A Matter of Degrees

Welcome back for a bonus episode of A Matter of Degrees! We were lucky enough to sit down with Rebecca Solnit — author, historian, and climate activist — to talk about her newest climate anthology, Not Too Late. Leah and Nikayla Jefferson both wrote essays for the book and joined Rebecca onstage for this live episode.

Not Too Late gets at the tough, vital work of culture change and features diverse climate voices from around the world. In this episode, Leah, Nikayla, and Rebecca hold an expansive conversation about hope, love, and how to stay engaged in the climate movement. 

Rebecca has written over twenty books on a diverse range of topics, including feminism, history, social change, and of course climate change. Our listeners may also recognize Nikayla as a guest host from our episodes on “The Stages of Black Climate Grief” and “The Journey of Justice40”. 

Read up on the top ten social drivers of climate change that Nikayla mentions in the episode. For more inspiration, visit the Not Too Late website, created by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua to shift the climate story from despair to possibility. Discover meaningful ways to take climate action via The All We Can Save Project.

In our season three finale, we’re transporting listeners to the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world and a vital carbon sink: the Tongass. 

Katharine and Leah investigate the impact of decades of industrial logging in Southeast Alaska and political debates pitting ecology against economy. We learn from the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people, who have lived on and with these lands for more than 10,000 years. And we discover how a new chapter for the Tongass is taking root.

This episode features Marina Anderson, deputy director of the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, and President Richard Chalyee Éesh Peterson of the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. Marina and Richard describe the boom-and-bust extractive economy of the past, and they share new collaborative approaches that are now moving Southeast Alaska towards a regenerative economy — in which the forest and local communities can thrive.

Along the way, we learn about key moments in the history of the Tongass: its designation as a National Forest in 1907, major pulp mill contracts in the 1950s, the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the 1990 Tongass Timber Reform Act, the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, and now, the modern-day Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy. It’s a powerful tale that ultimately points to so much possibility.

As this season comes to a close, we’re curious: Have the stories on our show inspired you to take climate action or set new climate goals? We’d love to know! Please take a moment to fill out our first-ever listener survey. 

Thank you to all our guests, listeners, supporters, production team, and amazing guest hosts, Nikayla Jefferson and Paasha Mahdavi, for a great season! While we’re away, you can discover more meaningful ways to take part in the climate story via The All We Can Save Project.

In his early days in office, President Biden took executive action to deliver environmental justice. Are those policies delivering justice in practice? This episode, we talk to EJ activists and federal policymakers about Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which directs 40% of the overall benefits of climate investments toward disadvantaged communities. We explore the decades of organizing that led to this moment, and what it will take now to fulfill the promise of the Justice40 Initiative. 

Our special guest host Nikayla Jefferson is back for this episode! She speaks with former People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH Buffalo) Executive Director Rahwa Ghirmatzion; Evergreen Action policy lead Rachel Patterson; and Shalanda Baker, Director of the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), who leads the agency’s Justice40 implementation. 

In this episode, Rachel cites the Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool that aims to identify “disadvantaged communities.” Nikayla names the nonprofit, Justice 40 Accelerator, which is helping community groups building capacity to access government funding. Check out the NY Renews coalition, also mentioned in this episode, and listen to another episode hosted by Nikayla, The Stages of Black Climate Grief.

Next time we follow Katharine on her journey to the Tongass, a vast temperate rainforest in Alaska and a massive carbon sink, alongside the people and creatures who call it home. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don’t miss a single episode this season!

Electric utilities are falling short on climate action. To explain why, we’re bringing back our season one finale. This episode features former utilities regulator Kris Mayes, who recently won a nail-biting election to become the second woman and first openly LGBTQ attorney general of Arizona. Go, Kris!

Since season one, Leah has been busy investigating utilities’ past and present role spreading climate denial, doubt, and delay. You can read the paper she co-wrote on the topic last fall, and discover the dirty truth about your electric utility and their climate plans in the report she released with Sierra Club. Spoiler alert, Arizona Public Service is one of the top offenders. We can’t wait to share the whole sordid tale with you one more time…

In 2013, a series of attack ads blitzed television sets across Arizona. They warned of a dire threat to senior citizens. Who was the villain? Solar energy.

