Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org
119 episodes - English - Latest episode: 28 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1 ratingAre you concerned about the Earth's future? Are you interested in what is being done in Northern California and the world to address environmental issues? Do you want to act? Then tune in every other Sunday to "Sustainability Now!" on KSQD.org to hear interviews with scientists, scholars, activists and officials involved in the pursuit of sustainability. Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, California
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Episodes
To be an Elephant Seal in the Spring! with Theresa Keates
April 22, 2022 16:07 - 54 minutes - 50.2 MBIn the Spring, Elephant Seals turn to love...and fighting... and feeding... and laying around in the sun. We are just past the prime viewing season at Año Nuevo State Park, during which the two-ton male seals fight bloody battles, the females give birth to young conceived the prior year, the adults mate, and the weaner pups look cute. Join Sustainability Now! hosts Ronnie Lipschutz and Brooke Wright on Sunday, April 17th, for a discussion with Theresa Keates, a UCSC PhD student in Ocean Sc...
Electrify California!
April 03, 2022 14:49 - 57 minutes - 53.7 MBElectrify California! with Benjamin Eichert On Sustainability Now! Sunday, April 3rd, 5-6 PM on KSQD 90.7 FM and KSQD.org Hosts Brooke Wright and Ronnie Lipschutz speak with Benjamin Eichert, Director of Let’s Green California—an initiative launched by the Romero Institute in Santa Cruz to create a California Green New Deal and get the core legislation passed into law by September 30, 2022. Let’s Green California has also created “Electrify CA!” based on a simple idea: make the switch f...
A Spectre is Haunting Europe: Nuclear Winter!
March 21, 2022 21:47 - 55 minutes - 51.4 MBA Spectre is Haunting Europe: Nuclear Winter with Dr. Alan Robock & Dr. Joshua Coupe On Sustainability Now! Sunday, March 20th, 5-6 PM on KSQD 90.7 FM and KSQD.org “A spectre is haunting Europe,” but this time it is not communism. Vladimir Putin has put Russia’s nuclear forces on “special combat readiness,” bringing back memories and fears for some of us, reminiscent of the darkest days of the Cold War. What would be the climatic consequences of nuclear war? Our guest are Dr. Alan Robo...
What are Seabed Mineral Nodules and Who Wants Them?
March 07, 2022 13:24 - 1 hour - 57.4 MBWhat are Seabed Mineral Nodules and Who Wants Them? with Emily Jeffers, Center for Biological Diversity California Assembly Member Luz Rivas recently introduced a bill to ban mining of seabed nodules on 2,500 square miles of sea floor off the coast of California. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, critics say such mining would “kill marine life, damage habitats and pollute surrounding areas, and ultimately could have a negative impact on fishing and tourism, which together contribu...
From Food Waste to Soil at Hard Core Compost
February 21, 2022 18:29 - 53 minutes - 49.7 MBSustainability Now! Sunday, February 20th: From Food Waste to Soil at Hard Core Compost Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a trip to Hard Core Compost. My guests will be Kumi Maxson and Zav Hershfield, two members of the Hard Core Compost collective. Hard Core uses cargo bicycles to haul food scraps from home kitchens to their composting site on the Westside of Santa Cruz, next to the Homeless Garden Project. We’ll be touring their site, talking about organic waste management in Santa Cruz and what ...
Latinx Farmers’ Survival in the U.S. Agricultural System, with Josefina Lara Chavez
February 07, 2022 17:44 - 53 minutes - 49.4 MBJoin host Ronnie Lipschutz in a conversation with Josefina Lara Chavez, Farm-to-Market specialist and Senior Manager, Latinx Farmer Program for the Community Alliance for Family Farmers in Davis. Our focus will be on Latinx farmers in the Monterey Bay Region and their struggle to survive and thrive in the face of an agricultural system that takes little account of them. Lara Chavez a fourth generation family farmer and is currently working at getting her farm and food hub in Hollister, Lara...
Solar Panels and Solar Panics, with Dr. Ahmad Faruqui
January 24, 2022 17:36 - 51 minutes - 48.1 MBJanuary 2022 is Solar Energy Month on Sustainability Now! On Sunday, January 23rd, hosts Ronnie Lipschutz and Brooke Wright welcome Dr. Ahmad Faruqui, an energy economist who has been deeply involved in solar electricity issues in California. We talk about the pending decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to reduce compensation for rooftop solar electricity and to charge households for access to the state’s electricity grid. You can learn about the proposed decision at: ht...
