“Ecoheroes Inspire Us To Change”

Carlos Fresneda, correspondent journalist for El Mundo in the United Kingdom, collaborator of Cuerpomente and co-founder of the website El Correo del Sol , has been writing about environmental issues for three decades. In the midst of a pandemic, and with climate change as a backdrop (a greater emergency that humanity must also face through collaboration), he has chosen relevant people, activists and scientists from all those he has interviewed over the years to offer an alternative kaledoiscope of another possible life, respectful of the Earth and our environment. The result has been a very inspiring and much needed book: Ecohéroes. 100 voices for the health of the planet . (editorial RBA).

In fact, Fresneda has been developing this book for more than 10 years. In full intensive writing, when it had already accumulated many pages, the COVID-19 pandemic was declared and that is why this work was also affected by the confinement: “In fact, there is a prologue called” The unthinkable “and that is a very direct reference to the pandemic; he concludes with the phrase that for me sums up a bit the message of the book: the unthinkable is going to force us to rethink everything. “

“Behind each ecohero there is a story with the changes they have brought about”

Ecohéroes is divided into 10 sections (cities, food, science, nature, water, climate, energy, economy, consumption and education) and in them it shuns the classic interview because its intention has been to offer the reader “an action book because they are people doing things. We are already fed up with speeches and that is why it is a book of stories, with the changes that they have brought about in their environment. I think it is a better way to inspire people. “

– Who are those hundred voices?
–They are activists or scientists known as Greta Thunberg or Jane Goodall, who by the way I interviewed during confinement. There is also the father of climate change science, James Hansen, the father of Gaia theory, James Lovelock, the founder of the Transition movement, Rob Hopkins, Vandana Shiva, the oceonologist Sylvia Earle … There are quite well-known people and others not. so well known, but that I also wanted to include to play a little surprise and to show that there is an ecohero around the corner.

Around 25% of the ecoheroes are Spanish and among them I want to highlight Domingo Jiménez Beltrán, the first director of the Environment Agency and who has created his own space in Murcia, in Águilas, the Castillo de Chuecos Foundation with the intention of to create a Mediterranean Sustainability Center. He is a champion of renewables and solar energy in Spain.

There is Heike Freire, the educator and author of “Educar en verde”, Sybilla, for all her work not only as a designer, but as an activist in Mallorca … Mallorca is a mainstay in the book and there are several Mallorcan eco-heroes, such as Guillem Ferrer, former Camper designer, who organizes Educar para la vida meetings and has been a beacon for me.

–Tell us a bit about the autochthonous eco-heroes.
–In addition to these, I would like to mention chef José Andrés, whom I call the “solar solidarity chef” because I witnessed his awakening as a solar and solidarity chef in Haiti after the earthquake with the help of another eco-hero and close friend Manolo Vílchez , which was the one who introduced the solar parabolic cooker. It was an expedition called Solar for Hope and that Haiti trip was crucial for me because I had the opportunity to meet José Andrés, who is a communication monster and a superhuman person and now he is everywhere for his great work during the pandemic. And I also want to pay a special tribute to Manolo because he was my bearer of autochthonous ecoheroes.

There is another person I have known for a long time and who also touches me very directly because he is a great communicator, apart from an incredible disseminator, who is Mariano Bueno, the father of organic farming in Spain and with whom I had the opportunity to take a trip from Barcelona to Castellón towards La Senieta, his farm where he has projected everything he knows how to do, which is a lot.

–After reading your book, I have to confess that Paul Stamets, the mycologist who has invented a Box of Life to reforest the planet, is one of my favorites. Which of them have really left you open-mouthed? Have any of you gotten excited?
–Paul Stamets is another of my favorites. The photo that my great friend Isaac Hernández took of him, who is my travel companion for more than half of the book, was taken at 6 in the morning with some parasol mushrooms more than half a meter high. Seeing Paul Stamets in his Transylvanian mushroom hat for me was like watching a goblin escaped from the forest. He makes an incredible comparison of the mycelium – of what is underneath, because the mushrooms are after all the tip of the iceberg -: the fungi underground are like the internet of the forest, of nature.

He compares the mycelium with galaxies and with networks, makes a kind of incredible metaphor and the conclusion is that everything is connected. Fritjof Capra, author of “La plot de la vida” (The Web of Life), has also influenced me a lot, and as a coda to the chapter I have also wanted to incorporate it because that is also the message. I was also moved by Gordon Hempton, the acoustic ecologist who has traveled the world in search of natural silence. I was with him in the “inch of silence” in the Olympic Mountains woods near Seattle.

He has taken advantage of the confinement to push for an initiative he calls the Parks of Silence because people are now much more sensitive to noise pollution than they were before confinement and also to air pollution. This initiative consists of looking for pockets of silence in urban parks, the first is in Taipeh, Taiwan; the second and third will be in Sweden; and you are looking for a site here in Spain.

– The youngest, Greta Thunberg, you interviewed her recently. What was your impression? Are the generations of the 21st century going to set a new course?
–With Greta it has been a bit like with the mouse and the cat this year. In the end, I was able to catch her more calmly in her last appearance in Bristol, in a demonstration that took place after her brilliant appearance at COP25, in Madrid, and that double crossing of the Atlantic. I am also critical of the information bubble that has been created around it, but above all I am very critical of those who have gone after it.

It has happened a bit like with Al Gore: since the message cannot be killed, they have tried to kill the messenger.

And in this case, even more so for being a woman, under 18 years old and with Asperger’s syndrome, which curiously has already become her superpower. And there it is: Person of the Year from the magazine “Time” and candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, possibly one of these years.

It has merit to have put climate change in the foreground and to have taken young people and children out of schools and to have created a school in their own way. Right now, Dara McAnulty, whom I call the “Northern Irishman”, who is the author of “Diary of a Young Naturalist”, aged 17 and also affected with Asperger’s syndrome, is creating a lot of sensation in the UK. The book has already received several awards and I hope we can see it translated soon. In fact, Dara will be one of the protagonists of a possible “Ecohéroes 2”.