These ads came from front groups funded by Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility. It was part of a years-long fight against rooftop solar that turned ugly.

“I mean, for Star Wars fans, APS became the Darth Vader of electric utilities in America. I mean, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a utility that behaved as badly as APS did in the last decade,” explains former regulator Kris Mayes.

But APS isn’t alone. It’s a prime example of how monopoly utilities abuse their power to influence regulatory decisions and slow clean-energy progress.

What happens if your electric utility starts doing things you don’t agree with? What if they start attacking solar and proposing to build more and more fossil gas plants? What if they actively resist clean energy progress?

Well, you don’t get a choice. You have to buy electricity, and you have to buy it from them. As a customer you’re funding that. 

In this episode, we’ll detail how it happened in Arizona – and how public pressure forced APS to come clean.

Featured in this episode: Ryan Randazzo, Kris Mayes, David Pomerantz.

In this episode, we explore the growing impact of heat on people and the planet. We talk to scientists and “climate detectives” trying to hold the perpetrators of this unprecedented global temperature increase accountable.

Leah and Katharine speak with Neza Xiuhtecutli, executive director of the Farmworker Association of Florida; Kate Marvel, climate science writer and physicist at Columbia University and NASA; and Richard Heede, co-founder and director of the Climate Accountability Institute.

Kate mentions the very first climate attribution study, which links human activity to the deadly 2003 European heat wave. Leah references two big lawsuits using attribution science to hold polluters accountable: one in Germany against RWE, and another against fossil fuel corporations in Hawai’i. Last, Leah mentions her home state of California, which just passed a cutting-edge law to improve early warnings for extreme heat. 

To learn more about Neza’s research, watch this video on how heat impacts farm workers, and find out how the piece-rate system works (or doesn’t work) for these laborers. Explore climate action in the courts with the Climate Change Litigation Database tool. And if you want to get involved in your own political sleuthing for climate, consider joining the Documenters.

Next time, we’ll explore the history, meaning, and challenges of the Justice40 Initiative — an unprecedented federal effort to promote environmental justice. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don’t miss a single episode this season!

At the start of 2023, we’re reflecting on past progress and setting climate intentions, both small and large, for the year ahead.

And we want to hear from you! Has A Matter of Degrees shifted your perspective or moved you to action? Do you have climate goals for 2023? Share your story with us.

To inspire and ground us for the new year, we share a powerful audio essay from the bestselling anthology All We Can Save: “Indigenous Prophecy and Mother Earth” by Sherri Mitchell, Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset. Sherri points humanity back toward life in this powerful piece, read by Alfre Woodard.

Sherri Mitchell is a Native American attorney, teacher, activist, and change maker. Check out her book Sacred Instructions and all the programs of the nonprofit Land Peace Foundation. Alfre Woodard is an award-winning performer, as well as a political activist and producer. In 2020, The New York Times listed her as one of “The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century.”

Don’t miss the whole All We Can Save audiobook, a rich collection of essays, poetry, and art created by women leading on climate and co-edited by Katharine and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. It’s available on Apple Books, Audible, Google Play, Libro.fm (which supports local, independent bookstores!), or anywhere else you get audiobooks. 

Next time, we look at how a hotter planet impacts people everywhere. We search for answers to the question everyone’s asking: “Who’s culpable for all of this?” Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don’t miss a single episode this season!

The fossil fuel industry is banking its future on petrochemicals — the toxic precursor to plastics. In this episode, Katharine and Leah speak with activists who are fighting back against petrochemicals in “sacrifice zones” across America, from the Ohio River Valley to the Gulf Coast. Learn where petrochemicals come from, how they harm people, places, and the climate, and why the fossil fuel industry wants them as a lifeline. 

We hear from three guests who are leading us to a world beyond petrochemicals and plastics: Michele Fetting, program director at the Breathe Project in Pittsburgh; Shilpi Chhotray, co-founder and executive director of People Over Plastics, a BIPOC storytelling and environmental justice power-building collective; and Yvette Arellano, founder and director of a Houston-based environmental justice organization, Fenceline Watch.

Katharine mentions the Clean Air Council’s fact sheet on the Shell Appalachia Ethane Cracker plant and cites data from the OECD on projected global plastic emissions. Leah references a study on cancer rates in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” If you want to dive deeper on the many problems with plastics, explore the bounty of resources from Beyond Plastics. Check out the comprehensive policy solutions proposed in the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act.