Here Comes the Sun!
January 09, 2022 20:59 - 55 minutes - 51.5 MBHere Comes the Sun! on Sustainability Now! Sunday, January 9th, 5-6 PM on KSQD January 2022 is Solar Energy Month on Sustainability Now! On Sunday, January 23rd, we will be welcoming Dr. Ahmad Faruqui, an energy economist who has been deeply involved in solar electricity issues in California. We will be talking about the pending decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to impose “grid participation charges” on households with rooftop solar. To get listeners prepared for Dr...
Foodware Beware! with Tim Goncharoff
December 13, 2021 20:58 - 55 minutes - 51 MBJoin hosts Brooke Wright and Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Tim Goncharoff, who knows everything there is to know about waste management. He has had a long and distinguished career in community service, locally and statewide, most recently as a Zero Waste Programs Manager at the County of Santa Cruz. He helped bring to fruition ordinances on composting, drugs and sharps, plastic bags, polystyrene foam and e-waste. We talk about waste management, plastics, recycling and composting ...
W(h)ither Water? with Sierra Ryan, County Water Resources Manager
November 15, 2021 20:57 - 54 minutes - 50.6 MBCentral California just experienced one of the three most intense storms since the 1950s, but was that prelude to feast or famine this coming water year? No one knows, but planning for the worst-case scenario is the prudent thing to do. Join Sustainability Now! hosts Brooke Wright and Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Sierra Ryan, the recently appointed Water Resources Manager for the Santa Cruz County Department of Environmental Health. Ryan coordinates water resource management ac...
Oil and Water Don’t Mix! with Fred Keeley
October 31, 2021 23:00 - 59 minutes - 55 MBJoin hosts Ronnie Lipschutz and Brooke Wright for a conversation with Fred Keeley, a well-known political person about town and across the Monterey Bay Region. He has a long and distinguished career in community service. In the 1980s and 1990s, Keeley served two terms as County Supervisor and three in the State Assembly. Following that, he was Santa Cruz County treasurer for 10 years. Currently he is working with the County of Santa Cruz to assess park, recreation and cultural services need...
What’s slough? I don’t know, what’s slough with you? with Dr. Kerstin Wasson, Elkhorn Slough
October 23, 2021 17:09 - 56 minutes - 51.8 MBHave you ever wondered what is going on upstream when you cross the Highway 1 bridge over Elkhorn Slough? Or why there are marshes on both sides of the highway? Or where all the birds and kayakers come from? Join SN! hosts Ronnie Lipschutz and Brooke Wright for a conversation with Dr. Kerstin Wasson, Research Coordinator at the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve and adjunct professor at UCSC. Dr. Wasson conducts research on a range of topics focused on the impacts of huma...
There's Fungus Among Us--Mycopermaculture, Mycomimicry, and Mycopsychology, with Maya Elson of CoRenewal
October 04, 2021 19:46 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MBJoin hosts Ronnie Lipschutz and Brooke Wright for a conversation with Maya Elson, Executive Director of CoREnewal (formerly known as the Amazon MycoRenewal Project). She is a founding member of the Radical Mycology network, she’s worked on various fungal cultivation and educational projects in Olympia, WA and the San Francisco Bay area. Maya is a teacher, naturalist, mycologist, organizer and lover of the wild, dedicated to enacting effective and just solutions to environmental and social c...
The Sustainable Systems Research Foundation: Who are those guys?
September 20, 2021 22:17 - 56 minutes - 47.5 MBSustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation. But what is SSRF? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz and new co-host Brooke Wright in a discussion of two SSRF projects in development. The Watsonville Basic Income Pilot Project will take revenues from sale of solar electricity to a local business and distribute to selected farmworker households as basic income stipends. The Sustainable Urban Food Initiative will bring the benefits of agricultural technology and...
Clean Energy Now! with Shaina Nanavati of Reclaim Our Power
September 06, 2021 18:47 - 53 minutes - 49.9 MBJoin host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Shaina Nanavati, a research organizer for the Reclaim Our Power Utility Justice Campaign and staff member of the Local Clean Energy Alliance. Reclaim Our Power is an statewide initiative mobilizing a broad coalition of utility ratepayers, social justice advocates, and allies to develop an equitable, sustainable, decentralized restructuring of California’s energy system. Tune in to learn about this transformative project and what it will req...
