Climate One
792 episodes - English - Latest episode: 22 days ago - ★★★★★ - 502 ratingsWe’re living through a climate emergency; addressing this crisis begins by talking about it. Co-hosts Greg Dalton and Ariana Brocious bring you empowering conversations that connect all aspects of the challenge — the scary and the exciting, the individual and the systemic. Join us.
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Episodes
REWIND: Climate Miseducation
June 17, 2022 07:01 - 58 minutesClimate 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 ba...
Digging Deep into the Next Farm Bill
June 10, 2022 07:01 - 55 minutesRoughly every five years, the U.S. designs and implements a new farm bill, which sets federal policy on agriculture across a huge swath of programs, including subsidies, food assistance, land practices and more. As the discussion around what to include in the 2023 farm bill intensifies, many are pushing for climate mitigation and adaptation measures to be a primary focus of the legislation. Then there’s equity. Since the 1930s, the Federal Government has supported farmers with subsidies, cred...
Disrupted Energy Markets: Fossil Revival or Renewable Opportunity?
June 03, 2022 07:01 - 55 minutesAs Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other economic pressures disrupt global energy markets, even insiders are scrambling to make sense of this moment. Ahead of the midterm elections, the Biden administration has signaled it wants more oil and gas now to ease the pain of surging fuel prices while maintaining support for cutting carbon emissions. Oil and gas aren’t the only commodities affected by market chaos. The supply chain, including for clean energy technology, has also been disrupted. Ho...
Indigenous Insights on Healing Land and Sky
May 27, 2022 07:01 - 58 minutesAccording to the World Bank, land managed by Indigenous peoples is associated with lower rates of deforestation, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and better biodiversity protection. But in many places, Indigenous people have been displaced from their ancestral lands through outright theft, land grabs, violence and war — sacrificing both indigenous livelihoods and the traditional knowledge that has protected their lands for centuries. Still, across the U.S. we can find examples of land access...
Coping with Climate through Music
May 20, 2022 07:01 - 55 minutesMusic and social movements have historically gone hand in hand. Folk music played a unifying role for the labor movements in the United States. Music was central to the protests against the Vietnam War and in favor of Civil Rights. As more people become aware of the climate crisis, music is starting to reflect that. But there is still no one song or artist inspiring climate action the way music catalyzed other movements. Why aren’t more musical artists raising the alarm over the growing clima...
Russ Feingold on Biodiversity, Climate and The Courts
May 13, 2022 07:01 - 55 minutesRuss Feingold became a household name co-authoring the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, more commonly known as McCain-Feingold. It’s the only major piece of campaign finance reform legislation passed into law in decades. Today he is using his experience navigating the levers of power to tackle alarming biodiversity loss and the worsening climate crisis. Feingold believes, “The threats posed to people from the destruction of nature are just as serious as those posed by climate change.” Guests:...
Big Money: Investment Managers Driving Corporate Action
May 06, 2022 07:01 - 56 minutesMore than half of Americans are invested in the stock market, either directly or through their retirement funds, but individual investors rarely think about how their money is actually being put to use. And even if they decide to take a stand and divest from fossil fuels, that may not translate into a single molecule less carbon being released into the atmosphere. On the other hand, large institutional investors - like those that manage individuals’ retirement funds - can wield huge influence...
Dismantling White Supremacy to Address the Climate Crisis
April 29, 2022 07:01 - 55 minutesA fundamental injustice of the climate crisis is that those who have contributed to it least are already bearing the brunt of the impacts, and that will continue as global temperatures rise. Like many other environmental and societal challenges, we can’t make real progress if certain groups are left behind. How might a new model for working together to solve interconnected crises, by tracing the origins of ecofeminism, environmental justice and other movements that center the voices and exper...
Climate & Democracy with Jamie Raskin, Heather McGhee, Rebecca Willis
April 21, 2022 07:01 - 1 hourCongressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) took the national spotlight as the lead manager for the second impeachment trial of the former president. As a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, he has grilled fossil fuel executives on the industry’s long history of intentionally misleading the public. And as a constitutional law professor, he has offered deep insight into the connections between an informed citizenry and a robust democracy. At a time when many Americans doubt Congress’s abil...
Climate & Democracy with Jamie Raskin, Heather McGhee and Rebecca Willis
April 21, 2022 07:01 - 1 hourCongressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) took the national spotlight as the lead manager for the second impeachment trial of the former president. As a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, he has grilled fossil fuel executives on the industry’s long history of intentionally misleading the public. And as a constitutional law professor, he has offered deep insight into the connections between an informed citizenry and a robust democracy. At a time when many Americans doubt Congress’s abi...
Breaking Down Climate Misinformation with Amy Westervelt and John Cook
April 15, 2022 07:01 - 1 hourFossil fuel companies and others have spent decades casting doubt on climate science to allow them to continue to profit. As documented by climate communication expert John Cook and others, these strategies have taken many forms: deny, dismiss, delay, deflect; and they have evolved over time. They’ve also included a concerted effort to recast political speech, banned and regulated in some contexts, as protected free speech, giving corporations more leeway in broadcasting their messages. In a...
