading among MAGA voters that Trump had already raised the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour. The videos were widely shared and gained significant traction among right-wing audiences.

Now, we all know it’s a lie. That’s not the news. The news is that they didn’t claim he raised wages to $15, or $17, or even $20. They said $25 an hour: the minimum needed to live anywhere in the United States right now. They chose the number that reflects people’s lived reality, including their own base. And it resonated.

We have a five-alarm fire. The right is talking about $25 and energizing their base around it, while the left is stuck arguing for $17, or in some places, still $15. I’ll be blunt. This is why people are frustrated with us. They see us negotiating against ourselves before we even enter the room. They see us settling for half a loaf.

When we saw this, we organized an emergency convening in Los Angeles in June, bringing together 140 labor and community leaders from 15 states. The message was clear. It’s time to move beyond the Fight for $15. It’s time to demand a living wage for all, with a national floor of $25.

Since that gathering, we’ve launched campaigns, bills, and ballot measures in dozens of states calling for $25 across the board, and $30 in higher-cost areas. Several counties have already taken action.

Within our own movement, there was hesitation. “$25? That’s too high. $30? Impossible.” So we polled it across red, blue, and purple districts. The result was overwhelming support. And when we tested the opposition’s messaging, that this would raise prices, cost jobs, or hurt small businesses, support actually increased.

People are angry. If you tell them wages can’t go up because prices will rise, they respond, “What are you talking about? Prices have already gone up.”

The only thing that hasn’t increased is the value of human labor.

There’s so much talk about affordability, but most of it centers on bringing costs down. There is no world in which affordability comes from bringing costs down alone. Inflation over the last 75 years has never meaningfully reversed. The only way to make life more affordable for half of working Americans, and it is half who earn less than $25, is to increase wages.

This unprecedented affordability crisis is also a democracy crisis. And that makes this a moment of real consequence.

I know there’s a lot to be unhappy about. There’s a lot to defend. But if all we do is play defense, we will lose. We need a proactive vision that is bold, that shows people we are fighting. And it has to focus on the issue they keep telling us matters most, the cost of living.

We’re in a moment of real opportunity. The pendulum could swing toward a world where people work one job instead of three, where they can thrive instead of just survive, where they have time with their kids, and the capacity to engage with the issues they care about, including the climate crisis.

I believe we can achieve this because fair wages is one of the few issues working people across the political spectrum can agree on.

It’s time for our country to deliver.

The post Democracy Doesn’t Work Without a Living Wage appeared first on Bioneers.

Researchers have developed a novel fresh produce wash that removes up to 93% of pesticides from the surface and doubles as a preservative, keeping fruit fresher for days longer than normal. What’s more, the wash is mostly made up of biodegradable starch.

Pesticides are often loaded onto fruit and veg and even with regulation, it can be hard to keep amounts in check. Data from Canadian food safety agencies found that the non-compliance rate for pesticide residues on food increased from 0.4% to over 2% in the four years between 2016 and 2020, the study reports. 

The researchers’ inventive solution requires just three ingredients: starch, coated in tannic acid, a natural plant compound, and iron, forged together into nanoparticles, and suspended in a solution. 

To test it out, they first applied three types of commonly-used pesticides to apples at real-world levels: thiabendazole, acetamiprid, and imidacloprid. Next, they analyzed how their nanoparticle-infused wash compared with water, the only available method most people have to clean their produce. 

The differences were stark. While rinsing with water was able to remove about 50% of the pesticides attached to the apples’ surface, the nanowash eradicated almost double that, varying slightly depending on the pesticide type: the wash cleared 93.5% of the acetamiprid, 89.03% of the imidacloprid, and 86% of the thiabendazole. 

 

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The success comes down to a precise reaction that takes place between iron and tannic acid, which together create an absorptive effect that helps to sponge chemicals off the fruit’s surface. 

The researchers went a step further, to explore whether their invention could help tackle another huge food system challenge: waste. They suspected that their wash could be used as a treatment to provide a preservative effect—and they were proved right. When they dipped two types of fruit, cut apples and fresh grapes, into a nanoparticle solution, they found that the cut apples took longer to turn brown than the untreated fruit. The grapes, meanwhile, maintained their shape for 15 days, compared to the untreated fruit which had grown noticeably wrinkled and shrunken by that point. 

In both the treated apples and grapes the rate of weight loss was also halved compared to the untreated fruits, suggesting that they had been able to retain more moisture. Tests on the wash showed it had antioxidant and antimicrobial properties, which seem to provide a protective coating on the fruit and to slow its degradation. 

The wash poses no health risks to consumers, and in fact the added sprinkling of iron may have a nutritional benefit, the scientists say. It will take a while for this innovation to reach consumers in their homes, but in the meantime the researchers have set their sights on industry, where they say their invention could be quickly scaled and used to clean produce before it reaches people’s homes. 

“Our early cost estimates suggest it would add roughly three cents per apple—comparable to current commercial coatings, but with the added benefit of pesticide removal and extending shelf life,” the researchers say.

Yang et. al. “Dual-Function Metal−Phenolic Network-Capped Starch Nanoparticles for Postharvest Pesticide Removal and Produce Preservation.” ACS Nano. 2026.

Image: Pexels

Radical Democracy: recovering the roots of self-governance & autonomy - Booklet presentation from Indonesia Date and time * Date: April 15th * Time: 11am GMT * Format: Hybrid event Introduction In the face of escalating global crises—climate breakdown, deepening economic inequalities, and the enduring dominance of neoliberal systems—the need to rethink democracy has never been more urgent. alternatives

Terry Tempest Williams, one of our nation’s living literary treasures and a guiding light for many of us regarding ethics and citizenship, shares how she emerged from a dream during the pandemic in 2020 with a renewed vow she had forgotten. In this time of political and climate chaos, as we seek beauty and cohesion wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry focused on “The Glorians,” the overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world and how they can inspire us to carry forward with grace. “The Glorians are reaching out to us,” she writes,” inviting us to dream a new world into being.”

This talk was delivered at the 2026 Bioneers Conference.

Terry Tempest Williams, a writer, educator, and environmental activist known for her lyrical and impassioned prose, is the author of over twenty creative nonfiction books including the environmental literature classic, Refuge – An Unnatural History of Family and Place, and: The Open Space of Democracy, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, When Women Were Birds, and Erosion – Essays of Undoing. Her most recent book is the The Glorians – Visitations from the Holy Ordinary (spring ’26). A Recipient of Guggenheim and Lannan literary fellowships, Ms. Williams’ work has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Progressive, and Orion, and has been translated worldwide. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is currently Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School.

Learn more at terrytempestwilliams.com

EXPLORE MORE Terry Tempest Williams: Noticing the Glorians in a Fractured World

In a recent conversation with Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, Terry Tempest Williams reflects more personally on the inner terrain behind her work — art, activism, spirituality, and the discipline of staying open. She speaks to grief as a form of love, to community as a site of imagination, and to the quiet but radical act of not looking away. As she describes it, “finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”

Erosion and Evolution: Our Undoing is Our Becoming

In this podcast episode, Terry Tempest Williams asks: How do we find the strength to not look away at all that is breaking our hearts? Hands on the earth, we remember where the source of our authentic power comes from.

