By How To Stop Climate Change
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The podcast currently has 29 episodes available.
This is part two of our series on biochar. Today we’re going to explore the biochar industry with Kathleen Draper. She is the chair of the International Biochar Initiative, the director of the Ithaka Institute for Carbon Intelligence and she’s the owner of Finger Lakes Biochar. She’s also co-authored three books on the subject.
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Music by Audio Snack
Sound design by Keaton Butler
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As we all know, climate change is happening. It’s no longer some distant future doomsday that we can prevent, it's here. However, there are a LOT of things we can do to minimize the effects and possibly undo some of the damage. One of those things is called biochar. Is that a pokemon? Is it a cartoon supervillain? Actually, no.
Biochar is similar to charcoal but it’s not used as a fuel. It is produced by heating biomass with very little oxygen. By restricting the oxygen you prevent it from burning and turning to ash and you are left with a carbon-rich material with lots of uses. Biochar has the potential to mitigate the effects of climate change and greatly improve soil quality, all while reducing waste and producing energy as a byproduct.
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Adam Edelen is the founder of Edelen Renewables. He’s working to bring jobs and investment to coal country by building massive solar farms on reclaimed strip mines, and he’s working with coal companies and renewable energy developers to do it. We had a great conversation with him and he gave me a tour of his first coal-to-solar project in Martin County, Kentucky. This is an incredibly exciting development for Appalachia and a fantastic way to put reclaimed mines, out of work miners, and abandoned fossil fuel infrastructure to work building a new clean energy economy.
Links
Episode webpage
Edelen Renewables
The Poverty Tours (video)
Lyndon Johnson Declares Unconditional War on Poverty (video)
Harlan County, USA (video)
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Music by Audio Snack
Sound design by Keaton Butler
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Our guest today is Natascha Glanzer-Fuerst an Austrian zero-waste advocate and feminist who was a crew member with eXXpedition, an organization that leads all-female scientific voyages around the world dedicated to exploring the impact of plastic and toxic pollution in our oceans and working to solve the problem. You might have noticed the odd spelling of eXXpedition. The XX stands for the female double X chromosomes. Hundreds of women from diverse backgrounds and professions have sailed with eXXpedition since it was founded in 2014.
So, why are the crews all female? Natascha explains that in the episode.
Links
Episode webpage at HowToStopClimateChange.com
eXXpedition.com
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Sound design by Keaton Butler – keatonbutlerrecording at gmail.com
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John Verdieck is the Director of International Climate Policy at The Nature Conservancy. Prior to joining The Nature Conservancy, John worked in the US State Department where he was a lead negotiator on the Paris Climate Accord. In the interview John shares what it was like to be in Paris in 2015 as the agreement was finally coming together after years of hard work, the excitement and implications for Biden’s pledge to rejoin the agreement and the ways that The Nature Conservancy is working to fight climate change.
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Sound design by Keaton Butler – keatonbutlerrecording at gmail.com
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Our guest today is Caitlin Bullock, EV Program Coordinator for Austin Energy. The city of Austin owns and operates Austin Energy, which means that dividends go to support city services that benefit Austinites instead of investors. It also means that Austin Energy can prioritize energy efficiency and green energy programs. We talked to Caitlin about Austin Energy’s efforts to promote EV ownership and build Austin’s charger infrastructure.
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Sound design by Keaton Butler – keatonbutlerrecording at gmail.com
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Some major oil companies have recently unveiled plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reinvent themselves in the face of climate change. Exxon has not announced any plan to deal with climate change but this week Bloomberg News reported on a leaked copy of Exxon’s 2018 investment plan and it calls for 17% more greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. We’ll take a look at Exxon’s dramatic plummet over the last few years and their big gamble on business as usual, come hell or high water (literally).
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Sound design by Keaton Butler – keatonbutlerrecording at gmail.com
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Dominic Frongillo is the co-founder & executive director of Elected Officials to Protect America or EOPA. EOPA is nonpartisan, which is very unusual for a political network. It’s members are state and local elected officials from all over the U.S. who are committed to fighting the climate crisis and protecting America’s communities, public health and environment. When we think of politicians we often think that they are working for their big corporate donors, who are often fossil fuel companies. But members of EOPA are committed to protecting Americans from those destructive industries and preserving our climate and water resources.
EOPA was born out of an earlier organization that Dominic co-founded. Elected Officials to Protect New York, that united nearly 1,000 local elected officials to fight high-volume hydro-fracking. They actually won that fight and got fracking banned in New York.
But Dominic’s story doesn’t start there. His political career started when a mentor and friend on the town council in his small hometown of Caroline, New York asked him to run for council at the age of 21.
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Sound design by Keaton Butler – keatonbutlerrecording at gmail.com
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Margaret Klein Salamon, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who founded The Climate Mobilization, a volunteer-powered organization that is working to initiate a WWII-scale mobilization to rapidly transform our economy to protect humanity and the living world. In that role, she has helped catalyze a burgeoning worldwide movement calling for governments at all levels to declare a climate emergency. Margaret is also the author of Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth, an effort to help readers process the emotional, psychological elements of the climate crisis and rise to the challenge of our time.
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Today we are joined by Nicole Systrom, founder of Sutro Energy Group. Nicole partners with philanthropists, investors and entrepreneurs to accelerate high-impact climate and clean technology solutions. Nicole also serves with multiple organizations that focus on energy, education, philanthropy and innovation. We’ll be talking with Nicole about how she came to be so involved in these areas, the various sectors that can help with environmental sustainability and the need for an innovative green economy, driven by creativity and investment.
Links
If you would like to support the show please click here.
Music by:
Sound design by Keaton Butler – keatonbutlerrecording at gmail.com
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The podcast currently has 29 episodes available.