An SN! Revisit with Dr. Rupa Basu. Climate Change and Public Health
September 06, 2021 18:34 - 55 minutes - 51.7 MBPlanetary heating and climate change are in the news more and more, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just issued a very pessimistic report on humanity’s and the world’s prospects. In a revisit of a show from 2020, Host Ronnie Lipschutz and Guest Dr. Rupa Basu talk about about climate change and public health. Dr. Basu is Chief of the Air and Climate Epidemiology Section at California Office on Environmental Health Hazards and a lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Publi...
An SN! Revisit: Can Solar Energy provide a basic income for everyone on earth? A conversation with Robert Stayton
September 06, 2021 18:18 - 57 minutes - 53.4 MBIn this SN! Revisit from 2019, host Ronnie Lipschutz welcomes Robert Stayton, physicist and author of Solar Dividends: How Solar Energy Can Generate a Basic Income for Everyone on Earth. We’ll discuss the math, physics, economics and politics of his idea and proposal, and whether his utopian vision can be made real by the end of the 21st century.
That’s the Last Straw! with Jackie Nuñez, founder of The Last Plastic Straw
July 26, 2021 18:57 - 55 minutes - 51.6 MBPlastic is ubiquitous: it rains down on us, it fouls land, streams and oceans, it even turns up in our bodies. And the big oil companies are looking to plastic to keep up profits when fossil fuels are finally banned. What are we to do? SN! host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with guest Jackie Nuñez, founder of The Last Plastic Straw and Advocacy Manager of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. The Last Plastic Straw is a project of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a global alliance of more than 1,200 ...
Give Me Land, Lots of Land in the Santa Clara Valley with Andrea Mackenzie of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority
July 12, 2021 18:46 - 54 minutes - 50.7 MBHost Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Andrea Mackenzie, General Manager of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. For more than 25 years, Ms. Mackenzie has worked in the fields of land use planning, conservation planning, public policy, and finance for open space and agricultural land preservation agencies at county, regional, state, and national levels. The Open Space Authority works to protect and steward the region’s natural capital, open spaces, water resources, natural areas, and work...
Fighting Fires with Fire, with Dr. Sasha Berleman, Wildland Fire Scientist
July 01, 2021 17:10 - 55 minutes - 50.9 MBCalifornia is dry, dry, dry and that probably means we are in for a wild wildfire season. Since the beginning of January, there have been more than 10,000 wildfires across the state. So, what are we to do? Hear from Dr. Sasha Berleman, Wildland Fire Scientist. She is director of Fire Forward at Audubon Canyon Ranch in Stinson Beach. She is a CA State Certified Burn Boss, a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX) coach and leader, and a wildland firefighter with Fire Effects Monitorin...
Making Solar Law and Solar Sausages: How It’s Done in California, with Allie Detrio, Chief Strategist of Reimagine Power
June 14, 2021 21:21 - 54 minutes - 50.7 MBThere is an old saying attributed to the 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” This show is about law and sausages in California. If you ever took a civics or government class in high school or college, you probably learned about how a bill becomes law through a clean and straightforward process. You might have learned about lobbyists and interests, too, but probably never traced legisl...
Finding the Mother Tree with Professor Suzanne Simard, University of British Columbia
May 27, 2021 19:18 - 52 minutes - 48.6 MBJoin host Ronnie Lipschutz as he speaks with Dr. Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forestry and Conservation Sciences about the social life of trees. Her new book, Finding the Mother Tree--Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, has just been published. According to Simard, communication between trees happens not in the air but deep below our feet in an incredibly dense, complex network of roots and chemical signals. ... “In a single forest, a mother tree may be connected to hundreds of other tr...
“Are we the cows of the future?” The digital management of nature and humans with Professor Esther Leslie, Birkbeck University, London
May 17, 2021 17:01 - 56 minutes - 52.3 MBJoin host Ronnie Lipschutz and Dr. Esther Leslie, Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck University in London. “Political Aesthetics highlights the complex and ambiguous connections of aesthetics with social, cultural and political experiences in contemporary societies.” This past January, Leslie published an entry in “The Stone,” a New York Times column on philosophy. There, she asked “Are we the cows of the future?” to be manipulated and managed like livestock. Among other topics...
What’s that bug up to, anyway? Insect socioecology in urban gardens, with Azucena Lucatero
May 03, 2021 20:20 - 53 minutes - 49.9 MBGosh, I never realized there was a social ecology in my backyard!” Find out just what those bugs are up to in your garden, as host Ronnie Lipschutz welcomes Azucena Lucatero, a third-year PhD student in Dr. Stacy Philpott's lab at UC Santa Cruz. Lucatero studies the socio-ecology of urban gardens in the California central coast with special interests in biological pest control, community and population ecology, landscape ecology, and food justice. The ladybugs are already home! You can fi...