The post Terry Tempest Williams – The Glorians Are Among Us appeared first on Bioneers.

There are several technologies out there that harvest the sun’s boundless energy. Solar panels soak up solar energy and convert it to electricity, while solar thermal systems use mirror-like contraptions to collect sunshine to heat water or living spaces. But there aren’t any efficient ways to store solar heat for days or weeks.

Now, researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara have come up with a way to do that. They have created a new engineered molecule that traps sunlight, stores the energy in its chemical bonds, and then releases it on demand. The team reported this rechargeable solar heat battery in a paper published in the journal Science.

“Think of photochromic sunglasses,” said Han Nguyen, a PhD student and the paper’s lead author in a press release. “When you’re inside, they’re just clear lenses. You walk out into the sun, and they darken on their own. Come back inside, and the lenses become clear again. That kind of reversible change is what we’re interested in. Only instead of changing color, we want to use the same idea to store energy, release it when we need it, and then reuse the material over and over.”

The new material, called a pyrimidone, can store more than 1.6 megajoules per kilogram. That is almost double the energy density of a conventional lithium-ion battery, which is about 0.9 MJ/kg. Just like a lithium-ion battery can store electricity for days, the new liquid battery could store sunshine for days to provide hot water or heat when needed.

 

.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl , .IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {height: auto;position: relative;}.IRPP_ruby , .IRPP_ruby:hover , .IRPP_ruby:visited , .IRPP_ruby:active {border:0!important;}.IRPP_ruby .clearfix:after {content: "";display: table;clear: both;}.IRPP_ruby {display: block;transition: background-color 250ms;webkit-transition: background-color 250ms;width: 100%;opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: #eaeaea;}.IRPP_ruby:active , .IRPP_ruby:hover {opacity: 1;transition: opacity 250ms;webkit-transition: opacity 250ms;background-color: inherit;}.IRPP_ruby .postImageUrl {background-position: center;background-size: cover;float: left;margin: 0;padding: 0;width: 31.59%;position: absolute;top: 0;bottom: 0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text-area {float: right;width: 65.65%;padding:0;margin:0;}.IRPP_ruby .centered-text {display: table;height: 130px;left: 0;top: 0;padding:0;margin:0;padding-top: 20px;padding-bottom: 20px;}.IRPP_ruby .IRPP_ruby-content {display: table-cell;margin: 0;padding: 0 74px 0 0px;position: relative;vertical-align: middle;width: 100%;}.IRPP_ruby .ctaText {border-bottom: 0 solid #fff;color: #0099cc;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .postTitle {color: #000000;font-size: 16px;font-weight: 600;letter-spacing: normal;margin: 0;padding: 0;font-family:'Arial';}.IRPP_ruby .ctaButton {background: url(https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts-pro/assets/images/next-arrow.png)no-repeat;background-color: #afb4b6;background-position: center;display: inline-block;height: 100%;width: 54px;margin-left: 10px;position: absolute;bottom:0;right: 0;top: 0;}.IRPP_ruby:after {content: "";display: block;clear: both;}Recommended Reading:Bottling Sunshine without Batteries

 

Scientists have tried to make such molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage systems before. But the materials designed so far either don’t store enough energy, degrade much too quickly, or need complex designs or solvents that made them impractical.

To make their MOST molecule, the California team turned to DNA for inspiration. The pyrimidone structure they have made resembles a component found in DNA that can reversibly change its form when exposed to UV light.

The new engineered pyrimidone molecule acts like a spring. When sunlight falls on it, it twists into a strained, high-energy state. It stays locked in that shape until a small amount of heat or a catalyst triggers it to release its stored energy as heat and revert to its relaxed state.

The molecule, which is soluble in water, releases enough heat to boil water in just a few minutes. The researchers suggest that it could find use in residential water heating: charge in rooftop tanks during the day and provide hot water at night, even days and weeks later.

Source: Han P. Q. Nguyen. Molecular solar thermal energy storage in Dewar pyrimidone beyond 1.6 MJ/kg. Science, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

Terry Tempest Williams is one of the most celebrated and revered American nature writers. She integrates the musicality of a poet with the passion and purpose of an activist. Terry is also an award-winning conservationist, a fierce defender of her beloved Southwestern desert landscapes.

She has authored over 20 books that are translated worldwide. Her most recent book is The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.

Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, author of Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, engaged with Terry at a Bioneers conference in a wide ranging conversation between two old friends.

Featuring

Terry Tempest Williams, a writer, educator, and environmental activist known for her lyrical and impassioned prose, is the author of over twenty creative nonfiction books. Her work has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Progressive, and Orion, and has been translated worldwide. Her most recent book is the The Glorians – Visitations from the Holy Ordinary (spring ’26).

Credits

• Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
• Written by: Kenny Ausubel
• Producer: Teo Grossman
• Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
• Associate Producer and Show Engineer: Emily Harris
• Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
• Production Assistance: Mika Anami

Resources

TerryTempestWilliams.com

The Glorians – Visitations from the Holy Ordinary

Terry Tempest Williams: Noticing the Glorians in a Fractured World

Erosion and Evolution: Our Undoing is Our Becoming | Bioneers Podcast

This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.

Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcast

Transcript

Neil Harvey (Host): Standing in the lineage of the greatest nature writers, the acclaimed author, naturalist and activist Terry Tempest Williams links her deepest inner experiences with the state of the web of life. She plumbs connections: art and ecology – women and politics – democracy and social healing – wild lands and First Peoples – family and faith.

I’m Neil Harvey. This is “A Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams”

Terry Tempest Williams is one of the most celebrated and revered American nature writers. She integrates the musicality of a poet with the passion and purpose of an activist. Her tender personal reflections and intimate insights as a naturalist braid together with her keen political and spiritual insight in a voice that feels most at home in the liminal – in the space between words.

Her work and her life encompass many dimensions beyond writing. As a socially and politically engaged artist, Terry is also an award-winning conservationist, a fierce defender of her beloved Southwestern desert landscapes. She’s done everything from civil disobedience to testifying before Congress on women’s health issues, to buying gas leases to prevent the desecration of pristine and sacred lands.

She has authored over 20 books that are translated worldwide, including the masterwork Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Her most recent book is The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.

Terry has received numerous prestigious literary awards, and her long academic career recently included serving as writer- in-residence at Harvard Divinity School.

Terry Tempest Williams spoke at a recent Bioneers conference, where Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, author of Nature, Culture and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, engaged with her in a free-range conversation between two old friends.

Nina began by asking Terry to describe the story from her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World chronicling her experience making social healing mosaics in Rwanda with the artist Lily Yeh.

