Climate One

Climate change science isn’t taught accurately — or equally — across the country. Investigative reporter Katie Worth dug into textbooks and talked with dozens of children and teachers to find out why. In her book, Miseducation: How Climate is Taught in America, Worth unpacks the influence of the fossil fuel industry, state legislatures and school boards on school curricula in their effort to spread confusion and misinformation about the climate crisis. 

Some organizations skip the textbook battle entirely and try to reach children directly through assemblies and social media. How do teachers navigate these dynamics in the classroom? How can we ensure our children are learning to be engaged, educated and climate-aware citizens?

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Katie Worth, investigative journalist, author, Miseducation: How Climate is Taught in America

Lea Dotson, Campaigner, Action for the Climate Emergency

Ann Reid, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education

Ben Graves, former science teacher in Delta County, CO

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President Biden recently signed the biggest piece of climate legislation in U.S. history into law. To be sure, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act got pared down significantly from what was first put on the table, but the final measure still contains five times more money for projects aimed at mitigating the climate crisis than the best legislation the Obama administration could get through. What did it take to get 19 Republican senators (not to mention Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) to vote with the Democrats? And with the states being given great latitude over how to spend the money, will the billions available for highways negate any positive climate impacts?

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Carla Frisch, Principal Deputy Director, Office of Policy, U.S. Department of Energy 

Sasha Mackler, Executive Director, The Energy Project, Bipartisan Policy Center

Beth Osborne, Director, Transportation for America

Michael Grunwald, journalist, author, The New New Deal

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Ever have a difficult conversation about climate? Pretty much everyone has. Knowing all the facts and figures only goes so far when talking to someone who just doesn’t agree. So how do we break through the barriers? Scientists trained to present information in a one-way lecture format face a particular challenge: they first need to unlearn old habits.

“Everybody's trying to figure out ‘how do we move past this idea that just arming people with facts will lead to a better world,’ right, because we’ve just seen that that’s absolutely not true,” says Faith Kearns, author of Getting to the Heart of Science Communication. 

Kearns argues that we all need to move from an “information deficit” model of communication – where it’s assumed that the audience simply needs more information – to a relational model, where the science communicator does as much listening as talking in order to first find empathy and common ground.

Guests:

Faith Kearns, author, Getting to the Heart of Science Communication

Katerina Gonzales, doctoral research fellow, Stanford University

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In 2015, delegates from 196 nations entered into the legally binding treaty on climate change known as the Paris Agreement, which set a goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2 and preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.” Yet in August of this year, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new assessment report that starkly illustrated the world’s collective failure to meet that target. Delegates from across the globe have just met in Glasgow for the international climate summit known as COP26, with the hope of strengthening commitments to keep emissions targets at that 1.5 degree level. 

After two weeks of negotiations, presentations and protests in Glasgow, COP26 is a wrap. This week we discuss what was achieved - and what wasn’t - at the summit. 

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Vanessa Nakate, Ugandan climate activist

Jiang Lin, Adjunct Professor, University of California Berkeley

Albert Cheung, Head of Global Analysis, Bloomberg New Energy Finance

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Rick Ridgeway estimates he’s spent about five years of his life sleeping in tents, often in the world’s most remote places alongside fellow outdoor adventure luminaries. Ridgeway worked for Patagonia for 15 years and was behind the company’s infamous “Don’t Buy This Jacket” ad campaign, which paradoxically advocated sustainability and increased sales. 

Outdoor companies like Patagonia may push for sustainability, but they largely still present a mostly white, wealthy experience with nature, which can be off-putting for people of color. “You know if you can't see yourself in those spaces then it’s hard to feel invited or welcome in that movement,” says writer and social justice facilitator Amanda Machado.  

What is the role of corporations in conservation? And how can the outdoor industry help make nature more safe, accessible and welcoming for all?

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Rick Ridgeway, former Vice President of Public Engagement, Patagonia

Amanda Machado, writer and social justice facilitator

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According to the latest IPCC Assessment Report, we’re currently on course for at least 3°C (5.4°F) of warming by 2100 even if all of the voluntary Paris Agreement emissions pledges are fulfilled. Clearly the world needs to do more to reduce emissions. But what if that’s still not enough?

Solar geoengineering – such as putting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to reduce the amount of the sun’s heat from reaching the earth – could be one tool to slow warming temporarily. But it has become so politically fraught that even research into the subject is contentious. Who decides who should control our atmosphere? And what global governance structures should be put in place before any experimentation begins?

This program is generously underwritten in part by the Laney and Pasha Thornton Foundation.

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts

Guests:

Janos Pasztor, Executive Director, Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, former Assistant Secretary General, United Nations 

Sheila Jasanoff, Professor of science and technology studies, Harvard Kennedy School

Albert Lin, Professor, University of California Davis School of Law 

David Keith, Professor of applied physics and public policy, Harvard

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Fully electrifying our homes, cars and industries could cut the amount of total energy we need by half, says Saul Griffith, an entrepreneur, inventor and author of Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. This electric revolution would mean significantly scaling up our solar, wind and battery storage and reorienting the electric grid – but could also mean “thousands of dollars in savings in every household, every year.” 

