How To Stop Climate Change

Dr. Annette Olson started her career as a field biologist studying the social behavior of the long-nosed mongoose on a remote island in West Africa. But a civil war in Sierra Leone brought an end to her mongoose studies and started her off on a 30-year career working for federal agencies and nonprofits in Washington, D.C. Now she is building Climate Steps, her own nonprofit organization with a mission to supply people with impactful personal, social, and political actions to fight climate change.

It’s a  great interview. We covered a lot of topics, including:

• Are they called mongeese or mongooses?
• Are individual climate actions worthwhile?
• The problems with some of the most commonly recommended climate actions
• What climate steps have the biggest impact and how to find the right climate steps for you
• The importance of discussing your climate actions with your friends and family

Links

• Episode webpage
• ClimateSteps.org
• If you would like to support the show please click here.

Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Grace van't Hof
• The Blueberries
• Theme music is by Juices

Sound design by Keaton Butler – keatonbutlerrecording at gmail.com

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Our guest today is Jay Siegel, co-host of Sustainability Defined, a podcast that takes on the rather intimidating goal of defining sustainability, one topic and one bad joke at a time. Each episode of Sustainability Defined explores an area of sustainability in great depth and then finishes up with an interview with an expert in that space. It’s such a good resource that it has made its way into the course curriculum at Duke, Penn State and other fine universities. 

When Jay isn’t podcasting he works as an urban infill real estate developer so he has first hand experience with a lot of the complicated sustainability issues around buildings and cities.

Here are just a few of the topics that we discussed with Jay.

• How to build a sustainability career when it’s not yet part of your day job
• Urban infill: can we reduce sprawl while minimizing the negative impacts of gentrification?
• The carbon footprint of buildings and cities
• Kanye’s Presidential bid

We’ll include a clip from Sustainability Defined at the end of this episode, so stick around.

Links

Sustainability Defined

Episode webpage

If you would like to support the show please click here.

Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

Sound design by Keaton Butler

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Our guest today is Diego Saez Gil, founder and CEO of Pachama, a carbon offset and technology company that is harnessing satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to measure and monitor carbon capture in forests. Reducing the cost of measuring the amount of carbon stored in forests means that more of the money spent on carbon offsets can go to landowners. Improving the accuracy of those measurements means that people and companies who purchase carbon offsets are more confident that their money is being spent on effective carbon removal solutions.

Episode Links

• Pachama.com

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Podcast Audio Production

Keaton Butler – [email protected]

Music was provided by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

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Our guest today is Shuli Goodman, founder and executive director of LF Energy, a new Linux Foundation project that supports open source innovation in the energy and electricity sectors.
Shuli had the opportunity to work on an IT project with independent utilities in California where she learned how woefully inadequate their software systems were for the upcoming changes that would be required to green the grid.
"We are in unbelievable trouble, because these guys do not have the technology or the capacity to meet the future that's going to come running at us."
She started looking for options for building a new digital infrastructure for the grid and came to the conclusion that the Linux Foundation was the only organization that could support such a vast collaborative project.

Links:
Shuli Goodman on LinkedIn
Shuli Goodman on Twitter
LF Energy

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Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

Podcast audio production by Keaton Butler – [email protected]

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Our guests today are Ty and Brock Benefiel, brothers and hosts of The Climate Pod podcast. Ty is co-founder and CEO of Hero Power, a company that allows electricity customers in Illinois to choose renewable energy over fossil fuel energy when they pay their utility bill. They plan to expand into 13 states. Brock is a journalist, podcaster, and Director of Marketing at Hero Power.

Some states allow utility customers to choose who supplies their power. This means that the local utility is responsible for maintaining the grid and distributing the electricity to customers. They also do the billing. But other companies are allowed to supply the electricity and consumers can choose which company they want to provide that electricity. Hero Power is one of those suppliers but they’re a little different than most. They buy electricity on the market and resell it but they also buy renewable energy credits to offset every kilowatt of power that they sell. So, people that sign up with Hero Power are generating demand for renewable energy without paying a penny more than they would otherwise.

Links
Hero Power
The Climate Pod
Episode webpage:Climate Pod hosts Ty and Brock Benefiel

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Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Gerry Leonard
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

Audio production by Keaton Butler – [email protected]

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Our guest today is Karly Matthews from the American Conservation Coalition, a nonprofit organization which educates and empowers conservatives to re-engage in environmental conversations by promoting a mix of free-market, pro-business, and limited-government environmentalism.