Nina Simons (NS): In Finding Beauty in a Broken World, you share the story of Lily Yeh’s work with barefoot artists, helping create healing places in Rwanda and globally through engaged community art creation. And in both her work and your own, my sense is that you each elevate art to a place where its healing capacity for people, society and culture is amplified in community. You wrote that finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world you find. So now, when the need to transform our culture and society is at an all-time high, and since artists often foresee the future, I wonder if you have any thoughts about the role of artists in times like this, and what you might suggest to artists whose catalytic capacity is so vital, though so often undervalued in this society.

Terry Tempest Williams (TTW): How many of you know the work of Lily Yeh? She’s a phenomenal artist. She’s now 85, almost to be 86 years old, Asian, born in Taiwan, in China, her family. I met her in 2001, after I realized September 11th, my rhetoric had become as brittle as the opposition. And I had forgotten my poetry.

And I remember being in Maine. We were at a family place. And it was high tide. I went out to a rocky point and I said prayers. And basically said to the sea: Give me one wild word and I promise I will follow. And the word that came back to me after listening was mosaic. And I thought, oh no, my life is now going to be relegated to breaking my mother’s dishes and making bad picture frames. You know? I was—I did not understand mosaic. 

And I did some research, and Lily Yeh, her name came up. She started the Village of Arts and Humanities just outside Philly, in a very tough neighborhood. And I went on a pilgrimage to meet her. And she really changed my life and showed me the aisle of angels made of mosaics, the safehouses of mosaics, how…her colleague who was—had been a former drug dealer, became a master mosaicist. And they made these beautiful murals, and it—her work has been one of placemaking around the world. 

Lily Yeh. Photo: Daniel Traub / Wikimedia Commons

She later came to Salt Lake to do a mural in one of the poorer neighborhoods that had been invisible to the community. It became highly visible with the Latina and Latino communities. And then she said, “I need to talk to you.” And she said, “Will you come with me as a barefoot artist to Rwanda?” And I said no. My brother had just died a month earlier, and I said I cannot. I did not want to be in any more death. I cannot go. And Nina, she just stared at me. And then I heard myself, and I realized if I said no, I would be saying no to my spiritual life and growth, and I heard myself say yes. And another life-changing moment. 

And, I have to tell you, here’s another lesson I learned from her. Very conscientious, you know, if I’ve got a job, I will take it seriously. So knowing we were going to go to Rwanda, I got a map, looked where it was, what it was next to. I read over 60 books, everything I could get my hands on – novels, non-fiction, government reports – went to the Library of Congress, looked at all the maps – fire maps, water maps, war maps – just to get it in my mind. And she called me and she said, “I just want to know how you’re preparing.” And so I gave her this whole list, told her what I just told you. And I said but I just don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere, but I’ve got more books to read. And I said, ‘How are you preparing?’ And there’s this long silence, and she said, “I’m meditating.” And I quit reading. And just sat with that. So she’s a real teacher. 

And I think that’s what art does for us, it bypasses rhetoric and pierces the heart, and the heart is really, I think, where all change resides. 

And I saw…the power of art, to go into communities…numb with grief, dead with grief, the bones of these women’s children were buried under trees that were still there, that they were carrying in the folds of their skirts. But when Lily got the paint out and the children took over and painted their houses – turquoise, yellow, red, animals – something lifted. And what it led to was the creation of a genocide memorial, where these women – and most of them were women – could bury their beloveds in a place of dignity. And that was Lily. 

NS: You know that conversation about Rwanda leads me to ask you, as we are both women who are childless by choice, about your decision to adopt a son, and how that’s changing you.

TTW: My hair’s white. [LAUGHTER] Louis Gakumba is our son. He was our translator in Rwanda. And so, again, Lily. You know? 

I think being a mother at 50, as you say, childless by choice… it has brought me to my knees, and I mean in the most beautiful ways, for both Brooke and me. And Louis has been our teacher. It’s been hard. I knew nothing. I still know nothing. I am a grandmother. I have two grandchildren – we do – Malka who is 8, and Shayja who is 7. Shayja loves birds. I love him. He’s constantly calling about what he sees. 

Malka, I will share this with you, since you asked how’s it changing me… When she was 5, she said to me, “Do you think I’m too black?” And I said, ‘Malka, you are beautiful.’ And I said, ‘Why do you think that?’ And she gave me her reasons. And I said, ‘Let’s look at all the beautiful Black women.’ And we looked online, and she said, “She’s black like me. She’s black like me. She’s black like me.” And then she said, “Will you show me your body?” And I have to tell you, it was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life, was take off my clothes in front of a 5-year old. And turn around. And then, as I am standing before my granddaughter, she says, “What color is your heart?” And I said, ‘The same color as yours.’ And we’ve never had that discussion again. 

And the other day, three years later, she said, “Te Te Terry, don’t you think I’m beautiful? And I just said, ‘You are so beautiful.’ And so I think it’s what we learn together. 

Terry Tempest Williams at Bioneers 2026. Photo: Boris Zharkov

Shayja, the other day, we were up in Shenandoah, and he’s staring at me. You know? And I think, okay, this’ll come out. And he goes, “If only you were a little tanner.” And I just—you know, so we are learning about interracial family together, and it’s a beautiful thing. And Louis just wrote his memoir. It’s tough, it’s beautiful, and he said I want my children to know where they come from. And I want them to know who my ancestors are and—so we’re learning. 

And my father, who would tell you in this audience, was a true racist. And he is now 92, and he and Louis are closer than I can ever tell you. And it was on a plane from Denver to Salt Lake, and Dad and Louis were sitting together on the exit row, and a flight attendant said, “Yes, yes, yes.” And when Louis said yes, she said, “Get out, you don’t speak English.” And my father stood up and said, “Apologize. He speaks six languages. He’s smarter than anyone on this plane.” And she said, “Get out.” And my father stood up and said, “This plane will not fly until you apologize.” 

And when dad came home, I called him to see if they’d gotten home, and the flight attendant let things go, apologized. When I called my father, he was crying. And he said Terry, “I knew racism from the inside out. I never knew racism from the outside in.” And that night, he had a stroke. And I think it was such a shock that he literally was rewired. And it was Louis who took him to the emergency room, sat with him all night, and held his hand. No one holds my father’s hand. So it’s those kinds of changes, Nina. Aside from love and joy and… I’m grateful. 

Host: When we return, Terry Tempest Williams and Nina Simons explore how to marry contradictions, being species-fluid, and feeding a spider.

I’m Neil Harvey. You’re listening to the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature.

Host: If you’d like to see and hear more from Terry Tempest Williams, you can visit bioneers.org

Let’s drop back into the kitchen table conversation with Terry Tempest Williams and Nina Simons.

NS: Well, years ago, we had a conversation where you spoke of feeling drawn to marrying apparent contradictions. And it landed in me in a big way. And—

TTW: In what way?

