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Jim Fournier on Reality Sandwich

The Tipping Point: A Global Death and Rebirth Story
 Jim Fournier

It felt like the end of the world at the time. The climate had spiraled out of control much faster than predicted. The Arctic ice was already gone in the summer, when a huge ice sheet collapsed sending off a tidal wave that flooded D.C. and left the ocean level six inches higher overnight. Only looking back on it now do we see it as the birth of a new world.

Shift Scenario: Averting Extinction
 Jim Fournier

Biologists calls the current loss of biodiversity "the 6th Extinction." This is not the first time that life on earth almost exhausted its available resources before discovering how to jump to a higher order of complexity. Will we figure out how to make a similar transition?

"Banish the word 'struggle' from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for." — Hopi elders

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Jim Fournier

About Me

Bio

Jim Fournier is founder and President of the Biomass Energy & Carbon, a Colorado based R&D company commercializing biomass gasification and developing a revolutionary new "carbon negative" bio-fuels technology that can remove CO2 from the air by generating sustainable energy and a high-carbon fertilizer from biomass. http://www.biomassec.com

Jim is cofounder of Planetwork, a San Francisco based network of people using information technology to address the pressing ecological and social issues of our time. Planetwork produced the first international conference on global ecology and information technology in May 2000, and several major conferences since then. http://www.planetwork.net

He is also working on a doctoral dissertation and book which situates energy technology within the context of biological evolution and shows how and why our moment in history represents a shift point at the dawn of a new phase of climax technology leading toward a plateau of long-term stability. http://www.metanature.org

A former industrial designer, entrepreneur, software developer and industrial ecologist, Jim left a graduate program at MIT to found an industrial design firm, owned and operated an international consumer goods design and manufacturing company, and developed 3D software as a geometry partner with Silicon Graphics. He retired from business in 1995 to work full time on global sustainability and over the last several years focused on initiatives to create an Internet identity protocol to more effectively inter-connect global civil society. He is involved with a number of projects related to strategic philanthropy, including an effort to reframe the loss of biodiversity in the context of accelerating mass extinction.

Jim serves on the boards of Planetwork, Current Innovations and Channel G, and the advisory boards of numerous organizations including Highfield Foundation, Meru Foundation, Parapsychology Research Group, Buckminster Fuller Institute, Many One, Peoples World and SF Green Maps.