A Matter of Degrees

Welcome back, climate-curious friends — it's time for Season 3 of A Matter of Degrees. This season we'll tackle some critical topics and big questions, starting with one we're all asking when it comes to the climate crisis: "What can I do?"

Season 3 kicks off (September 15!) with a three-part miniseries to answer that question. We'll talk with some brilliant folks and illuminate what we can do personally, professionally, and politically. But that's just the tip of the iceberg...in a good way. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and don't miss a single episode this season!

You can follow us on Twitter @degreespod, @leahstokes, and @DrKWilkinson, and on Instagram @drkwilkinson.

Welcome back to A Matter of Degrees! While we've been hard at work producing season three of the show, the climate movement has been going through a lot of twists and turns. Most recently, after announcing he would not support climate investments in a budget reconciliation deal, Senator Joe Manchin abruptly made a historic climate deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA).

The bill includes $369 billion of climate investments. We can't overstate the significance of this opportunity — modeling shows the IRA, if passed, would cut emissions 37-41% below 2005 levels by 2030. That gets us 80% of the way to cutting emissions in half this decade and meeting President Biden's climate goals. In this bonus episode, we acknowledge the harmful flaws in the deal, lay out the modeling of its climate impacts, and call on first the Senate, then the House of Representatives to vote and pass it now.

This episode features a live conversation co-hosted by Evergreen Action, featuring Senator Ed Markey, Representative Pramila Jayapal, and Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr.

Resources:

• Evergreen Action: What Is the Climate Impact of the Inflation Reduction Act?
• Call4Climate.com (a free and easy tool to call your Congressmembers)
• Rhodium Group: A Congressional Climate Breakthrough (initial IRA modeling)
• Energy Innovation: Modeling the Senate Reconciliation Bill Using the Energy Policy Simulator (comprehensive IRA modeling)
• Abbie Dillen, President of Earthjustice (on the real world impact of the harmful fossil fuel concessions in the IRA)
• Hip Hop Caucus (using the power of our cultural expression to empower communities who are first and worst impacted by injustice)

Follow our co-hosts and special guests::

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Evergreen Action
• Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.
• Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA)
• Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)

This episode is a collaboration between A Matter Of Degrees and the Gimlet podcast How To Save A Planet.

Take a look at many of the spaces where climate-related decisions are being made — from government to business to media — and you'll notice a numbers problem. Despite being roughly half the people on the planet, women rarely have equal representation in critical climate decision-making spaces. This isn't just bad for women. It's bad for everyone.

In this episode, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson (our host) and Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (host of Spotify's How To Save A Planet) take a deep dive into the data behind this idea. They speak with two sociologists about how gender inequality in climate leadership can deepen the harmful impacts of climate change, and also hinder policy changes.

They also speak with someone who has seen firsthand how women can transform an entire nation when they lead on climate.

This episode features Dr. Christina Ergas, Anne Karpf, and Wanjira Mathai.

Resources:

• We Do's Gender Climate Tracker
• Emily's List (an organization that helps Democratic women and non-binary people run for office)
• Higher Heights (invests in Black women's leadership)
• She The People (focused on helping women of color run for office)
• Matriarch (focused on helping progressive women run for office)
• She Should Run (helps women regardless of political affiliation)
• Global Witness (organization that assists environmental defenders)

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser
• Dalvin Aboagye

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes, visit our website.

In the jungles of the Brazilian Amazon, groups of farmers and their families get by on what they can grow with the land beneath their feet. They're known in Brazil as "landless workers," a social movement with the goal of increasing land access and ownership for the country's rural poor.

These landless workers -- sometimes called land guardians or protectors -- are a symbol for the power imbalances that have destroyed the Amazon.

Atmos Climate Editor Yessenia Funes brings us a story about one landless worker named Fernando dos Santos Araújo.

In 2017, Fernando witnessed the massacre of his fellow landless workers on a small farm in Pará, Brazil. His story illustrates the violent tactics that the government and wealthy landowners use to protect their power.

This episode features Ana Aranha, a documentary filmmaker in Brazil, and Ivi Oliveira from the nonprofit Frontline Defenders.

Resources:

• The Print Version Of Yessenia's Story
• Frontline Defenders
• Global Witness 2020 Environmental and Land Defenders Report
• The Frontline, Yessenia's bi-weekly newsletter

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser
• Dalvin Aboagye

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes, visit our website.

This episode is a collaboration between A Matter Of Degrees and the Gimlet podcast How To Save A Planet.

Coal-fired power plants are closing at record rates. But many are still scheduled to remain operational for the foreseeable future -- despite losing lots of money every year.

How do we shut these uneconomic coal plants down faster? One answer: coal debt securitization.

Coal debt securitization is like refinancing a mortgage. States across the country are considering policies that would make it easier for owners of coal-fired power plants to restructure their debt.

In this episode, A Matter Of Degrees Host Leah Stokes and How To Save A Planet Host Alex Blumberg team up to explore how securitization would work -- and why utilities are getting behind it.

This episode features Ashok Gupta, a Senior Energy economist for the Natural Resources Defense Council and Jason Klindt, the Senior Director Of Government Affairs for Evergy.