NS: Well, in that every time I found myself encountering an apparent contradiction, I thought of you, and I thought, Huh, what does it mean to try to marry these things that seem so polarized. And…it was long before there was so much interest in non-binary gendered identities, and I found it a useful practice, to see how I could imagine them dancing together. Do you still find that resonant for you?

TTW: Every day.

NS: Yeah. [LAUGHS]

TTW: You know, living around Great Salt Lake, and living long enough to have seen her in her historic high, and now at her historic low, in retreat – and I don’t see it as retreat in the military retreat. I see it as a retreat as one goes on retreat or retreat in meditation or retreat in reflection. And I feel she’s inviting us to do the same.

So here is a saline lake that theoretically is dying, and alongside her death will be the death of the Wasatch Front – 2.5 million people if we do nothing. Not to mention the livelihood of 12 million birds. Right now, I have never seen Great Salt Lake so vibrant. I have never seen the Salt Lake area more alive with concern, with creative thinking, with young people, with artists, the Mormon Church. Great Salt Lake now has a new ally – Donald Trump. I don’t know how to deal with that, the paradox, because if I’m saying all hands on deck, that means Donald Trump’s hands too. And then I think, are we losing the lake even as we’re trying to save the lake?

I watch people who are saying it’s not called Great Salt Lake anymore, it’s the Lake. There are those that are saying this is America’s lake… I see them neutering her. And the Native people have said our Sacred Mother Lake. This is how we know her, this is how we want her dressed. I see the tribes not being brought to the table as sovereign nations, as sovereign governments. So it’s this, that and all of it. 

And the Wilson’s phalarope, which is now an endangered species, we’ve filed a petition for that species protection. The scientists on one hand say we have five years, seven years. The percentage of a saline lake ever being saved is zero.

Great Salt Lake. Photo: Patrick Hendry / Unsplash

But now, the governor, who’s on board, saying the deadline is 2034, which is the Winter Olympics. So that’s not the lake’s deadline. That’s not the phalarope’s deadline. So how do we juggle all of these things? It’s a paradox that feels like a hologram. And, yet, Great Salt Lake is directing us. 

And I think, again, what we were talking about today. If we are present, we’ll know what to do. If we’re listening to the lake, we will hear what she has to say. And, again, the elders, the different tribes, are leading the way, in my mind, and with integrity and a spiritual depth that I’m not seeing elsewhere. 

NS: I feel a tremendous connection with you and your writing through the way that you speak to and embody a quality of the feminine in your work. And the “feminine” I want to say, with quotes, because it’s such a weird word, and it’s been so malformed in our culture. And I think of When Women Were Birds. And I’ve recently begun studying the Tao Te Ching, and especially Ursula Le Guin’s version of it.

TTW: I love that.

NS: Which is so wonderful. And it’s reminding me of a long fascination that I’ve had with this quality that’s beyond binary genderism that’s about how one way of seeing how we’ve gone so wrong is the imbalance of the yin and the yang in all of us – in our culture, in our—you know, economy, in our education, in everything. I find myself reaching to expand the gender dialogue to encompass everyone and everything, and the archetypal necessity of rebalancing our inner framework. I wonder if you have any thoughts about that.

TTW: Just for the record, I’m thinking do I dare say this. You know? [LAUGHTER] I won’t have the right language, and I’m sure I will say it wrong and offend someone. But there was a moment in one of my classes, and we were—you know, the students write essays and braided essays, and gender pronouns, all of that comes up, and it’s important, and we’re all learning. And we’ve had some really powerful conversations in terms of what stories do we tell, what’s private, what’s personal, what about families, all of those. And we had an incredible conversation about queerness. And I said, ‘I think I’m queer.’ And you could have heard a pin drop. You know? And they go, “What do you mean?” And I said, ‘Well, we’ve been talking about being gender fluid. I feel I’m species fluid.’ And they got so excited. [LAUGHTER] You know? But I feel that. You know?

And I remember in An Unspoken Hunger, I talked about pansexuality in The Yellowstone: An Erotics of Place, and mentioned bison. And, you know, I think we’re so limited in terms of what we are capable of, in terms of our understanding different genders, in terms of understanding different species, and yet, if we can open ourselves and really be present with whomever we’re with, I think there is a depth of reciprocity and responsibility and empathy that is transferred. And I feel that again and again and again in the natural world. Call it serendipitous, call it the erotics of place, call it species—being species fluid. 

Talking to a person on the phone about the Say’s phoebes, that they were so beautiful. And I said, ‘I just love them.’ And then one jumped on my head. You know? And you just think, they know, you know? We’ve all had this experience.

Say’s Phoebe. Photo: Chuck Abbe / Wikimedia Commons

And it seems to me that the ultimate act of anthropomorphism is to assume that other species don’t feel, don’t communicate, don’t live and love and grieve. The exceptionalism that we have, I think, is so limiting, whether it’s our own view of gender, whether it’s our own view of the natural world, whether it’s our own view of ourselves.

So how do we keep expanding? How do we live and love with our hearts wide open, even in brokenness?

Host: The deeper story where the sacred dwells, where anything is possible.

As one of our generation’s greatest storytellers, Terry Tempest Williams engages with the world around her by building bridges between the human and other-than-human worlds.

In an excerpt from her recent book, The Glorians, she returns to the landscape she calls home, the Red Rock desert of Utah. She writes about what she calls “visitations from the holy ordinary,” moments and experiences that draw her deeper into relationship with the pulsing, thriving life that surrounds us all.

TTW: This is from The Glorians.

“‘I came from a family of repairers,’ the artist Louise Bourgeois once said, ‘The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn’t get mad. She weaves and repairs it.’

When I think of black widows in the desert, I wonder if this is true. Their webs are messy and hidden, not at all elegant like the orb weavers’ circular webs that spiral outward in summer fields of goldenrod. Black widows offer a warning. When their web is touched, it crackles like a witch, inspiring panic. The chaotic nest is a morgue of tightly wrapped victims that have had their blood sucked out of them, heightening the red hourglass on the female’s shiny black body.

Here in the Red Rock desert, they are everywhere – in between rocks, nestled in cliffs, and inhabiting our homes. Best to check coat pockets, behind pillows, and inside shoes. We have learned to live with them.

One summer, we had a large female, her abdomen the size of a Costco blueberry.” I wish I’d used a different metaphor. [LAUGHTER] “The size of a Costco blueberry, who lived behind our armoire in our bedroom. Brooke was out of town and I was about to leave for a longer period of time, so I left him a yellow sticky note attached to the wall close to where she would often come out to feed, and wrote: Please take care of her. X X X, T.

When Brooke returned home, he saw the note, and instead of understanding my message to mean please take her outside, he took it to mean please feed her. Which is exactly what he did for weeks. When I returned home, her abdomen was the size of a grape. [LAUGHTER]

The summer progressed, and one night, I was home alone again. It was hot and I couldn’t sleep. Rather than fight it, I decided I would listen to a group of soundscapes a friend had recently sent me as a stay against loneliness and heat-induced insomnia. One recording was from the Arctic in Alaska, one was from the rainforest in Costa Rica, and one was from Arizona Sonoran Desert. I listened to the Arctic. I didn’t think there was anything on it. I turned on the bedroom light and listened more closely. If one can hear cold, it was a faint growl. I changed CDs.