Getting Back to the (Alan Chadwick) Garden, with Orin Martin, Master Gardener, Horticulturalist and Teacher
April 19, 2021 18:21 - 56 minutes - 52 MBUCSC’s Agroecology Farm is known around the world for innovation, training and inspiration. But before there was a Farm, there was a Garden: the Alan Chadwick Garden, launched in 1967 on a steep, rocky clay hill side. It is still there today, although very few people know of its existence. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz in a conversation with Orin Martin, who has managed the Chadwick Garden since 1977 and where he is widely admired for his skills as a master orchardist, horticulturalist, and t...
The Green Business Program in California & the Monterey Bay Region, with Brooke Wright, Green Business Expert
April 05, 2021 18:07 - 53 minutes - 49.5 MBThese days, we are hearing a lot about plans to transform the country’s energy infrastructure from one based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable energy resources. President Biden appears to be making this transformation one of his signature initiatives. Certainly, the technology exists, the money is (probably) there but there is one elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about: getting the American public to go along. Central to going along will be greening the economy and c...
Water in California’s Future, with Dr. Ruth Langridge
March 24, 2021 22:33 - 46 minutes - 43.1 MBIt’s beginning to look as though California is headed into another multi-year drought. The snowpack is meager and contracted water supplies through the state’s delivery systems are likely to be much less than requested. Farmers and cities are looking to groundwater to make up the difference, but even groundwater is heavily depleted. Hear Dr. Ruth Langridge, UCSC Researcher and instructor in Legal Studies, who has studied California groundwater and climate change since 2009, the curr...
There Otter be a Law! Will the Southern Sea Otter Survive? A conversation with James Estes
March 24, 2021 22:16 - 54 minutes - 50.2 MBThe southern sea otter is a keystone species in kelp forest communities, acting to increase the species diversity and providing ecosystem services. Despite federal protection since 1977, the southern sea otter population has struggled to recover and there are only an estimated 2,800 sea otters in California. Listen to this conversation with Dr. James Estes, Emeritus Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UCSC. Estes is author of Serendipity: An Ecologist’s Quest to Understand ...
Environmental Literacy for K-12 Students, with Amity Sandage, Santa Cruz County Office of Education
February 24, 2021 00:40 - 57 minutes - 52.8 MBHost Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Amity Sandage, environmental literacy coordinator for Santa Cruz County Office of Education. Sandage leads a countywide effort to build environmental literacy by increasing student access to outdoor learning. She also supports teachers in using local environmental connections to increase relevance of core classes and to create opportunities for civic and environmental action. You can learn more about the state's environmental literacy goals in "A Blueprint ...
Radio Show #38, February 7, 2021: Reconnecting with Nature through Ecospirtuality: A Conversation with Dr. Michelle Merrill
February 08, 2021 20:46 - 56 minutes - 52.7 MBJoin host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with anthropologist Dr. Michelle Merrill, whose teaching and counseling experience led her to establish Novasutras, an egalitarian spiritual movement with scientific sensibilities. Novasutras responds to the need for spiritual community centered on the biggest challenge humanity currently faces: how do we help people through the transition from an “Industrial Growth Society” to an “environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfil...
Reconnecting with Nature through Ecospirtuality: A Conversation with Dr. Michelle Merrill
February 08, 2021 20:46 - 56 minutes - 52.7 MBJoin host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with anthropologist Dr. Michelle Merrill, whose teaching and counseling experience led her to establish Novasutras, an egalitarian spiritual movement with scientific sensibilities. Novasutras responds to the need for spiritual community centered on the biggest challenge humanity currently faces: how do we help people through the transition from an “Industrial Growth Society” to an “environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfil...
W(h)ither California & the Nation? A Conversation with State Senator John Laird
January 25, 2021 18:02 - 53 minutes - 49.6 MBRadio Show #37, January 24, 2021: Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with newly-elected California State Senator John Laird, to talk about energy, resources, environment and politics, in the state and the country, and his hopes and dreams for the State Senate. Laird’s political career began in 1981, on the Santa Cruz City Council, and included stints in the State Assembly and Jerry Brown’s second administration as Secretary of Natural Resources. He has just begun his term i...
