Local radio launches 'Sisters Insiders'

Sisters radio station KZSO 94.9 FM will present a new weekly program called "Sisters Insiders," which will be broadcast on Saturdays at 8 a.m. with a repeat broadcast on Mondays at 6 p.m. The show will feature interviews with locals and visitors to Sisters Country who are involved in projects and careers that affect the planet.

On Saturday, November 29, host Rick Olson, a former missile technician, has a compelling conversation with Jeff Goebel, founder of aboutlistening.com, where he works on conflict resolution through consensus-building with communities, organizations, groups and families in an effort to find win/win solutions.

"Our approach begins with seeking to understand the root causes of conflict," Goebel says. "We identify all the people involved, bring them together in a collaborative process of visioning, trust building, and negotiation that empowers all parties to the conflict. This ensures that all voices are heard, and all interests are recognized and taken into account in the final decision."

Goebel has traveled all over the world to facilitate bringing people together to solve their disagreements, from warring tribes in Africa to cattle ranchers in New Mexico to the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation. He works in high schools and universities, private enterprises, non-profits and governmental agencies.

He helps his clients foster social sustainability, manage small acreage, and do financial planning to meet their goals.

On this week's Sisters Insiders, Olson and Goebel discuss how rearranging the same tools can be used to bring back what was destroyed. In the case of warring African tribes, who were starving because their battles and their livestock killed their produce, the re-purposed tools were the plow, the ax, the cow, fire and the gun. Goebel's team was able to change human behavior to help the tribes resolve their differences and become a self-sustaining, ecologically sound community.

This will be followed by some lively banter on climate change, with Olson playing the devil's advocate. Listeners can follow along with Goebel's slide presentation on the KZSO.org web page.

He talks about the graph of increasing CO2 levels around Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and how this led him to recognize the zig-zag effect caused by the tilting of the earth from summer to winter. As if the sun were breathing in and out, during summers CO2 is pulled out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and is drawn back in during the cold winters.

Goebel says people have known about changing weather patterns like El Niño and La Niña for hundreds of years, but that humans have also increased climate change by burning fossil fuels. He mentioned how easily pollinators are affected by the weather and how we need to know what's going on with birds, butterflies and bees because we need reliable cycles to grow crops.

Goebel, who recently moved from Portland to New Mexico, talks about his current passion, The Green Dot Project. He hopes to affect climate change by increasing humans' ability to develop new and adaptive methods to capture more CO2 through increased photosynthesis and reduce emissions of carbon into the atmosphere by using his proven consensus- building process on a global

scale.

How do you change the way you do things to make it better?

"By changing your thoughts," Goebel says. "We need to listen to each other, face our fears, learn to let go and trust our inner guidance. We'll be working towards building consensus to bring communities together from the bottom up to reach agreement."