This time, I sat up with a low-wattage lamp. The rain intensified, and without thought, I started having an anxiety attack thinking there might be another flash flood, until I realized that it sounded, to my desert ear, like exactly that, a flash flood. I was two for two with no relief for loneliness or hope of a lullaby.

The final recording was of the Sonoran Desert, with giant saguaros on the cover. I placed the CD in the machine and returned to my chair. It was perfect. The familiar sounds of crickets, bat wings, and the pinpoint peeps, a band of coyotes and some insects I did not recognize. Just then, a shadow appeared on the wall. [LAUGHTER] I turned to see the black widow drawn from her hiding place by sounds of the desert night she inhabits. I was not startled, but welcomed her presence.

I sat in my chair. She was poised on the edge of her web. Together in soft light, we listened to night sounds from the Sonoran, a woman and a spider, comfortable with each other’s company.”

Thank you. Thank you so much. And let’s thank Nina for everything. [APPLAUSE]

NS: Thank you, all. Thank you, Terry, so very much. [APPLAUSE]

Host: “A Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams.”

The post A Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams appeared first on Bioneers.

Lakes and wetlands are welcome natural oases amidst the concrete and asphalt of the urban world. In many cities, they are magnets for people seeking a chance to go birdwatching, fishing, swimming, or just use the water as a scenic backdrop.

But these spots have an invisible and unappetizing side as well. They can be hotspots of antibiotic-resistant microbes, posing a potential health risk to people coming in contact with the water.  A survey of wetlands in Chinese cities discovered levels of these microbes on par with untreated sewage, Chinese scientists reported last week in Nature Cities.

The discovery highlights the overlooked risks of what are commonly seen as urban amenities. It also points to possible ways to clean up these waterways. Rather than being a “regulatory blind spot,” these waterbodies “should serve as ‘frontline outposts’ guarding public health and ecological security, requiring our concerted efforts to ensure they serve city residents safely,” lead author Da Lin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Urban Environment wrote in an online essay discussing the research.

The scientists were first alerted to the possible problem while strolling past a wetland in a city park “bustling with human activity,” Lin wrote. While such waterbodies might look appealing, they can also serve as impromptu stormwater storage ponds, capturing runoff from nearby streets or even from overflowing sewage pipes. The scientists wondered to what degree that also turned them into magnets for antibiotic resistant bacteria, which are known to flourish in urban settings.

They collected water samples from 17 wetlands in 9 Chinese cities, filtered the water and examined the DNA left in the filters to see what viruses and bacteria were present, and whether their genes contained signs of antibiotic resistance.

The test revealed nearly 750 types of genes coded for antibiotic resistance in concentrations 9 times greater than what researchers have found in natural lakes. It was approximately the same contamination levels seen in tests of raw sewage, and roughly four times the average levels found in urban wetland elsewhere in the world, based on results from other studies.

This microbial stew included genes for resistance to sulfonamide and tetracycline, as well as genes for broader resistance to a range of antibiotics. The scientists also found traces of 67 different microbes known to infect humans, particularly from the Pseudomonas genus, which are known for having antibiotic resistance. “This data objectively demonstrates that urban wetlands have become important reservoirs” for antibiotic resistant genes, Lin wrote.

Not all wetlands were equally problematic. Waterbodies in poorer cities had higher levels of contamination with antibiotic resistant bacteria. That might be linked to weaker urban infrastructure, which enables more untreated stormwater to flow into these lakes and ponds, the scientists wrote.

That also points to possible ways to tackle the problem. A number of Chinese cities, including the capital of Beijing, have in recent years begun building nature-inspired infrastructure to better cope with stormwater. These so-called “sponge cities” use tools such as permeable pavement, landscaping engineered to soak up rainwater and, yes, wetlands meant to clean the water.

While such infrastructure can help, as the new research points out it can also create public health headaches.

To guard against these wetlands becoming more problem than solution, the scientists called for more robust monitoring and regulation of these waterbodies. Among the recommendations: Set standards for contamination levels with antibiotic resistant bacteria; create a list of high-risk wetlands; and keep the antibiotic problem in mind when designing and managing urban water spots, rather than focusing only on removing nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous, which can spark algae blooms.

Just as public beaches are now sometimes closed when water tests show high levels of E. coli, perhaps one day something similar might be in place for high levels of antibiotic resistance.

Lin, et. al. “Urban wetlands as hotspots of antibiotic resistomes and their potential viral transmission.” Nature Cities. April 17, 2026.

Photo by LUM3N/Freerange Stock

Image: The handcart, equipped with a sail. Photo by Kris De Decker.

The human-powered handcart is the oldest of vehicles, and it will likely be the last one around in the future. Of all vehicles, it’s the cheapest and least complex to build and use. It offers a large advantage over carrying a load on your back or dragging it over the ground - the even older concept of the sled. On the other hand, the handcart is cheaper and easier to use than the animal-powered cart. Oxen and donkeys eat more than humans, and they have their own will, which can work against the driver.

Like any other wheeled vehicle, the handcart requires roads to drive on. This infrastructure has not always been available anywhere or at any time in history. For example, in medieval Europe, porters and pack animals were more common than handcarts because of poor roads. 1 In the West, the handcart only reached its heyday during the first decades of the Industrial Revolution, when it connected fast-growing cities to train stations and harbors. In China, on the other hand, the handcart was the backbone of the transport network for millennia. 2

Of all vehicles, the handcart is the cheapest and least complex to build and use.

There are still many human-powered carts in modern society: strollers, grocery carts, roller suitcases, and various utility and folding carts. However, these modern carts are to their predecessors what birds are to dinosaurs. They are small, often with very small wheels, and we use them for very short distances, usually inside buildings. In contrast, old-fashioned handcarts were often large and had big wheels, and they were pushed or pulled on roads and over longer distances. Many crafts and professions had their own type of handcart.

Image: Low-tech Magazine's handcart. Photo by Kris De Decker. Why I need a handcart

People still use large handcarts in so-called “developing countries”. However, they can be just as useful again in the large cities of the industrialized world, as I can testify after using one for a couple of months. Last autumn, I received an internship application from Kozimo, who studies at the Design Academy Eindhoven. In his application, Kozimo sent a video of a large handcart he made, which he was driving on the streets of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

I have always dreamt of a handcart. I have never owned a car, and the only times I miss one are when I have to move stuff, something which has become increasingly common lately. Consequently, I proposed to Kozimo to build a handcart for me.

Now, I can no longer imagine living without it. I have used the vehicle to move houses and offices, pick up materials and objects I bought online, new or second-hand, and transport workshop and event materials (bike generators, solar panels, solar ovens, books, sound systems). I have done the same for friends. During these trips, I often took home materials, furniture, or objects that I found for free on the streets of Barcelona.