“To Say Nothing of the Dog”* Understanding connections between culture and nature in environmental art
January 11, 2021 17:58 - 52 minutes - 48.5 MBEpisode #36, Sunday, January 10th: Hear Jeffrey Downing, Professor of Art at San Francisco State University and Artist-in-Residence at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art talk about how his work connects culture and nature. Downing was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago for his environmental sculpture in Richardson Bay, designed to mark today’s king tides, which will be swamped by rising sea levels in the future. According to a website describing his work: “Jeff Downin...
Are we Becoming “Plastic People of the Universe” Or, What does “biodegradable” really mean?
December 28, 2020 17:42 - 57 minutes - 52.8 MBRadio Show #35, December 27, 2020: As you may have read in a number of places, not only is the ocean full of plastic, we are literally living in an ocean of plastic microparticles falling from the sky. Before you know it, we will all be “Plastic People of the Universe.” On this show, Sustainability Now! addresses this and related topics. Ronnie Lipschutz and Kevin Bell, co-founder and co-director of the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, discuss the biodegradabili...
Environmental Justice through Building Green, Healthy and Sustainable Communities
December 14, 2020 18:35 - 58 minutes - 54.3 MBRadio Show #34: Sunday, December 13th, 5-6 PM Join Host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Darryl Molina Sarmiento, Executive Director for Communities for a Better Environment, a 40-year-old environmental justice organization with offices in both Southern and Northern California. The mission of CBE is to build people’s power in California’s communities of color and low-income communities to achieve environmental health and justice by preventing and reducing pollution and buildin...
Sustainability Now! Permaculture and Regenerative Agriculture on a Small Farm
December 01, 2020 20:26 - 55 minutes - 51.8 MBRadio Show #33: Host Ronnie Lipschutz and Dave Blume of Blume Distillation do a walking interview and tour of Whiskey Hill Farm, its permaculture and regenerative agriculture practices and technological innovations connecting alcohol distillation and organic agriculture. Whiskey Hill Farm is a 14-acre organic farm on Calabasas Road near Watsonville that employs poly-cropping, permaculture techniques in six large greenhouses to create “food forests” of multi-layered polyculture. Dave i...
Electric Vehicles on the Road and in Our Future
November 16, 2020 19:31 - 59 minutes - 55 MBRadio Show #32. In September 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order requiring that by 2035 all new cars and passenger trucks sold in the state will have to be zero-emission vehicles, producing no greenhouse gases. While there are various types of zero-emission power plants in existence and on design boards, most of these will probably be electric vehicles, or EVs. This goes along with a parallel push to electrify the state by 2045. Getting from here to there will b...
Forests and species after wildfires & climate change
November 02, 2020 21:45 - 58 minutes - 56.8 MBRadio Show #31. Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Dr. Joseph Stewart, a conservation biologist with special interests in biogeography, prediction, demography, ecophysiology, and climate change. He received his PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from UCSC in 2018 and is now a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy. He works with the US Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection on forest regeneration after wildfir...
Sustainability Now!, November 1: “Forests and species after wildfires & climate change”
November 02, 2020 21:45 - 58 minutes - 56.8 MBRadio Show #31. Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Dr. Joseph Stewart, a conservation biologist with special interests in biogeography, prediction, demography, ecophysiology, and climate change. He received his PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from UCSC in 2018 and is now a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy. He works with the US Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection on forest regeneration after wildfir...
Clean Water as a Human Right
October 20, 2020 17:07 - 57 minutes - 53.3 MBRadio Show #30, October 18, 2020. Did you know that Section 106.3 of the California Water Code states that “every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.” Host Ronnie Lipschutz talks with Mayra Hernandez, a community organizer at the Community Water Center in Watsonville, about safe water and the human right to it. The Community Water Center works towards realizing the Human Right to Water ...
As long as grass grows: The indigenous fight for environmental justice
October 05, 2020 21:38 - 59 minutes - 55.2 MBRadio Show, #29, October 4, 2020. Host Ronnie Lipschutz and guest Dina Gilio-Whitaker talk about indigenous environmental justice, environmental philosophy and the restoration of balance between humans and nature. Gilio-Whitaker is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes in the Pacific Northwest, a lecturer in American Indian Studies at California State University, San Marcos and Policy Director and Researcher at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She is author of As long as grass...
Healthy Eating and Economic Justice in the Pajaro Valley
September 21, 2020 20:58 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBRadio Show #28, September 20, 2020. Host Ronnie Lipschutz welcomes his guests, Mireya Gomez-Contreras and Ana Rasmussen, codirectors of Esperanza Community Farms. Esperanza Community Farms is a system-changing, sustainable community agriculture project focused entirely and directly on increasing food security and good health among low-income families from under-resourced communities in the Pajaro Valley. ECF cultivates fresh, pesticide-free, culturally preferred vegetables and fruit ...