President Biden wants half the cars sold in the US to be electric by 2030. And automakers are increasingly putting money and marketing muscle behind EVs. When Ford announced its all-electric F-150, it sent a powerful jolt through the transportation industry. Pre-orders for the F-150 Lightning surpassed 100,000 within three days, signalling that EVs are no longer just for kale-eating coastal elites. 

Note: Ford Motor Co. is among Climate One’s sponsors. This program was underwritten in part by ClimateWorks Foundation.

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Saul Griffith, author, Electrify: An Optimist Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future

Cynthia Williams, Global Director, Sustainability, Homologation and Compliance, Ford Motor Co.

Sara Baldwin, Director of Electrification Policy, Energy Innovation 

Josh Nassar, Legislative Director, United Auto Workers

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People around the world have been experiencing unprecedented extreme weather events – raging wildfires, killer heatwaves and catastrophic floods. In August, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new Assessment Report, which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called “code red for humanity,” adding that alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable. 

Against this backdrop, delegates from across the globe are set to convene for the international climate summit known as COP26, where they’re expected to hammer out commitments to reduce carbon emissions in hopes of avoiding the worst impacts of climate disruption. Six years on from the Paris agreement, is there finally enough urgency to turn ambition and promises into action? 

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Kate Larsen, Director, International Energy & Climate, Rhodium Group

Albert Cheung, Head of Global Analysis, Bloomberg NEF

Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Climate Justice Activist, Youth Advocates for Climate Action Philippines

Carlon Zackhras, Marshall Islands youth climate activist

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How do we manage our own anxiety around an uncertain climate future – let alone help our children work through their feelings and fears? In his latest book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, internationally renowned Zen Master and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hahn argues that addressing the intersection of ecological destruction, rising inequality, racial injustice, and the lasting impacts of a devastating pandemic requires us to strengthen our clarity, compassion, and courage to act. 

“The power of Zen and the power of mindfulness is that it roots us in the present moment so we can be alert to what is going on, we can be responsive, we can be the master of our mind and awareness in any given situation,” including climate disruption, says Sister True Dedication, contributor and editor of Thich Nhat Hahn’s book.

Psychotherapist Leslie Davenport, author of All the Feelings Under the Sun: How to Deal With Climate Change, provides thoughtful, practical exercises to help young readers process their feelings about climate change. 

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Sister True Dedication, Zen Buddhist nun, editor of Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Zen and the Art of Saving The Planet 

Leslie Davenport, author, Emotional Resiliency in the Era of Climate Change; All the Feelings Under the Sun: How to Deal With Climate Change

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We’ve experienced yet another summer of record wildfires in the western U.S., endangering lives, displacing communities, and sending unhealthy smoke across the nation. 

The science is clear: human-caused climate change is making lands more conducive to burning, and we are increasingly living in flammable landscapes. Forest experts say there are tools to help reduce the risk of catastrophic fires, keep forests alive as valuable carbon sinks and make communities more resilient to megafires. But we may also have to become accustomed to more fire – and smoke – in our lives. 

How can we better live with fire, including using it as a tool, rather than always fighting it?

For transcripts and other information, visit: https://www.climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts 

Guests:

Stephen Pyne, author, The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next 

Susan Husari, member of the California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection

Chad T. Hanson, author, Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate

Jaime Lowe, author, Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires

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Despite her identity as an evangelical, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe doesn't accept global warming on faith; she crunches the data, analyzes the models, and helps engineers, city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts. In her new book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, Hayhoe argues that when it comes to changing hearts and minds, facts are only one part of the equation. 

“The biggest problem we have is not the people who willfully decide to reject 200 years of basic science,” she says. “The bigger problem is the number of people who say, ‘it's real’ but they don’t think it matters to them.”

Hayhoe says we need to find shared values with others to drive conversations and collective action on climate disruption.

Guest:

Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist and chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy; author, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World

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The COVID-19 pandemic revealed structural weaknesses and inequities that existed long before 2020. Like COVID-19, climate change is another “threat multiplier,” with the power to disrupt many of our social systems. 

In her new book, The Fight for Climate After COVID-19, Alice Hill says we need to adapt our thinking and our policies to combat the ever-increasing threat of climate change. Especially when we see more compound disasters – like a wildfire followed by a mudslide.

“We need to come together to understand the risks, understand the vulnerabilities and then start making decisions with the support and the aid of the federal government to have better outcomes,” Hill says.

What changes can we make now to better prepare for future risks and climate disasters?   

Guests:

Alice Hill, author, The Fight for Climate After COVID-19, Senior Fellow for Climate Change Policy, Council on Foreign Relations

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Thomas P. Bostick, Former Commanding General, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Francis Suarez, Mayor of Miami

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This September marks the 50th anniversary of the seminal work Diet for a Small Planet, in which Frances Moore Lappé argued that cattle constitute “a protein factory in reverse.” Lappé’s book inspired countless people to adopt vegetarian diets for environmental reasons. 

But in the last 50 years the industrial food systems in America have only grown bigger and more concentrated, and – as the Lappés would argue – more powerful. Together with her daughter Anna Lappé, author of Diet for a Hot Planet, the two now focus on the intersections between democracy, environment, food, and justice. 

“It's really important that we understand that in order to change our food environment, we need to really work to get money out of politics, and we really need to work on how to take on that kind of consolidated power in the industry,” Anna Lappé says.  