Next time, we’ll bring you a special holiday episode, featuring an audio essay from the bestselling anthology All We Can Save: “Indigenous Prophecy and Mother Earth” by Sherri Mitchell. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don’t miss a single episode this season!

In this episode, we investigate corporate climate commitments and how to make them stronger. We get to the root of zero-emissions pledges and greenwashing — specifically in the oil and gas industry. 

Dr. Paasha Mahdavi, associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, joins us to report this story. Paasha talks with Louise Rouse, a consultant who teams up with investors to push corporations for climate accountability. He also speaks with The Science Based Targets Initiative’s head of standards, Emma Watson, and Jill Courtenay, director of communications and project management at the shareholder advocacy nonprofit, As You Sow.

Leah, Katharine, and Paasha look at how we can get to a decarbonized economy through policy and shareholder activism — a tool that can be used by anyone with a retirement account. They learn about the SEC’s proposed mandatory disclosure rules, shareholder resolutions, and the difference between buzzwords like “carbon neutral” and “net zero.” Paasha also mentions three different categories, or “scopes,” of corporate emissions. You can read about scope one, “burn,” scope two, “buy,” and scope three, “beyond.”

Corporations that keep this info hidden can face serious blowback from their investors. Check out this earth-shaking vote by ExxonMobil shareholders to reshape the company’s board of directors in 2021 (which Jill Courtenay mentions in the episode).   

Next time, we’ll enter the worlds of three activists working across the country to fight petrochemical pollution within their communities. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don’t miss a single episode this season!

This episode delves into the murky world of cryptocurrency and its impact on our planet. Join Katharine and Leah as they discover how digital currencies are breathing new life into previously shuttered coal plants across the United States. 

This episode features Alex de Vries, data scientist and founder of Digiconimist, an online platform that tracks Bitcoin’s energy consumption; Anne Hedges, the director of policy and legislative affairs at watchdog organization Montana Environmental Information Center; and New York State Assemblymember Anna Kelles, who sponsored a bill to establish a two-year moratorium on crypto mining in New York.

Leah mentions this White House report about the climate impacts of cryptocurrency. Alex points out how famous cryptographer Hal Finney foresaw crypto’s huge emissions from the start. Anne mentions how China cracked down on cryptocurrency, which has pushed companies to operate in other nations, including the United States. Assemblymember Kelles warns that Bitcoin won’t deliver on equity or access to wealth: roughly 0.01% of wallets hold 27% of the currency. On the bright side, Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, just reduced its energy consumption 99% by switching to proof-of-stake. 

Next time, we’ll look at the fight for climate accountability within corporate America. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don’t miss a single episode this season!

This episode is all about feelings. You’ve heard the phrase “climate grief,” right? But how do we deal with what it does to our hearts, minds, and bodies? And how might it impact the climate action we take?

This episode features Dr. Britt Wray, a Stanford-based author and researcher on climate and mental health; somatic coach and climate grief worker, Selin Nurgün; and Zen priest and Environmental Defense Fund senior scientist, Dr. Kritee Kanko. Check out Britt’s weekly newsletter Gen Dread and her recent book Generation Dread. And learn more about the grief rituals Kritee facilitates through Boundless in Motion and the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. 

In this episode, we discuss Joanna Macy and The Work That Reconnects, as well as public rituals such as the glacier memorial created by Dr. Cymene Howe and Dr. Dominic Boyer. And we quote some wise folks whose work you should check out: Resmaa Menakem, Sherri Mitchell, and Dr. Susi Moser.

If you’re struggling with climate distress, you might want to explore the Climate Psychology Alliance’s directory of climate-aware therapists, the Good Grief Network’s 10-step program, Plum Village’s online retreats, or the embodied approaches of Generative Somatics. If you’re looking for an approach based in conversation and community, try All We Can Save Circles, Climate Cafes, or Climate Awakening (created by Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon).

The guided meditation at the end of the episode was created by Katharine for The All We Can Save Project’s Climate Wayfinding program.

Next time, we’ll look at the climate impact of crypto. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don’t miss a single episode this season.