Image: Kozimo and Kris De Decker with Low-tech Magazine's handcart, halfway through a 30 km trip along the coast of Spain. Photo by Linda Osusky.

Unlike a van or a car, my handcart doesn’t need gasoline, electricity, or batteries, making it entirely independent from energy infrastructures. Neither do I need to pay taxes and insurance. The handcart is a very democratic vehicle. It allows anyone to carry a load wherever they want, while older, less affordable cars and vans are no longer allowed to enter city centers due to the installation of Low Emission Zones.

A handcart doesn’t need gasoline, electricity, or batteries, making it entirely independent from energy infrastructures.

It would make a lot of sense to offer vehicles like this at community centers, where they are available for all neighbors to use when needed. Few people would need a handcart each day, and communal use would solve the parking problem. Although our handcart can also be parked vertically, it won’t fit in most apartments.

Description of the handcart

This article will not explain in detail how to build a handcart. We want to do that another time with a simpler handcart model, because the vehicle we present in this article is not one that most people can make themselves. You need good woodworking and metalworking skills, and in fact, two people made the handcart.

Kozimo designed and built the whole structure from wood, while Guilhem Senges - visual artist and one of my neighbors - designed and made several essential reinforcements from metal; the wheels, the brakes, and the handlebars are all connected to the wood structure with custom-made iron parts.

Image: Detail of the handcart, showing the underside of the vehicle. Photo by Kris De Decker. THIS ONE OR THE NEXT ONE. --> Image: The underside of the handcart. Photo by Kris De Decker. Image: Detail of the handcart, showing the underside of the vehicle. Photo by Kris De Decker. --> Images: The front and back of the handcart. Photos by Kris De Decker. Image: The lights are mounted in coconuts. Photo by Kris De Decker. Load weight and volume

Low-tech Magazine’s handcart is 250 cm long and 100 cm wide, while the platform itself measures 210 by 85 cm. Assuming a load height of 50 cm, the cargo volume is roughly 1.55 m3 (37 cubic feet or 1050 liters). That’s two to four times the typical trunk space in a European car. We have transported cargo that is wider or longer than the cart: a large heated table measuring 140x140cm, and several loads of wooden beams, each three meters long.

The load weight is limited by the wheels, which come from a wheelchair. They can support up to 150 kg. 3 The cart itself weighs 32 kg, so the practical maximum cargo weight is about 120 kg. The loading platform consists of slats with gaps between them, making it easy to secure various types of cargo.

Images: The handcart with various cargoes. Upper left: a 6m2 wooden floor and a chest. Upper right: 3-meter-long wood beams. Below: A heated table ready for transport. It drives itself!

Over the past few months, we’ve learned that people have many misconceptions about handcarts. For example, you may think that pushing a handcart takes a lot of effort, perhaps based on your experience pushing supermarket carts through parking lots or pulling heavy suitcases through city centers (which is how I moved stuff before I had a handcart).

However, using the handcart can be so effortless - even when it’s heavily loaded - that it feels like you are not pushing at all. Once in motion, you can often guide it with one hand, and it sometimes feels like the cart is pulling you forward. It’s no exaggeration to say that pushing the handcart with a 100 kg load is more comfortable than walking while carrying a 10 kg heavy backpack.

Using the handcart can be so effortless - even when it’s heavily loaded - that it feels like you are not pushing at all.

There are several reasons for this light operation, rooted in physics. Each vehicle has to overcome three forces: rolling resistance, air resistance, and gravity. Air resistance is negligible at walking speed, meaning that a handcart user on flat terrain mainly needs to overcome rolling resistance. That’s the friction between wheels and road surface, a factor that’s largely independent of speed.

In contrast, air resistance increases with the square of speed. A cyclist, going at 15-20 km/h, already spends more effort overcoming air resistance than overcoming rolling resistance, which is the same in both cases because both vehicles have similar wheels. In short, the handcart’s low speed minimizes air resistance, while its narrow wheels minimize rolling resistance.

Image: Driving the handcart. Photo by Linda Osusky.

Second, accelerating a vehicle requires more energy than maintaining a constant speed. You only need to sustain momentum, not build it. Our handcart is pushed by a person walking, so the effort to accelerate lasts no longer than one or two seconds. In contrast, a cyclist takes much longer to reach cruise speed, and because of the higher air resistance, it takes more effort to sustain that speed. If the handcart is heavily loaded, it also gains significant kinetic energy, even at low speed. That explains why it sometimes feels like the cart is pulling you forward - because it actually is.

Finally, our wheels are much larger than those used on modern pushcarts. That makes for comfortable driving on asphalt and sidewalks, which are not as smooth as airport or supermarket floors. Large wheels increase air resistance, but because of our low speed, that doesn’t matter.

Handcarts and gravity

However, an effortless ride requires two conditions: flat terrain and a well-balanced load. Both involve the third force any vehicle must overcome: gravity.

Balancing the handcart: distributing the load

A two-wheeled cart becomes heavy and difficult to use when too much weight is placed on the front or back. Consequently, you need to load the vehicle so that the weight is equal on both sides of the wheels. That’s easy to check: the cart should remain in a horizontal position for several seconds without you touching it. If there’s just one piece of cargo, place it above the center of the wheels. If there are more things to carry, the total weight should be divided equally over the two sides. Finetuning the balance often involves moving a backpack from the front to the back of the cart, or vice versa.

You need to load the vehicle so that the weight is equal on both sides of the wheels.

A two-wheeled cart also needs additional support to keep it horizontal when parked, for instance, when loading or unloading cargo. Otherwise, the cart may suddenly flip to the other side. Our handcart carries four support beams, two on each side. When the cart is moving, they are in a horizontal position. When the cart is parked, we remove one or more beams and place them in a vertical position. Each beam can be set to a different length, allowing us to stabilize the cart on uneven terrain. We tighten the beams with screws.

Image: The handcart is parked with four supporting legs. Photo by Kris De Decker. Image: Detail of the supporting beam holder. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Many people have asked us why we didn’t build a four-wheeled cart that wouldn’t need to be balanced. However, four wheels would double the rolling resistance and thus the effort required to push the cart. Furthermore, a four-wheeled cart is less maneuverable and more difficult to drive on uneven terrain. You also need to get two extra wheels, and you need to build a steering mechanism. Throughout history, the two-wheeled handcart (or one-wheeled handcart in the case of China) was much more common than the four-wheeled cart. 1

Going uphill: you need help

An effortless ride also requires more or less flat terrain, which is what you get here in many parts of Barcelona. If you go up a steep slope, you suddenly feel the weight of the cart and its cargo. Climbing with a heavily loaded cart can be as strenuous as running up stairs or cycling at top speed. People tell us we should put an electric motor on the cart, and that’s perfectly possible.