Guests:

Frances Moore Lappé, author, Diet for a Small Planet 

Anna Lappé, author, Diet for a Hot Planet

Analena Hope Hassberg, Associate Professor, Ethnic and Women's Studies Department, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Ruth Richardson, Executive Director, Global Alliance for the Future of Food

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Water is essential for life, and throughout history we have sought to control and make use of it. As Giulio Boccaletti explores in his new book, Water: A Biography, that relationship with water has underpinned human civilization, forming an integral part of society, government and land use systems. But despite its essential nature, access to water has never been equal or entirely fair. 

Climate disruption will further destabilize the systems we’ve built to control water in our environment – even as it remains a public good without fair and equal public access. What can 10,000 years of history teach us about how we should handle water in our current and future climate?

Guests:

Giulio Boccaletti, Author, Water: A Biography

Sara Aminzadeh, Vice President of Partnerships, U.S. Water Alliance

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Hundreds of people have been arrested in Minnesota in ongoing protests against Line 3, a pipeline that will move Canadian tar sands oil, and which could be operational as soon as this month. 

Pipeline advocates, like Mike Fernandez of Enbridge (Line 3’s builder), argue that as long as people are still using oil, we need a way to transport it — and pipelines are the safest, least carbon-intensive means of doing so. Opponents, like Sierra Club’s Kelly Sheehan Martin, argue that oil companies bolster markets for oil and gas as a way to justify continued profits from building pipelines and extracting oil. Sheehan Martin argues that to seriously address the climate crisis, we need to keep the oil in the ground, and listen to the voices of those worried about harm to waterways and tribal lands. 

Why have oil pipelines become such a point of contention in the environmental movement? And what can all sides agree on to work toward the same less-carbon-reliant future?

Guests:

Mike Fernandez, Senior Vice President, Public Affairs, Communications & Sustainability, Enbridge

Daniel Raimi, Fellow, Resources for the Future

Kelly Sheehan Martin, Senior Director of Energy Campaigns, Sierra Club

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Listener Advisory: This episode contains some content related to a suicide. If you or someone you love is thinking about suicide, the National 24-hour Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255.

This summer, the climate crisis seems to be unfolding faster than ever before — with catastrophic floods, huge wildfires, and killer heat. It’s becoming increasingly hard to mentally set climate aside as a future problem — it is here, real in our present moment. 

How do we grapple with the weight of these changes, and process our fear for what is coming for us, and for the next generation? And how do those emotions affect our decisions about whether or not to have children, who in many ways represent an embodied version of our hope for the future?

Guests:

Daniel Sherrell, Author, Warmth, Coming of Age at the End of Our World

Seb Gould, physics teacher

Irène Mathieu, pediatrician and poet

Virginie Le Masson, co-director of the Centre for Gender and Disaster at University College London

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In early August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report unequivocally connecting global warming and extreme weather to human-driven greenhouse gas emissions, and warning of much more dramatic climate futures if we don’t change course soon.

Since the 2020 election, Rich Thau’s Swing Voter Project has been querying those who shifted from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020 about a range of issues. How will their views affect the 2022 midterms and the 2024 election? Where does climate rate on their list of issues? And does the accelerating climate crisis matter enough to affect their votes?

Guests:

Rich Thau, Moderator, The Swing Voter Project; Co-founder and President, Engagious 

Andrew Freedman, Climate and Energy Reporter, Axios

Venkatachalam “Ram” Ramaswamy, Director of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

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In October 2020, California Gov. Newsom announced a plan to protect 30% of his state by 2030. In 2021, the Biden Administration announced its own 30x30 plan, later dubbed America the Beautiful. With 12% of the U.S. already under some form of protection, where will the other 18% come from? In states like Nebraska, nearly all the land is in private hands — and the owners are worried.

With increased focus on the climate crisis, it’s easy to think we have enough to worry about without considering species other than our own. But the natural world provides critical resources that counteract the damaging impacts of climate change and sustain all life — including human life. About one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction. How much land does nature need to survive?

Guests:

Paula Ehrlich, CEO, E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation

Woody Lee, Executive Director, Utah Diné Bikéyah

Jennifer Norris, Deputy Secretary for Biodiversity and Habitat, California Natural Resources Agency

Catherine Semcer, Research Fellow, Property and Environment Research Center

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In Washington State, voters defeated initiatives to put a price on carbon ― twice. Governor Jay Inslee himself then lost his personal bid for the White House. Yet his bold ideas have proven staying power. The state legislature recently passed a carbon cap and invest bill that will reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions 95 percent by 2050. 

“We’ve got to wake up every morning figuring out ‘how can I disrupt the status quo.’ Because the status quo is deadly, it’s fatal, it will destroy economies and the biology that we exist on,” Inlsee says. 

Even big oil, which spent tens of missions to defeat the 2018 carbon pricing proposal, seems to be changing its tune, with BP now supporting a price on carbon. 

How might Washington State be a bellwether for Washington DC?

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From clearing land for pasture to building dams, humans have long changed the face of the Earth. But Indian eco-feminist Vandana Shiva is highly critical of how we’ve changed our relationship with the land through industrial monocrop agriculture. She firmly opposes genetically modified crops, and has called seed patents “bio-piracy.” But it’s not just the technology she’s critical of. 

“I’m critical of the world view of arrogance. The worldview that came with colonialism, the mechanistic mindset of the conquering man being the creator of the earth and creator of the wealth,” Shiva says. 

