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January 2009. From the desk of Alden Bryant, President, Earth Regeneration Society, Inc.. About Us: Who we are. Where did we come from and where are we going? The Earth Regeneration Society, Inc.: how it all flowed together? Dr. Fred Bernard Wood, PhD, Electrical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, was a friend from 1953. For his working life he worked in research and advanced systems development for IBM, including Project Engineer for voice recognition projects. He was a lifetime organizer for the International Society for Systems Sciences (ISSS). They had an international meeting each year in a different country. Fred and I joined in late 1970s around coming climate changes. He chaired the climate working group in the ISSS. He was my main initial encouragement and exposure to using computers. We found support from the book "Survival of Civilization" 1982 by John D. Hamaker and Donald A. Weaver, and by Don Weaver sitting in with our group. Inception of the Earth Regeneration Society, Inc. A 1979 public start was my interview on radio station KPFA, Berkeley, by Katherine Webb. Then a group of 26 people was brought together with the question "what is happening worldwide and historically with climate change?" At this time I am mostly concerned with elucidating the contributions of hometown participant in the E.R.S.: Glen Frendel. Chronology/Development of our Relationship. During the period of the late 1980's and early 1990's chance encounters brought Glen and me together, and I began to "get" to know him, while he became more familiar with the E.R.S. "mission". I was pleased by Glen's intuitive understanding of the importance of the work, done under my aegis, by an eminent team of: academic environmental scientists, highly qualified scientists from the private sector and knowledgeable citizen scientists. They, the early Earth Regeneration Society, Inc., were confirming the profound danger that the accelerating buildup of CO2 represented to the earth's climate, and thus the very survival of ecosphere of our planet, which developed over millions of years, had provided the environment in which lower forms of life, and ultimately humankind could develop. For the first time in the scientific history, the E.R.S.'s research had established that earth's ecology, particularly since the beginning of the industrial revolution, has been manipulated and gradually destroyed by the human species up to that point, for most of its existence had lived holistically with the planet. Within 200 years +- human activity has become transformed into a kind of "malignancy", doing incalculable, yet still (probably) repairable given time, damage to the planet's ecosphere. Armed with the factual truth about the planet's current state vis a vis the survival of not only the human species but the incalculable, vital diversity of all planetary life forms necessary for the planet to provide a viable habitat for human survival. Humankind acting thoughtful and holistically in concert WITH the planet has a good chance of completely transforming its relationship to the environment, making humankind continued existence possible for the foreseeable future. As the E.R.S.'s president, frustrated by the limited analysis of "global warming" pushed by some energy companies and other parties interested in obfuscating the planetary climate issues, and the looming publication deadline for Whose World to Lose, I was stumped by how to convey that CLIMATE CHANGE, a far more intellectually complex concept than "Global Warming", was at the heart of the E.R.S. message. Glen and I had a lengthy discussion in which I conveyed to Glen the profoundly negative consequences of climate change, from a human perspective, a concept, which couldn't be summed up in, simplistic glib catch phrases like "global warming". In fact as Glen helped me clarify in my own mind that we weren't facing a problem properly defined by simplistic ideas like "global warming", in fact our dialog crystallized for me that the consequences of CO2 buildup on climate WAS both warming AND cooling, and generally more extreme weather of all kinds.CO2 build-up as causing planetary climate patterns to be catastrophically altered. After considering my exposition on the true consequence of climate change brought on by CO2 build-up, and my frustration at how to express this reality in a simple, honest and comprehensive statement, Glen, in a moment of inspiration, and maybe a touch of frustration said: call it "CLIMATE CHAOS", 1992 © Glen Frendel. This was the language we adopted in the E.R.S. publication: 1990: Glen Frendel: Commenced significant volunteer work with the E.R.S..