However, we found a simpler solution: if necessary, we ask for help from another person. Our handlebars are wide enough for two or even three people to push together, which makes going uphill a lot easier. Adding an electric motor and a battery would significantly increase the vehicle’s weight, and it only makes sense if you regularly have to climb hills.

Going downhill: brakes

Going downhill, you have to counter gravity forces to prevent the handcart from hurling down a slope, which would be very dangerous. Rather than pushing the cart, you’ll have to pull it back instead. Here, cyclists have all the advantage, as they can use gravity to its full benefit during a descent.

We made going downhill a lot easier by adding bicycle brakes. In combination with the large wheels, the brakes also allow the handcart to be taken down sidewalk curbs or even stairs without damaging it. They double as a hand brake as well, by tightening two lashing straps around them. That allows leaving the cart unattended on a slope or in high winds.

Image: The brakes. Photo by Kris De Decker. Handcarts go on the sidewalk

Many people assume that handcarts go on the road, with the cars, or on the cycling path. That’s not the case: you use it on the sidewalk. Legally, handcart users are in a similar position to other pedestrians pushing a smaller handcart, such as a stroller. The only difference is that, when they are forced onto the road because there’s no sidewalk or it’s blocked, handcart users should walk on the right side of the road, while other pedestrians should walk on the left. For now, the police have stopped us only once, and they were just curious.

Legally, handcart users are in a similar position to other pedestrians pushing a smaller handcart, such as a stroller.

We could find no traffic laws that limit the size of a handcart, at least not in the handful of countries we researched, including Spain. However, in practice, there are clear limits. If your vehicle is wider than the space between traffic bollards that keep cars out of pedestrian streets, all pedestrian zones will become inaccessible to you. You should also take into account other obstacles on the sidewalk, such as building scaffolding. Consequently, it’s rarely practical to build a handcart more than one meter wide.

Barcelona has very wide sidewalks in most of the city. We rarely have to share the road with cars or cyclists. Of course, that’s not the case in every city, and then the use of a handcart becomes less attractive. Using a handcart on the road or cyclepath is rather dangerous because other vehicles are much faster.

Image: Kozimo pushes the handcart through a narrow walkway. Photo by Kris De Decker. Respecting other pedestrians

Driving a large handcart on the sidewalk demands your full attention. You don’t want to hit any infrastructure, and you surely don’t want to hit someone’s legs. You need to drive it with respect for other pedestrians and their pets (some dogs start barking at the vehicle). In general, the handcart is very safe to use because it travels at a very low speed. That makes accidents less likely in the first place and less impactful if they do happen. You also have a very good overview of your vehicle, much better than for a car or a bicycle. As long as you keep your eyes on the handcart, you are unlikely to hit anything or anyone.

However, our handcart is so silent that people don’t hear it coming. We added a bicycle bell to warn people, but we hope to find a better tune in the future: every vehicle needs its own type of sound. We also need a bell for oncoming pedestrians who are watching their phones while walking and expect others to make space. With the handcart, we cannot always make that space. Our handcart has front and rear lights as well, wired to a USB power bank mounted underneath the platform. Lights are very helpful on sidewalks, both day and night, as they make the vehicle more visible. Furthermore, lights are essential if you need to move onto the road after dark.

Images: Kris De Decker drives the handcart through Barcelona. Photos by Guillaume Lion.

Even in Barcelona, sidewalks can get crowded, and a busy sidewalk will slow down the vehicle considerably. With little chance to overtake someone, we tend to get stuck behind the slowest walkers.

A handcart is not a difficult vehicle to drive, but nowadays people in industrialized societies have no experience with it. Apart from driving it attentively, you also need to be careful when rounding blind corners (take the turn as wide as possible) and when you leave a garage or any other type of exit (pull rather than push the cart). By the time you see oncoming traffic, you already have 2 meters of your handcart on the road or around the corner.

Why not a bike trailer?

Almost everyone who sees the handcart for the first time asks the same question: how do you attach it to a bicycle? You don’t. You push it while walking. When we say that, there follows a silence. Pushing a handcart seems like one step too far back, even for people committed to living more sustainably. Why would you push a handcart if you could just as well use a much faster bike trailer, or a cargo bike?

In fact, there are several practical reasons to opt for a handcart rather than a bike trailer, and we have already mentioned many of them. First, a handcart lets you go anywhere a pedestrian can, while cyclists often need to get off their bikes and push them - just like a handcart. A handcart is also more agile. For example, although the cart is 2.5 meters long, it takes just two seconds and little space to turn it around and walk in the opposite direction from where you came from.

Why would you push a handcart if you could just as well use a much faster bike trailer, or a cargo bike?

A handcart can be built larger than a bike trailer as well. Although it’s perfectly possible to build a bike trailer the size of our handcart, its higher speed would pose much greater risk of accidents and damage, both to the cart and to other road users. As a bike trailer, it would also need to be made sturdier, and it would need a more elaborate mechanism to operate the brakes.

All this does not mean that bike trailers are a bad idea. We have used the handcart mainly for trips between 5 and 10 km, which comes down to one to two hours of walking. For longer distances, the bike trailer has the obvious advantage of speed. If you need to cover 40 km, you would need to travel eight hours with a handcart, compared to just two hours with a bike trailer.

Image: Guilhem Senges, who built the vehicle's metal parts, pushes the handcart to a welding job a few streets up in the neighborhood. The merits of slow travel

However, when people ask us why we don’t use it as a bike trailer, we can also answer differently: why the rush? Deciding to travel with the slowest vehicle possible is subversive because it questions values we take for granted in the modern world, such as speed and utility.

To many people, walking a handcart seems like a waste of time, but our experience is exactly the opposite. Every trip is an adventure, and we always look forward to using it again. It’s a pleasure to drive the vehicle, more like steering a boat than driving a land vehicle. It’s easy to chat with other pedestrians, who tend to be very curious about our vehicle. Consequently, the trip takes even longer.

To many people, walking a handcart seems like a waste of time, but our experience is exactly the opposite.

Driving a handcart feels entirely different from using any other mode of transport. When people are walking, they usually cannot carry much with them, either in terms of weight or volume. In contrast, the handcart allows you to walk with a lot of stuff close at hand: drinks, food, a sound system, books, extra clothes. Furthermore, you have a large platform, which allows you to rest and invite others to do the same. It becomes a vehicle for wandering and roaming, and for connecting to other people.

Image: It's a pleasure to drive the vehicle, more like steering a boat than driving a land vehicle. Model: Rocío Sánchez. Photo by Kris De Decker. Image: The handcart with rain protection. Photo by Kris De Decker. Handcart Accessories

Once the handcart proved its utility as a cargo vehicle, Kozimo began designing and building additional structures to expand its uses. These objects make use of the slatted platform or the support beam design. Unfortunately, Kozimo’s internship ended before we could test all these extensions, but the little experience we gained by now shows that the handcart can be much more than just a cargo vehicle.