Shiva argues for a renewed focus on biodiversity and regenerative agriculture to help solve the climate crisis.

Guests:

Vandana Shiva, director of the Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology

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The United States is famous for its car culture. But a hundred years ago, pedestrians didn’t want cars to take over the streets — and it took decades of pressure and lobbying by car companies to make them feel otherwise. Today, traffic jams, maintenance and pollution make cars more like the cigarette no one wants to quit. Urban areas have grown up and spread out along ever widening highways with parking spaces required for each new building, further entrenching the car into our lives and choking cities with smog.

Public transit holds tremendous possibilities for reducing our transportation emissions while better moving people through cities. But there’s a lot to overcome when trying to change the mobility model in most American cities, starting with the lack of good public transit and the high costs of construction. How can we make good public transportation work in America?

Guests:

Peter Norton, associate professor of history at the University of Virginia;

author of Fighting Traffic and Autonorama

Eric Goldwyn, assistant professor at the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management; 

co-founder of the Transit Costs Project

Amanda Eaken, director of transportation for the Bloomberg American Cities Climate Challenge at the Natural Resources Defense Council

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Pathways for reducing carbon emissions include electrifying transportation and replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar power. But in this time of national reckoning on racial and economic disparities, there is growing support for a more holistic approach. This view holds that the climate crisis won’t be resolved until we first address the systemic imbalances that have fueled it – racism, capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. In their recent book, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, co-editors Katharine Wilkinson and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson bring together the voices of women artists, writers and change-makers who are at the forefront of climate action.

“The work that we’re doing is instigating or nurturing a feminist climate renaissance,” says Johnson, “which is what we feel the climate movement so desperately needs right now.”

Guests:

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist

Katharine Wilkinson, Vice President, Project Drawdown

Co-editors, All We Can Save:Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (One World, 2020)

Christine Nieves Rodriguez, Co-founder and President, Emerge Puerto Rico.

Sherri Mitchell, author, Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change (North Atlantic Books, 2018)

Heather McTeer Toney, National Field Director, Moms Clean Air Force

Jainey Bavishi, Director, Mayor's Office of Resiliency, New York City

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When we think of action on climate change, we usually think of what individuals can do, what governments can do, and maybe what businesses can do. But what about the broader economic levers that affect behaviors? 

Can we get companies to walk away from billions of dollars they’ve already invested in a fossil fuel-based economy? Insurers are on the front lines of climate disruption; it’s their business to put a price on risk. So how can the financial and insurance sectors create better-aligned incentives for companies, businesses and even governments to get on the ever-narrowing path to net zero carbon emissions before it’s too late?

Guests:

Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance 

Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency

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For over two decades, carbon offset programs have promised individuals and businesses that they can reduce their overall carbon footprint by paying someone else to reduce their carbon emissions. Yet many programs have been plagued by scandal – like shady accounting and paying forest owners not to cut down trees they weren’t planning to log anyway.

A new nonprofit called Climate Vault wants to buy emissions permits from regulated markets and lock them away so other polluters can’t buy and use them. Will this finally be an approach that works? Or are all carbon offset programs just smoke and mirrors?

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Extreme heat causes more deaths than any other weather-related hazard in the U.S., wreaking quiet havoc on the health and economic well-being of billions of people across the world. But it’s rarely given the same billing or resources as other, more dramatic, natural disasters. Because of racist and discriminatory housing and development practices, extreme heat also disproportionately impacts poorer and minority communities.

Recognizing a growing need for local responses to a global problem, the mayors of Miami-Dade, Athens, Greece and Freetown, Sierra Leone recently announced they are appointing the world’s first Chief Heat Officers. How can we prepare for and address the impacts of extreme heat?

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From activism to political campaigns to corporate advertising, the power of music and images is undeniable. So how can the arts inspire and advance the climate conversation? 

For more than three decades, Shepard Fairey’s work has provoked thought and controversy in the art and political spheres. Now, with a public weary of climate charts and apocalyptic images of melting glaciers and emaciated polar bears, we explore how the arts can provoke a more productive conversation with Fairey and Grammy-nominated hip hop artist Mystic.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our work. Go to climateone.org/donate to help us reach our goal of $10,000 by July 1.

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The Colorado River supplies water to more than 40 million people across seven states. Lake Mead has fallen to its lowest level since it was filled in the 1930s, which could trigger the first stage of real water cutbacks.

For years, “much of the discussion in the Colorado River Basin has been who gets the next drop,” says journalist Luke Runyon. “The conversation very recently has shifted to who has to use less.”

In the midst of long-term drought, warming temperatures and decreasing runoff, water managers are gearing up for the next round of negotiations to divvy up the Colorado River’s supply in the future. Tribal water users are hoping to have a bigger say in those basin-wide negotiations, and to finally correct an historic injustice by ensuring universal access to clean water for tribes.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our work. Go to climateone.org/donate to help us reach our goal of $10,000 by July 1.

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Ever have a difficult conversation about climate? Pretty much everyone has. Knowing all the facts and figures only goes so far when talking to someone who just doesn’t agree. So how do we break through the barriers? Scientists trained to present information in a one-way lecture format face a particular challenge: they first need to unlearn old habits.