Can We Get Clean Energy Without Dirty Mines?
April 08, 2022 07:01 - 59 minutesGlobal sales of electric vehicles more than doubled in 2021. Projections for this year are for another huge gain as more automakers introduce more models with increasing range. This is all good news for transitioning to a clean energy economy. But sourcing the materials needed for clean energy might not be so clean. Mining is the leading industrial polluter in the U.S., but the climate crisis demands a transition to technologies that require raw materials to be extracted. How can the world ge...
Solar Flare-ups
April 01, 2022 07:01 - 57 minutesEarlier this year, California regulators were set to propose significant changes to the incentives that drive rooftop solar installations. After widespread opposition from industry and climate advocates, the California Public Utilities Commission paused the effort. The issue centers on how much rooftop solar customers pay to use the grid and what rewards they get for selling their excess power. But California is far from the only state where net metering is a hotly contested issue. While uti...
Coping with COVID and Climate Fatigue
March 25, 2022 07:01 - 53 minutesSince March 2020, the global community has grappled with an unprecedented pandemic. At first, most people were willing to do what it takes to keep themselves and others safe. Two years in, pretty much everyone feels exhausted by the effort and by the general anxiety of living with COVID. The global community simultaneously faces an even greater existential threat: climate change. For those fighting to stave off this slower-moving catastrophe, fatigue is a familiar feeling. What have we learne...
Playing With Fire: Russia, Ukraine and the Geopolitics of Energy
March 18, 2022 07:01 - 54 minutesThe IPCC released its latest report the same day as the U.S. Supreme Court heard the most environmentally significant case in a decade, all while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rattled global energy markets. It’s a lot to take in all at once. Will the disruption of methane gas supplies to Europe give it the extra push it needs to decarbonize, or will some countries always be beholden to untrustworthy partners for the resources they need? What other options exist to power our economies more...
Turning Air into Stone: Tech-Based Carbon Removal
March 11, 2022 08:01 - 53 minutesIt has been 3 million years since there’s been this much CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if we stop all burning of fossil fuels today, humans have already emitted enough CO2 that we’ll continue experiencing extreme weather events for years to come. Not only do we need to stop emitting greenhouse gasses, but according to the IPCC, we also need to accelerate the removal of CO2. With forests burning faster than we can grow them, nature-based solutions may not be enough. What role might tech-based so...
Peat, Kelp and Trees: Nature-Based Carbon Capture
March 04, 2022 08:01 - 1 hourHumans must dramatically rein in greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow the planetary warming caused by centuries of fossil fuel combustion. But even if we accomplish that through major reforms to our power supply, food systems, industrial industries and more, we still need to remove huge amounts of carbon already in the atmosphere to stave off the worst impacts of climate disruption. This is no easy task. We need to explore every option – both nature-based solutions and tech solutions. In...
Cow Poop and Compost: Digesting the Methane Menace
February 25, 2022 08:01 - 56 minutesIn a 20-year time frame, methane is 80 times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide. Nationally, 37% of methane emissions come from cows. 17% of all US methane emissions come from food waste rotting in landfills. More than 100 countries, including the US, signed The Global Methane Pledge, promising to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030. In California, a new law went into effect directly addressing the state’s methane emissions from organic waste and dairy farms. The law target...
Our Greatest Unintended Experiment
February 18, 2022 08:01 - 1 hourFor years, scientists, activists, and politicians have tried to warn the world of the potential catastrophic consequences of dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere: Think of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. Or NASA scientist James Hansens’ testimony before the U.S. Senate in 1988, in which he said that “the greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now.” Or go all the way back to 1856, when Eunice Newton Foote first warned the world that an atmosphere heavy with c...
The Enablers: The Firms Behind Fossil Fuel Falsehoods
February 11, 2022 08:01 - 53 minutesFor years, fossil fuel companies have claimed to support climate science and policy. Many have recently pledged to hit net zero emissions by midcentury. Yet behind the scenes they fight those very same policies through industry associations, shadow groups, and lobbying – all while spending vast sums on advertising and PR campaigns touting their climate commitments. This week we focus on the PR and law firms helping fossil fuel companies delay the transition to clean energy while claiming they...
REWIND: Should We Have Children in a Climate Emergency?
February 04, 2022 08:01 - 1 hourThe climate crisis seems to be unfolding faster than ever before — with catastrophic floods, winter wildfires, and last summer’s 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 way...
State of the Unions: Navigating Job Creation and Destruction
January 28, 2022 08:01 - 56 minutesWith expanding electrical infrastructure and some jurisdictions beginning to ban gas appliances in new construction, the transition to a clean energy economy is already happening. Understandably, labor unions that represent workers tied to the fossil fuel infrastructure are digging in their heels. While recognizing that climate change is a threat, the Laborers’ International Union of North America and the Utility Workers Union of America are skeptical of promises of a just transition, saying ...
Corporate Net Zero Pledges: Ambitious or Empty Promises?