Passenger seat

The first, and perhaps most powerful addition, is a foldable seat. While our handcart can be - and usually is - operated by only one person, it’s ideally handled by two people, especially for longer voyages. Thanks to the seat, one person can push the cart while the other one rests in the vehicle.

As long as the road is flat, the extra weight of the passenger does not significantly increase the effort to push the cart. Consequently, two people can travel faster or farther in a single day. When climbing hills or bridges, the passenger gets off the seat. If necessary, he or she also helps to push the cart.

One person can push the cart while the other one rests in the vehicle, increasing the distance that two people can travel in a day.

An extra pair of eyes on the road is also handy. The seat can be put in two positions, so that both the passenger and the driver are either looking in the same direction or facing each other, which makes it easier to talk and allows the passenger to serve as the rear-view mirror.

We used the seat on a 30 km day trip along the coast of Catalunya, Spain, moving stuff from my old place to my new place. For one person, this would have been an exhausting trip. However, there were several people on the way there, and two people on the way back. The fact that we could rest from time to time - without stopping - made a great difference, especially on the way back. An extra person also proved useful when unexpected obstacles arose. For example, there was a bridge under repair, which forced us to carry the cart down the rocks, over the beach, and up the rocks again.

Image: A foldable seat on the slatted platform. Photo by Kris De Decker. Image: Kozimo drives the handcart along the coast. Linda Osusky is filming while resting in the seat. Photo by Kris De Decker. Images: Carrying the handcart over the rocks. Photos by Linda Osusky. Digital nomad office

As a second addition, we combined the seat with a work table that doubles as a solar power plant, resulting in a digital nomad office. The table fits onto the sides of the handcart and slides back and forth. The solar panel can be in a horizontal position or at various tilted angles. It can charge a laptop or any other device requiring up to 100 watts of power.

If you’re two people traveling, one person can work at the table while the other drives. If you’re alone, you can wheel the vehicle to the nearest park or beach, set up the four support legs, and work all day. In 2016, I took my home office off the grid with solar panels on the window sills. 4 Ten years later, both the office and the solar panels have become mobile.

Images: Digital nomad office. Photos by Kris De Decker. Image: Digital nomad office. Photo by Kris De Decker. Renewable power plant

Although we built only one solar panel support structure, the handcart platform is large enough to support a total of four 100-watt solar panels. That would provide us with 400 watts of solar power for a concert or emergency power, for example. The handcart can also transport the two bike generators Low-tech Magazine has in Barcelona. 5Consequently, the cart enables us to quickly provide power within a radius of several kilometers, at any time of the day. The handcart could also be wheeled into a sunny spot during the day, charging a battery bank to power a household during the night and in bad weather.

Mobile home

If you want to get back home the same day, the handcart’s range is roughly 40-80 km (8-16 hours of walking, back and forth). However, at least in my case, nobody obliges me to come back home the same day. I could use the handcart for longer voyages, especially since it offers me a place to sleep.

The four supporting legs that make loading and unloading the cart more practical can also be used to turn the vehicle into a bed. After Kozimo went back to the Netherlands, I bought a foldable mattress that fits neatly on the platform. During a trip, I can store the other cargo under the cart at night. Alternatively, I could push a passenger who’s lying in the bed, turning the vehicle into an adult version of a baby stroller.

Images: A foldable sleeping mattress on the handcart. Photos by Kris De Decker. Image: A mosquito net covers the handcart with a sleeping mattress. Photo by Kris De Decker.

Kozimo also made four supporting legs that are almost two meters long. I can use them to erect a tent around the bed, and cover the structure with modern tent materials, wool blankets, or a mosquito net. The large poles can also dry laundry. Furthermore, I could use the supporting legs in various combinations to convert the cart into a podium, expo stand, market stand, or a cinema or presentation screen.

The seat, table, solar panel, sleeping mattress, and longer poles can all be carried on the handcart simultaneously, leaving ample space for other luggage. That means that I could potentially work, live, and travel in the vehicle, turning it into a nomadic home. It fits somewhere between the tiny house on wheels, the tipi, and the homeless shack. Rents got very expensive in Barcelona, so I may as well give it a try.

Image: The handcart is packed for a longer trip. Photo by Kris De Decker. Sailing and roller skating the handcart

Finally, Kozimo made a small sail for the handcart to help pull a heavy load in a good wind; the vehicle is sometimes used along the coast. Of course, we got the inspiration from the use of sails on the historical Chinese wheelbarrow. For a longer trip, the sail fits on the cart, so I could use it whenever the opportunity arises.

Images: The handcart with a 1m2 sail. Model: Iris De Decker. Photos by Kris De Decker.

We could increase the speed of the handcart by using a larger sail, and combining it with roller blades, inline skates, or a skateboard. In that case, the cart would pull the driver in good winds. It’s also possible to push the cart while using roller blades, inline skates, or an electric unicycle, without a sail. For now, we did a first small test on flat terrain using inline skates, with very good results. If you would take enough cargo, the kinetic energy of a skate-powered handcart would regularly pull you forward even without a sail.

The higher speeds of these configurations obviously introduce more risk and, most likely, trouble with the police. Higher speeds require ample space, free of pedestrians. That almost always pushes the handcart on the road, between the cars, as most cycle paths are not wide enough. However, it shows that sustainable vehicles could take many different forms if only we would give them the space to flourish. There are more than enough roads suitable for sailing and roller-skating handcarts; we need to empty them of cars and vans.

Images: Julia Steketee drives the handcart on online skates. Photos by Kris De Decker.

• Handcart design and construction: Kozimo, Guilhem Senges.
• Photos: Kris De Decker, Linda Osusky, Guillaume Lion.
• Special thanks to: AkashaHub Barcelona, Carmen Tanaka, Gaston Quispe Castros, Linda Osusky, Guillaume Lion, Rocío Sánchez, Iris De Decker, Lili-Roos Noeyens, Julia Steketee, Tim Rudolph, Guilherme Maglio, Selcen Küçüküstel.
• Marie Verdeil and Roel Roscam Abbing contributed to the selection of images.

1. Bulliet, Richard W. The wheel: inventions and reinventions. Columbia University Press, 2016. ↩︎ ↩︎

2. How to downsize a transport network: The Chinese wheelbarrow, Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine, 2011. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/how-to-downsize-a-transport-network-the-chinese-wheelbarrow/ ↩︎

3. You could build a handcart with stronger wheels, either heavy-duty wheelchair wheels (available up to 350 kg) or cargo-bike wheels. However, stronger wheels are likely wider, which increases rolling resistance. It would also become more difficult to push these heavier loads up a steep incline. ↩︎

4. How to get your apartment off-the-grid, Kris De Decker, Low-tech Magazine, 2016. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/05/how-to-get-your-apartment-off-the-grid/ ↩︎

5. How to build a practical household bike generator, Kris De Decker & Marie Verdeil, Low-tech Magazine, 2022. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/03/how-to-build-a-practical-household-bike-generator/ ↩︎