“Everybody's trying to figure out ‘how do we move past this idea that just arming people with facts will lead to a better world,’ right, because we’ve just seen that that’s absolutely not true,” says Faith Kearns, author of Getting to the Heart of Science Communication. 

Kearns argues that we all need to move from an “information deficit” model of communication – where it’s assumed that the audience simply needs more information – to a relational model, where the science communicator does as much listening as talking in order to first find empathy and common ground.

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If corporations can be legal persons, why can’t Mother Earth? 

In 2017, New Zealand granted the Whanganui River the full legal rights of a person. India also recently granted full legal rights to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, and recognized that the Himalayan Glaciers have a right to exist. In 2019, the city of Toledo passed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights with 61 percent of the vote, but then a year later, a federal judge struck it down.

As Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, an attorney who represented Lake Erie, explains, the problem stems from a 500-year history of Western property law. Our legal system grants rights to property owners, but not to property itself. 

“If we’re treating ecosystems as property, then ultimately, we as property owners have the right to destroy our property and that fundamentally has to change,” Schromen-Wawrin says.

Rebecca Tsosie, a law professor focused on Federal Indian law and Indigenous peoples’ human rights, says there are other rights frameworks to consider. “If we go into Indigenous epistemology, many times it’s a relational universe that comes with mutual responsibility.”

Guests:

Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, attorney at Shearwater Law, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund 

Rebecca Tsosie, Regents Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, Indigenous Peoples’ Law and Policy Program

Carol Van Strum, author of A Bitter Fog, activist

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Mapping has emerged as a powerful tool for helping humans combat climate disruption. Technology for measuring the totality of global carbon emissions, for example, is highly refined: we know that half of all the carbon pollution humans have dumped into the sky has happened in just the last three decades. But understanding the specific sources of those emissions at the scale of factories or communities has been more elusive. 

Riley Duren, CEO of Carbon Mapper, has said, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Carbon Mapper, a public-private partnership that includes universities and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and is backed by philanthropists, uses satellites to pinpoint super emitters of both CO2 and methane in real time with the goal of reducing emissions.

But this isn’t the only technology that may point the way toward a better understanding of climate threats and potential solutions. The Catholic Church, for example, holds vast tracts of land across the globe. But until Molly Burhans came on the scene, the Vatican had no real understanding of what they own. Burhans founded her nonprofit mapping organization Goodlands to provide the Church with the tools to use their landholdings to address issues ranging from erosion and biodiversity loss to climate migration. 

On the local level, Ariane Middel’s research uses a human-sized mobile weather station to look at variations in actual heat on the ground, chronicling how small differences in landscape and urban design can add up to major differences in heat impacts experienced by those who live and work in various built environments.

Guests:

Molly Burhans, Founder / Executive Director, GoodLands

Riley Duren, CEO, Carbon Mapper  

Ariane Middel, Senior Sustainability Scientist, Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation

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What motivates the activists? Grassroots activism can take many forms, from protests to letter-writing to citizen science to community organizing. But these often more local forms of activism can get short shrift compared to the more powerful, national players in climate and environmental movements.

Nick Mullins, a former fifth-generation coal miner, grew up seeing multiple generations of his family endure hardships created by our nation’s demand for cheap coal. In search of decent pay, he became a miner himself – but he eventually left the industry in search of justice for his mountain communities. 

James Coleman started his career as a teenage climate activist before becoming the youngest elected public official in California in over 100 years. San Francisco activist Marie Harrison fought against environmental contamination of her community by the U.S. Navy and a fossil-fuel-burning power plant – and now her daughter, Arieann Harrison, has picked up her mantle to continue pushing for environmental justice.  

Mullins, Coleman, and dozens of activists featured in Audrea Lim’s book The World We Need, Stories and Lessons from America’s Unsung Environmental Movement represent just a fraction of those motivated to take action on climate. 

“The thing about grassroots activism, actually, apart from the stereotype is that it’s really just people in a community who see a problem and then they get together on their own and try to find a solution to it,” says Audrea Lim.

What can grassroots activists do that national organizations can’t? And what can their stories and experiences teach us?

Guests:

Nick Mullins, former fifth-generation coal miner, blogger, Thoughts of a Coal Miner

Audrea Lim, Journalist & Editor, The World We Need, Stories and Lessons from America’s Unsung Environmental Movement

James Coleman, City Councilor, South San Francisco

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How do our identities and values shape the way we listen to others’ climate experience? Author Nathaniel Rich and journalist Meera Subramanian cover the hopes, fears, and middle-of-the-night concerns affecting the people living closest to climate change. 

In Georgia, farmers were convinced that climate is a political issue — until too-warm winters began upending the Peach State’s prized crop. In a wealthy Los Angeles suburb, an invisible methane gas leak caused outrage and hysteria for local residents concerned about personal health and property values — but not the climate.

“I think we've all gotten really used to telling our stories, putting them out there in the world, and it sometimes feels like maybe not so many people are actually listening to them,” Subramanian says. “And so I think sometimes showing up as a journalist and just being all ears can feel kind of profound.”

Guests:

Nathaniel Rich, Author, Losing Earth; Second Nature

Meera Subramanian, Environmental Journalist

Have you ever had a difficult conversation about climate? A disagreement, perhaps, or coming to terms with a new reality? We’d like to hear your stories. Please call (650) 382-3869 and leave us a voicemail about your toughest climate conversation. Or drop us a line at climateone@gmail.com. We may use your story in an upcoming episode.