Links

• Episode webpage: Young conservative climate activists | Karly Matthews, American Conservation Coalition
• Learn more about the American Conservation Coalition
• Follow Karly Matthews on Twitter

If you would like to support the show please click here.
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Podcast production by Keaton Butler – [email protected]
Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

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Our guest today is RL Miller, a determined and outspoken political activist who founded Climate Hawks Vote, an organization that endorses and supports democratic candidates who are serious about developing effective climate policies. She has been a leading advocate for a presidential climate debate and getting Democratic candidates to pledge that they won’t take fossil fuel money, and she was just elected to the Democratic National Committee. 

RL is angry that DNC chair Tom Perez refused to stage a presidential climate debate and over his reversal of the DNC resolution that she pushed not to accept fossil fuel money. She is determined to fix those things and work to make the DNC more transparent and democratic and most importantly more devoted to fighting climate change.

Links

Climate Hawks Vote

Episode webpage: RL Miller | Climate hawk in the DNC

If you would like to support the show please click here.

Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

Audio production by Keaton Butler – [email protected]

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Our guest today is Tim Gordon, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter and the Australian institute of Marine Science. He studies climate change impacts on marine ecosystems, especially the Great Barrier reef. Coral reefs are surprisingly noisy but climate change may be starting to silence them. We’ll be talking with Tim about his research, which aims to understand more about the impacts of climate change on the natural soundscapes of marine ecosystems.

Links

Episode webpage:Climate change is silencing coral reefs | Tim Gordon

Read more about Tim Gordon’s work at University of Exeter

Watch Tim Gordon on YouTube

• Timothy Gordon at World Ocean Summit 2018
• Tim Gordon - United Kingdom - FameLab International Final 2019
• Sounds of the past give new hope for coral reef restoration

If you would like to support the show please click here.

Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

Audio production by Keaton Butler – [email protected]

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Matt Russell joins us again for our second episode in a two part series about climate denial. This week we're focusing on Planet of the Humans, the new movie from Michael Moore, Jeff Gibbs and Ozzy Zehner. The filmmakers aren’t climate change deniers but they are very critical of renewable energy and a lot of the arguments that they bring up in the film are incorrect talking points and myths that climate change deniers used 10 years ago. Deniers are ecstatic to have an influential liberal documentary filmmaker like Michael Moore reviving these points. It provides them with a lot of ammunition that they can use as they work to slow the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. 
Overall the film is a poorly-researched and often incorrect indictment of nearly every aspect of the green movement, from technologies to organizations to leaders. We’re not going to dive into every topic that is covered in the film. We’ll take a look at the questions it raises around the following:

• Solar energy
• Wind energy
• Electric cars
• Hydrogen fuel cell cars
• Green business
• Population growth
• Consumerism

Links

Episode webpage:Climate Change Denial pt. 2: Planet of the Humans vs. Renewable Energy

Ketan Joshi’s analysis of Planet of the Humans

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Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

Audio production by Keaton Butler – [email protected]

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Dear Climate Denier
This is the premiere of a new segment for the show called Dear Climate Denier. Our guest today is Matt Russell, an environmental consultant and a good friend of mine and he’ll join us each week to discuss one or two standard climate denial topics so you’ll be ready the next time you hear those talking points come up. And, most importantly we’ll talk about the best approach for talking to your nearest and dearest climate deniers. How can you stand your ground on climate change and offer up some facts without getting into a screaming match.

The History of Climate Change Denial
Going forward Dear Climate Denier will be a quick little segment of the show but for this episode we’re going to do a deep dive on it. The best place to start is by taking a look at the history of climate science and climate change denial. We’ll also discuss some of our favorite examples of climate deniers going off the rails.

Planet of the Humans
Michael Moore released a new movie called Planet of the Humans on Earth Day this year. It attacks renewable energy, biomass, Bill McKibben and the environmental movement in general. It’s full of outdated information and unsupported conclusions. Unfortunately a lot of the points that the film makes are the exact same things that climate deniers were saying about renewable energy 10 years ago. We’ll talk about that a little bit today but we’ll go into depth on the movie in the next episode.

Links
Episode webpage: Climate Change Denial: Dear Climate Denier
The History of Climate Change Denial
If you would like to support the show please click here.

Music by:

• Avery Reidy
• Keaton Butler
• Theme music is by Juices

Audio production by Keaton Butler – [email protected]

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Do you have a great idea for stopping climate change? We want to hear it.
Click here to share your idea and it might be featured on the show. 

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