Climate One

In 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 targets a 40% reduction in the same time frame. That’s ambitious. What effect will this law have on industrial agriculture, and the general population?  

Guests:

Neil Edgar, Executive Director, California Compost Coalition

J Jordan, Policy Coordinator, Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability

Michael Boccadoro, Executive Director, Dairy Cares

Monique Figueiredo, Chief Executive Officer / Founder / Co-Owner, Compostable LA

Allen Williams, Understanding Ag

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For 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 carbon dioxide could send global temperatures soaring. 

Writer and climate campaigner Alice Bell lays out the history of evolving climate science and our forays into different energy technologies in Our Biggest Experiment: An Epic History of the Climate Crisis. Despite our current emissions trajectory, Bell says there’s still reason to hope: “We have been left a lot of opportunities and we still have got some time to seize them.”

Guests:

Alice Bell, climate campaigner, author, Our Biggest Experiment: An Epic History of the Climate Crisis

Meera Subramanian, environmental journalist 

Katerina Gonzales, climate scientist

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For 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 are on the side of climate protection.

Guests: 

Benjamin Franta, PhD candidate in History of Science, Stanford University.

Jamie Henn, founder and director, Fossil Free Media

Kathryn Lundstrom, sustainability editor, Adweek

Christine Arena, former Executive Vice President, Edelman; founder, Generous Films

Michaela Anang, law student, UC Davis

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The 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 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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With 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 green jobs are typically non-union and pay far less. So how can we transition to a low-carbon economy while protecting good-paying jobs?

Guests:

Austin Keyser, Assistant to the International President for Government Affairs at International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)

Yvette Pena-O'Sullivan, Executive Director, Office of the General President, LiUNA 

Lee Anderson, Director of Government Affairs, Utility Workers Union of America

Carol Zabin, Director, Green Economy Program, UC Berkeley Labor Center 

Norman Rogers, Second Vice President of United Steelworkers, California

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Corporate 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 and policy leaders distinguish between stalling and increased ambition? Can third party auditors hold companies accountable?

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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 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, formerly with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund 

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

Carol Van Strum, author of A Bitter Fog, activist

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Beyond 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 can. 

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

Guests:

John Doerr, Chairman, Kleiner Perkins

Ryan Panchadsaram, Advisor, Kleiner Perkins

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Each 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. And which one we get depends on what we do,” Johnson says.

This episode also features past award winner and noted climate historian Naomi Oreskes discussing sexism in the sciences and the ongoing disinformation campaigns perpetrated by fossil fuel companies.

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

Guests:

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist, writer

Naomi Oreskes, Professor, History of Science, Harvard University

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Southeastern 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 starting – buyouts of flood-prone properties. 

How will we manage the homes, farms, naval bases and infrastructure destined to go under water? How do federal and private insurance programs hamper or help moves away from climate-disrupted regions? And what are the equity issues with managed retreat?

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

Guests:

Sam Turken, reporter, “At A Crossroads” series for WHRO 

Amy Chester, Managing Director, Rebuild By Design

Kia Javanmardian, Senior Partner, McKinsey and Company

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