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In the US, we’ve become accustomed to climate – like nearly everything else – being politicized. Even when potential solutions might benefit everyone, a zero-sum mentality has taken hold where there’s an “us” and a “them” and progress for them comes at the expense of us. “Racism in our politics and policymaking is distorting our ability to respond to big problems and to advance collective solutions,” says political strategist Heather McGhee. But does it have to be this way? Can we look to the UK and elsewhere for a different model? Is it even possible to make the whole planet a winner?

Guests:

Heather McGhee, Political Strategist & Author, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together 

Rebecca Willis, Researcher & Author, Too Hot to Handle? The Democratic Challenge of Climate Change

We have been nominated for a Webby!

Please give us your vote as the Best Science and Education Limited Series in the 25th Annual People's Voice Award below:

https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2021/podcasts/limited-series-specials/science-education

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Guests:

Tamara Conry, Camp Fire survivor 

Julia Fay Bernal, director of Pueblo Action Alliance 

Britt Wray, postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University focused on the intersection of mental health and the climate crisis

The impacts of climate change may come fast or slow. A wildfire amplified by drought may rip through a town in a matter of hours, or rising seas may take years to destroy a neighborhood. Health impacts may show up in months, or take the form of devastating cancer rates that rise over a decade. Regardless of speed or intensity, the climate emergency will impact us all. How do we live alongside climate disruption?

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.

Related Links:

Pueblo Action Alliance

Eco-anxiety and Gen Dread

We have been nominated for a Webby!

Please give us your vote as the Best Science and Education Limited Series in the 25th Annual People's Voice Award below:

https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2021/podcasts/limited-series-specials/science-education

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For many of us, the story of the American wilderness begins when Europeans arrived on these shores and began conquering it. The wide open spaces of the American West loom large in our country’s mythology.

But what often gets written out is the history and culture of those native societies who were here to begin with — and whose relationship to this land is very different. And while one-percenters have contributed generously to preserve and protect the pristine wilderness they love, the people who work for them are often struggling, working two or three jobs.

How are public and private land interests competing in the American West? Can conservation and recreation coalesce in a way that is inclusive of all communities?

Guests:

Dina Gilio-Whitaker, American Indian Studies Lecturer, California State University San Marcos

Justin Farrell, Author, Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West (Princeton University Press, 2020)

Diane Regas, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Trust for Public Land

Jessica Newton, Founder, Vibe Tribe Adventures 

For show notes and related links, visit our website.

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Speakers:

Julian Brave NoiseCat, Vice President of Policy and Strategy, Data for Progress 

Julie Pullen, Director of Product, Jupiter Intelligence 

Alicia Seiger, Managing Director, Sustainable Finance Initiative, Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University

The COVID-19 shutdown has hit women and minorities hardest: four times as many women as men dropped out of the workforce in September 2020, with Latina and Black women seeing the highest levels of unemployment.

The Biden Administration’s COVID recovery plans promise to prioritize climate and equity alongside economic growth—can those values carry over to a post-pandemic workforce that doesn’t leave anyone behind? “The solutions to climate expand far beyond simple carbon math,” says Alicia Seiger of Stanford University. How will climate resilience be built into America's economic recovery?

Related Links:

The American Rescue Plan

Data for Progress

Jupiter Intelligence

Precourt Institute for Energy

The All We Can Save Project

Waterfront Alliance

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Guests:

Sandra Kwak, CEO and Founder, 10Power

Donnel Baird, CEO, BlocPower

Andreas Karelas, Author, Climate Courage: How Tackling Climate Change Can Build Community, Transform the Economy, and Bridge the Political Divide in America 

Summary: As the spring of 2021 arrives, it would be hard to design a more challenging — or more promising — moment for implementing climate solutions. Americans are reeling from an economic shutdown that’s pushed many out of the workforce, and widened the gap between the wealthy and the poor. In this brave new post-Covid world, can President Biden step up where Obama couldn’t? 

“I'm delighted about what I'm seeing from the Biden-Harris team,” notes Donnel Baird, CEO of BlocPower. “Climate justice and racial equality are wedded together alongside employment, alongside public health and working our way out of these kinds of four simultaneous crises we’re dealing with.” From big tech to clean energy, what are the opportunities for scaling new solutions — and where do inequity and politics continue to set us back?

Related links:

10Power

BlocPower

Climate Courage

Re-volv

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Warmer, shorter winters may sound like an impact of climate change that would inspire more joy than despair. But rising temperatures and decreasing snowpack won’t just transform water supplies and species ranges. It will also disrupt a multi-billion dollar winter sport industry, including the jobs and local economies associated with them. 

“If we're not able to ski or snowboard anymore,” says Mario Molina, CEO of Protect Our Winters, “the least of our concerns will be the activities that we participate in.” So how are winter sports enthusiasts and others preparing to weather the storm?