January 21, 2022 08:01 - 58 minutesCorporate pledges of reaching net zero carbon emissions have quickly become commonplace. Critics argue that such pledges are mere greenwashing, and even if pledges are fulfilled, the balance sheets usually utilize carbon offsets, which can be of questionable quality and accountability. Proponents of corporate net zero pledges say we’ll never get to net zero emissions without corporate action, and pledges represent legitimate ramping up of ambition and commitment. How can consumers, investors ...
REWIND: Should Nature Have Rights?
January 14, 2022 08:01 - 56 minutesIf 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 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, expl...
John Doerr And Ryan Panchadsaram: An Action Plan For Solving Our Climate Crisis Now
January 07, 2022 08:01 - 55 minutesBeyond his position as chairman of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, John Doerr rose to global prominence in the business world with his popularization of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), which he promoted in his best-selling book, Measure What Matters. Could the same set of management tools be applied to preventing the growing climate crisis? In Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now, John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins advisor Ryan Panchadsaram argue that it c...
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Naomi Oreskes: The Schneider Award
December 30, 2021 08:01 - 56 minutesEach year, Climate One gives an award to a natural or social scientist for excellence in science communication. This year’s recipient of the Stephen H. Schneider Award is marine biologist Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, co-founder of the Urban Ocean Lab and co-creator of the All We Can Save project. “What gets me out of bed in the morning, what makes this work of communicating about climate science and policy so important, is that we have such a huge spectrum of possible futures available to us...
Managed Retreat: When Climate Hits Home
December 23, 2021 08:01 - 1 hourSoutheastern Virginia currently experiences the fastest rate of sea level rise on the Atlantic seaboard, and that’s only projected to accelerate. For many neighborhoods, it’s not a question of if they will go underwater, but when. On the west coast, between $8 billion and $10 billion of existing property in California is likely to be underwater by 2050, with an additional $6 billion to $10 billion at risk during high tides. Increasingly, local and regional governments are considering – and st...
This Year in Climate
December 17, 2021 08:01 - 59 minutesA recent poll shows that in 2021, for the first time, a majority of Americans personally felt the effects of climate change. But has that growing awareness translated into action? This week, Climate One hosts Greg Dalton and Ariana Brocious review the top climate stories of the year – from Joe Biden’s climate agenda to the extreme weather events so many experienced, to the recent international climate summit in Glasgow, to the passage and signing of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal. This s...
This Year in Climate: 2021
December 17, 2021 08:01 - 59 minutesA recent poll shows that in 2021, for the first time, a majority of Americans personally felt the effects of climate change. But has that growing awareness translated into action? This week, Climate One hosts Greg Dalton and Ariana Brocious review the top climate stories of the year – from Joe Biden’s climate agenda to the extreme weather events so many experienced, to the recent international climate summit in Glasgow, to the passage and signing of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal. This s...
Climate Miseducation
December 10, 2021 08:01 - 58 minutesClimate 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 ba...
What the Infrastructure Deal Means for Climate
December 03, 2021 08:01 - 59 minutesPresident 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) ...
REWIND Finding the Heart to Talk About Climate
November 25, 2021 08:01 - 54 minutesEver 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, becaus...
Taking Stock of COP26
November 19, 2021 08:01 - 1 hourIn 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 ju...
Climbing, Conservation and Capitalism
November 12, 2021 08:01 - 55 minutesRick 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, w...
Geoengineering: Who Should Control Our Atmosphere?
November 05, 2021 07:01 - 56 minutesAccording 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 ...
Electrify Everything
October 29, 2021 07:01 - 59 minutesFully 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...
What’s on Tap at COP26 in Glasgow
October 22, 2021 07:01 - 56 minutesPeople 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 summi...
Zen and Coping with Climate
October 15, 2021 07:01 - 54 minutesHow 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 ...
Firefight: How to Live in the Pyrocene
October 08, 2021 07:01 - 59 minutesWe’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...
Katharine Hayhoe on Hope and Healing
October 01, 2021 08:00 - 58 minutesDespite 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 deci...
Preparing for Disasters We Don’t Want to Think About
September 24, 2021 13:58 - 1 hourThe 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 t...
Diet for a Threatened Planet
September 17, 2021 08:00 - 59 minutesThis 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 Pla...
Water and Civilization: Resilience and Collapse
September 10, 2021 08:00 - 59 minutesWater 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 – e...
The Fight Over Pipelines
September 03, 2021 08:00 - 54 minutesHundreds 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 bo...
Should We Have Children in a Climate Emergency?
August 27, 2021 08:00 - 57 minutesListener 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 o...
Which Way Are Swing Voters Swinging on Climate?
August 20, 2021 08:00 - 56 minutesIn 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 doe...
30x30: This Land Is Whose Land?
August 13, 2021 08:00 - 54 minutesIn 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...
Jay Inslee, BP and Washington’s Climate Story
August 06, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourIn 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 ec...
Vandana Shiva and the Hubris of Manipulating Nature
July 30, 2021 08:00 - 53 minutesFrom 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 mind...
How a Manufactured Car Culture Blocks Transit
July 23, 2021 08:00 - 1 hourThe 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 chok...