Accessory Dwelling Units in Our Backyards
September 07, 2020 18:04 - 59 minutes - 54.6 MBSustainability Now! Show #27, September 6, 2020, Accessory Dwelling Units in Our Backyards: Host Ronnie Lipschutz and his guest, Santa Cruz architect Mark Primack, talk about how we might address the California housing crisis through construction of accessory dwelling units. Primack has lived and worked in Santa Cruz since the late 1970s, served on the City Council, written Divisible Cities: Acting Local in a Transient World and writes a regular column on local matters for The Santa Cruz Se...
Sustainability & Politics after Annus Horriblis 2020, with Kim Stanley Robinson
August 24, 2020 01:00 - 53 minutes - 49.9 MBSustainability Now! August 23, 2020. Host Ronnie Lipschutz and his guest Kim Stanley Robinson engage in a wide-ranging conversation about sustainability, politics, 2020 and after, and how we might prepare for the future. Robinson is a science fiction author, California futurist and environmental optimist of the will. His recent work, such as New York 2140 (2017) has addressed environmental and climate issues. His forthcoming book, The Ministry for the Future, which imagines a new, globa...
Climate Change, Heat & Birth Impacts
August 09, 2020 18:00 - 59 minutes - 54.7 MBSustainability Now! #25, August 9, 2020. Climate Change, Public Health & Birth Impacts, with Dr. Rupa Basu, Chief of the Air and Climate Epidemiology Section at California Office on Environmental Health Hazards in the California Environmental Protection Agency and a lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She is coauthor of a recently-published review article in JAMA Open Network about the effects of air pollution and climate change on birth outcomes and conducts research on th...
Environmental Art in Public Spaces
July 26, 2020 18:00 - 57 minutes - 53.6 MBSustainability Now! #24, July 26, 2020. Environmental Art in Built & Natural Landscapes, with Marisha Farnsworth. “Environmental artists seek to investigate our human relationship with the environment through embedding their artistic practice within it” (“The Art Story”). Learn about the practice of environmental art on Sustainability Now! in this conversation between host Ronnie Lipschutz and environmental artist Marisha Farnsworth. She is an Oakland-based artist, whose large-scale public s...
Sustainable Community Commons
July 12, 2020 19:00 - 51 minutes - 47.5 MBSustainability Now #23, July 12, 2020, with Len Beyea, addresses sustainable community planning in Santa Cruz and cities in general. Len is a semi-retired energy engineer and commissioning agent, former land-use planner, musician, Interfaith Minister, gardener, dancer, political and cultural commentator. He is host of the Wednesday broadcast of Talk of the Bay on KSQD and shares hosting of Border-Free Radio, which airs just before this time slot. Len writes that “The modern city has grown u...
Climate Changes & Black Lives
June 22, 2020 19:00 - 51 minutes - 47.6 MBSustainability Now! #22, June 28, 2020, with Kalina Browne, 2019-20 RAY Diversity Fellow at the Ocean Conservancy to learn about Climate Change and Black Lives Mattering on the California Coast. Browne grew up on the Caribbean island of St Vincent and the Grenadines. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Geoscience from the University of Buffalo. She has worked with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center in Belize, the Garifuna Heritage Foundation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and t...
Public Lands on Pacific's Edge
June 14, 2020 19:00 - 58 minutes - 54.4 MBSustainability Now! #21, June 14, 2020, with Jo Chamberlain, Executive Director of the Coastside Land Trust in Half Moon Bay. Jo is a graduate of College Eight (aka, Rachel Carson College) at UC Santa Cruz and was provost’s assistant there for several years during the past decade. She has served on several non-profit boards, including the San Francisco Zoological Society and Friends of Westwind. The Coastside Land Trust is dedicated to the preservation, protection and enhancement of the ope...
"The Wheels on the Bus"
May 31, 2020 19:00 - 57 minutes - 53.3 MBMay 31, 2020, “The Wheels on the Bus” Getting ‘Round the City, with Rick Longinotti, a member of and spokesperson for the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation, a “group of volunteers dedicated to making Santa Cruz County a place where everyone in our diverse community can access their needs and activities in a way that is safe, affordable, convenient and sustainable for future generations.” You can learn more about transportation in Santa Cruz County at the Regional Transportation Commiss...