Speakers:

Elizabeth Burakowski, Assistant Professor, Earth Systems Research Center, University of New Hampshire

Kit DesLauriers, National Geographic Explorer; Skimountaineer 

Geraldine Link, Director of Public Policy, National Ski Areas Association 

Mario Molina, CEO, Protect our Winters

Related Links:

Protect Our Winters

Higher Love: Climbing and Skiing the Seven Summits

National Ski Areas Association

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Guests:

Céline Cousteau, Explorer and Filmmaker

Davis Guggenheim, Director, An Inconvenient Truth; Founder, Concordia Studio 

Cristina Mittermeier, National Geographic Photographer; Co-Founder, SeaLegacy

While IPCC risk assessments and emission projections can help us understand climate change, they don’t exactly inspire the imagination or provoke a personal response to the crisis. But a growing league of storytellers is using photographs, films and the human experience to breathe life into the cerebral science of climate change and conservation. “It's not the blockbuster, big-splash film,” says explorer and filmmaker Céline Cousteau, “It's truth, it’s intimacy, and some of it is ugly and some of it is beautiful.” So how far can images and sound go to inspire a global climate response?

Related Links:

He Named Me Malala

My Octopus Teacher

SeaLegacy

Tribes on the Edge

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True to his campaign promise, President Biden dove right into the climate crisis on Day One, signing a stack of executive orders that signaled his determination. But how effective are they? 

“Executive orders, I think, are often very splashy when they're introduced, and they get a lot of attention,” notes Axios reporter Ben Gemen. “I think the better way to look at an executive order is sort of firing a starting gun for an extraordinarily long race.” But while he faces certain blowback from Republicans in Congress, there are signs that when it comes to conservative thought, the wind may be changing.

What can the Biden Administration accomplish using existing authority? How much will conservatives and businesses step in and step up on climate?

Guests:

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), Chair of House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

Rich Powell, Executive Director, ClearPath

Ben Geman, Energy Reporter, Axios

For complete show notes, visit our website.

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Just two months into 2021, deadly winter temperatures left millions of Texans without water and power. Meanwhile, California is preparing for another year of intense drought, and Wall Street millionaires are moving their remote work to Florida, ground zero for flooding and sea-level rise.

“We think about the Earth as a system,” says Marshall Shepherd, director of Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia, “so we can't understand climate change unless we understand changes in the Arctic, or in the ocean circulations, or in the biosphere, and so forth.”

“Hope or waiting and seeing is no longer a valid risk mitigation strategy."

Guests:

Katharine Mach, Associate Professor, Marine Ecosystems and Society, University of Miami

Marshall Shepherd, Director, Atmospheric Sciences, University of Georgia

For complete show notes, visit our website.

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“The long-term energy future of America is not going to be written in fossil fuels,” declared John Kerry last April. President Biden recently appointed the former Secretary of State to a top position in his climate cabinet - United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

Joe Biden did not start his campaign as the “climate candidate.” But as he starts his second month as president, he is looking at everything through a climate lens – from jobs and infrastructure to international diplomacy, public health and social justice.

“He really is a person who was engaged somewhat in climate, but I don't think it was as yet sort of ingrained into him,” said former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “Well, it is now!”

McCarthy and Kerry are just two of the climate leaders that President Joe Biden has tapped to put his ambitious climate plan into action. In this program, we revisit conversations with these and other Climate One guests from the past year that have been named to prominent roles in the Biden-Harris administration.

Speakers:

Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington

Gina McCarthy, Former President & CEO, NRDC Action Fund

John Kerry, Former U.S. Senator and Former Secretary of State

Sonia Aggarwal, Former Vice President of Energy, Energy Innovation

Brian Deese, Former Managing Director, Global Head of Sustainable Investing, BlackRock

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In the past decade, narratives of a dystopian climate future have helped connect people with heroes in worlds decimated by climate disruption and industrial expansion. In today’s real world, scientists are looking to geo-engineering and other human innovations to preserve the wellbeing of life on Earth. “What we’re missing is a way to galvanize people to support policies that are actually gonna change,” says Jeff Biggers, founder of The Climate Narrative Project.

So how can climate storytelling help us reckon with our changing environment? Do we need a new climate narrative to help us understand and solve the climate emergency?

Guests:

Jeff Biggers, Founder, The Climate Narrative Project

Elizabeth Kolbert, Staff Writer, The New Yorker

Kim Stanley Robinson, Science Fiction Author

Related Links:

Climate Narrative Project

Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition

The Ministry for the Future

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

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Experts have warned us that COVID-19 is just one example of climate change-related diseases on the rise. And while climate disruption, environmental health and the current pandemic may seem like three distinct problems, to those in the health and environmental justice field, that’s not the case.

"All of them are connected," says Adrienne Hollis of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "And the underlying cause is systemic racism."

"If you want to address pandemics, and you want to address climate change, you’ve got to focus on equity," agrees Aaron Bernstein of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. "And the solution, and the great news in some ways, is that these actions you need to take are one and the same."

How are heat, lack of sanitation, and other environmental issues killing Americans in underserved communities? A conversation on what happens when climate, health, and poverty converge.

Guests:

Catherine Coleman Flowers, Founder, Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice; Author, Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret  (The New Press, 2020)

Adrienne Hollis, Senior Climate Justice and Health Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists

Aaron Bernstein, Interim Director, Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health 

For complete show notes, visit our website.

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With a new pro-science, pro-climate action administration in the White House, there are more pathways — and far greater political will — than ever before for the clean energy transition. The question is now less about what can be done to act on climate, and more about how soon. 