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser
• Dalvin Aboagye

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes, visit our website.

Since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015, banks and large investors have dumped $3.8 trillion into fossil fuels.

It's a staggering number. This is why writer and activist Bill McKibben calls money the "oxygen" that fuels the fire of global warming. While the wildfires burning around the world are getting worse each year, it's like the world's bankers are blowing on those fires, making them even bigger.

For this episode, we have a story about two people who are trying to cut off that supply of oxygen to global lenders and the insurance companies backing them. It comes from our executive editor, Stephen Lacey.

We'll hear from Ulf Erlandsson, founder and chief executive of a non-profit called the Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute. Ulf is a former bond trader who calls out deals in corporate and government lending that would be a disaster for the climate. He's helping bond traders "short" these bad investments.

We'll also hear from Elana Sulakshana, an energy finance campaigner with the Rainforest Action Network, about why insurance companies are enabling trillions of dollars to pour into new fossil fuel infrastructure. Resources:

• Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute
• Stop the Money Pipeline
• Banking on Climate Chaos report
• Insure Our Future climate scorecard

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser
• Dalvin Aboagye

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes, visit our website.

Advocates are turning their attention to a new front in the climate war: the fossil-gas hookups in our homes that fuel burners, boilers, and other household appliances.

If we want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to electrify the hundreds of millions of machines inside our homes and buildings as fast as possible. But the gas industry won't go down without a fight.

Gas industry front groups are infiltrating neighborhood groups, hiring social media influencers, and barraging citizens with messages in order to stir up controversy around local bans on new fossil gas connections. That's exactly what happened to the residents of Santa Barbara, California last year.

This week, we'll hear from activists, reporters, and industry professionals who are following the gas industry's battle to keep fossil fuels in our homes.

How far will gas companies go to stop electrification? And where does the electrification movement stand?

Leah Stokes speaks with Sierra Club's Santa Barbara Chapter Chair Katie Davis; EarthJustice Senior Attorney Matt Vespa; Earther Staff Writer Dharna Noor; and Former BlocPower Senior Strategist Associate Rose Stephens-Booker.

Resources:

• RMI research on the dangers of gas stoves
• Dharna Noor on why gas is so problematic in our homes
• Saul Griffith on electrifying everything, starting now

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser
• Dalvin Aboagye

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

When Hurricanes Maria and Irma hit Puerto Rico in 2017, they destroyed the island's fragile food system. Farms of all sizes were battered, with around 80 percent of the island's crop value wiped out.

But a group of Puerto Rican farmers practicing an old way of farming, called agroecology, saw their operations bounce back much faster than conventional farms. What does their experience tell us about how to build and protect food systems in a rapidly warming world?

Producer Dalvin Aboagye brings us a story about a collective known as Guakia in Puerto Rico working to clean up the food system as a part of a larger worldwide movement to adapt farms to local ecosystems.

We'll also talk to an expert about how agroecology works as a climate solution. At scale, agroecology could help us shrink the 24 percent share of global emissions attributed to food, agriculture, and land use. And it's an important line of defense in protecting our ability to feed people as extreme weather makes food systems more vulnerable.

Resources:

• Puerto Rico's agroecology revolution after Maria
• Agroecology's impact on European emissions

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

President Biden's American Jobs Plan promises big investments in the clean-energy economy, including clean energy workforce and education programs. Economic progress and clean climate action are inextricably linked.

But how can we make sure that those dollars go to communities of color who have already been most impacted by climate change and consistently shut out of past federal programs promising transformational change? And to gender minorities who are underrepresented in certain green fields?

This week, we hear from folks in government, the nonprofit sector, the renewable energy space and academia about what it will really take to usher in a just transition.

Katharine Wilkinson speaks with solar entrepreneur Bob Blake; The Partnership for Southern Equity's Chandra Farley; New Jersey Deputy Secretary For Higher Education Diana Gonzalez; and Brooking Institute Fellow Christina Kwauk.

Resources:

• More on Bob Blake's Company, Solar Bear
• The Partnership for Southern Equity
• More about Diana Gonzalez and her work in NJ
• Christina Kwauk's Green Learning Agenda
• Christina's 'Education Moonshot' Plan

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

Abuse of soil, the atmosphere, and communities of color have gone hand in hand. Through reclaiming ancestral connection to the soil, Black farmers are healing the entangled harms of colonization, capitalism, and White supremacy and moving agricultural climate solutions forward in the process.

In this episode, we feature an audio essay that wrestles with these themes. The essay is titled "Black Gold" by Leah Penniman, an activist, farmer, and founder of Soul Fire Farm.

As Leah puts it: "In healing our relationship with soil, we heal the climate, and we heal ourselves."

This is an excerpt from the audiobook version of All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, an anthology of essays, poetry, and art co-edited by Katharine Wilkinson and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.

The audiobook version of this essay is read by award-winning audiobook narrator Bahni Turpin.

Resources:

• Order your copy of All We Can Save here
• RSVP for the All We Can Save paperback book launch

Follow our co-hosts and production team:

• Leah Stokes
• Katharine Wilkinson
• Stephen Lacey
• Jaime Kaiser

A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.