In 2006 with assent of the E.R.S. board members: -Dolores Huerta, President, of the Dolores Huerta Foundation. AND -Alden Bryant, M.A., Founder/President of the Earth Regeneration Society, Inc., I offered Glen the salaried position of: Executive Director of the E.R.S. — For reasons beyond his control, Glen was unable to assume his job as the Executive Director of the E.R.S.'s or to be involved in the E.R.S.'s day-to-day operations. Thankfully, since late 2007 and into 2009 Glen has been involved in activating the E.R.S. and developing our agenda going forward. For that both the E.R.S. Board and myself are very grateful!
— Glen is a kindred spirit from which well the same feelings that I experienced in my early life. Like me Glen understands the anti-ecological, anti-humankind nature and un-sustainability of global corporatism. We both realize that global corporatization is gobbling up the planet. The corporate paradigm is completely out of scale with both human beings and the environment and ultimately will destroy/displace them both. Glen understands the importance of practicing moral and spiritual integrity, and the importance of humankind's conscious responsible actions toward the earth and our fellow humans.Over the years I've come to appreciate Glen's "take" on the profligate fashion that humans have operated on the planet since the transformation millennia ago from a matriarchal/child centric species, to organized around a male driven, weapon-centric, male dominated, fixed agriculture, and property holding society. The evolution of humankind's imperialistic tendencies has been pathologically sustained and advanced by the male drive to dominate every facet of his existence: from his fellow humans to the amazingly improbably situation that mankind has existence and evolved ever since the first hominid walked upright through the African savannah millions of years ago. Glen has one of the best understandings of the problems facing humankind of anyone I've met in ecology action (pretty heavy complement): esp. in his rhetorical expression of the urgency of the problem and the importance of effectively conveying the requisite board range of solutions to our fellow humans. In Glen's words: “CO2: 2nd hand smoke of the 21st Century": © Glen Frendel. Just as many humans have managed to kick the nicotine habit, it is urgently imperative that we must, KICK THE CARBON HABIT. — Glen is committed to fighting global corporatism, which has become a growing rapacious, out of control business contrivance. He has been looking forward into the future. He has developed his own ideas about how the necessity of international confederation promoting pan national "nationalization," is the only means to withstand corporate globalization. — I know that as long as Glen is affiliated with the E.R.S. he'll not allow himself, or any other member of the E.R.S., any intellectual slack in tackling the challenge of halting the catastrophic degradation of the planet that is taking place daily: the exploitation of planetary resources for "share holder value" - a specious concept that materially robs the vast majority of earth's citizens to enrich a tiny minority-, and further to do the important work of breaking the hypnotic spell that much of humanity operates under as a complicit partner in the what he calls "planet gobbling". — Glen in his way is a protagonist motivated by the same ideals as those of the E.R.S. movement and myself: relate to nature (people of every ethnicity); develop a sense of ethical and moral responsibility toward every living thing; respect the value of the environment that has developed so propitiously, providing humans with a miraculously, uniquely habitable planetary homeland; educate humankind to appreciate the miracle of human sentience is and what a paradise the cosmos has handed us; awaken humanity to its own "executive" responsibility as a race, not only to itself but all aspects of the planet; get humans to deeply consider the consequence of every "gesture"; replace global corporate machinery with human scale commerce, rejecting the false "economy" of our increasingly throw-away society. — It's clear to me that Glen has deep and heartfelt awareness of humanity's dire situation, and the willy-nilly destruction it has wrought on humankind's mother-originator, planet earth, over the last 200 years plus. I hope that Glen is able to continue as the E.R.S.'s Executive Director for many years to come, as we confront an increasingly challenging future. Sincerely, Alden Bryant ------------------------------------- A Biographical Sketch of Glen Frendel's Contributions to the Earth Regeneration Society, Inc.,: 1990 to Feb. 2009. Late 80's: Meeting of the Minds.
I want to express my immense gratitude to Glen for his MANY INVALUABLE contributions to the E.R.S., without which the E.R.S.'s ability to: illuminate, educate, and ultimately move the planetary CO2 reduction/climate change reversal agenda forward would have been significantly reduced! THANK - YOU - GLEN!
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