“We have the best opportunity in more than a decade now to see federal climate action through legislation,” says Leah Stokes from UC Santa Barbara. So how quickly can a new administration turn around a gutted EPA, myriad environmental law rollbacks, and a legacy of climate denial from fossil fuel companies?

Guests:

Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Penn State University

Leah Stokes, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UC Santa Barbara

Related Links:

Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad

The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet

Short Circuiting Policy: Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States

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A decade ago, a nationwide survey showed that only around twelve percent of Americans were seriously concerned about climate change. Today, public perceptions have changed. 

“The alarmed are between a quarter and 30% of the public,” says Edward Maibach. “That makes them the largest single segment of Americans…as their name implies, they’re alarmed about climate change.”

How does understanding the perceptions of a broadly concerned public enable our leaders to create lasting change? How do climate concerns break down across political, economic, and regional divides?

A conversation with Anthony Leiserowitz and Edward Maibach, recipients of the tenth annual Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication. At a time when understanding climate perceptions has never been more important, Dr. Leiserowitz and Dr. Maibach have exemplified the ability to be both scientists and powerful communicators through their work on the public’s understanding of climate change, including the seminal Global Warming’s Six Americas project.

Guests:

Anthony Leiserowitz, Director and Senior Research Scientist, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

Edward Maibach, Director, George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication

Host: Greg Dalton

Related Links:

Global Warming’s Six Americas

Yale Climate Connections Podcast

Climate Matters – Jim Gandy

Climate Matters in the Newsroom

White House Fact Sheet: President Biden’s Executive Actions on Climate Change

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Hopes and expectations are high for President Biden’s first weeks in office. His recovery plans promise to take on COVID-19, a battered economy, and a rapid clean energy transition in a way that doesn’t leave communities behind. But Navajo Nation, which until recently was home to the largest coal-fired power plant in the U.S., has been left out of economic and energy plans for a long time.

“The community that has been the provider is the one that has the most homes that don't have access to electricity,” notes Wahleah Johns, Co-Founder and Director of Native Renewables. Can the incoming administration improve energy access for all Americans while phasing out fossil fuels?

Guests

Loretta Lynch, Former President, California Public Utilities Commission

Wahleah Johns, Co-Founder & Director, Native Renewables

Paula Glover, President, Alliance to Save Energy; former President and CEO, American Association of Blacks in Energy

Jeremiah Baumann, Director of Federal Policy, Energy Innovation

Visit our website for more information on today's episode.

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Incoming President Biden faces an unimaginable set of challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, a gutted economy and a nation reeling from the recent capital attack. With all of that and more on his plate, what of Biden’s plans to fight climate change?

“This President-elect has shown that he is absolutely committed to addressing the issue of climate,” says former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman. “Because it affects everything.”

Advancing a bipartisan climate agenda will be a hard sell. But in his nearly four decades in the Senate, Biden has made friends and earned respect from his Republican peers.

“That isn’t gonna fix everything, of course not,” admits former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. But if you start with that...there are enough Republicans in the Senate who will respond to that.”

Visit climateone.org/watch-and-listen/podcasts for more information on today's episode.

Guests:

Christine Todd Whitman, former Governor of New Jersey, former EPA Administrator

Chuck Hagel, former U.S. Secretary of Defense; former Republican Senator from Nebraska

John Podesta, Founder, Center for American Progress; former Hillary Clinton Campaign Chairman

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Questioning science, funding vocal climate denial groups, and encouraging the focus on personal carbon footprints are corporate America’s preferred tools for shifting the responsibility for action on climate from industry to the individual. “Companies that are very much pro-climate action, that are acting in their own operations, are mostly silent on public policy,” says Bill Weihl, former Sustainability Director at Facebook.

But with more workers holding their employers accountable and the start of a departure from shareholder-first capitalism, is the role of the corporation shifting?

Visit our website for more information on today's episode.

Guests: Mike Toffel, Senator

John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management, Harvard Business School; Founder, Climate Rising Podcast

Emily Atkin, Climate Journalist, Heated Newsletter & Podcast

Bill Weihl, Founder and Executive Director, ClimateVoice; Former Sustainability Director, Facebook

Barbara Freese, Author, Industrial-Strength Denial: Eight Stories of Corporations Defending the Indefensible, from the Slave Trade to Climate Change

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Twenty years ago, Julia Roberts won an Oscar for her portrayal of maverick environmental activist Erin Brockovich in the film of the same name. These days, in addition to her work on water safety and toxins in communities, Brockovich has taken on the climate emergency. In her mind, the connection is fundamental. “Climate change is about too much water, not enough water, no water, drought, flooding,” Brockovich says, adding, “It’s becoming real because it's tangible, it's touchable. You're running from it, you’re breathing it. You're swimming in it. You could be drowning in it. I just think it's here.”

Also, New York Times reporter Tatiana Schlossberg on how everyday choices – like deciding what to eat, wear or binge-watch – may impact the planet more than you think. And two experts on sustainable apparel uncover the hidden carbon footprint stuffed in our drawers, closets and gym bags.

Visit our website for more information on today's episode.

Guests:

Erin Brockovich, Author, Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It (Pantheon, 2020)

Tatiana Schlossberg, Author, Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have (Grand Central Publishing, 2019)

Rebecca Burgess, Founder and Director, Fibershed

Amina Razvi, Executive Director, Sustainable Apparel Coalition

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