Sea Change Radio

While US political news is certainly more than depressing these days, it’s always nice to get a healthy reminder of the many good things that are happening around us. This week on Sea Change Radio we speak to Inside Climate News Science Reporter Bob Berwyn as he prepares to cover next month’s COP 30 conference in Brazil. We look at some of the more positive developments on the biodiversity and rewilding fronts, examine the effectiveness of some recent policies to help animal populations like seabirds and gray wolves bounce back, and talk briefly about what to expect from the upcoming COP 30 conference.

Is America’s love affair with billionaires actually an abusive relationship? This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to author Chuck Collins whose new book, Burned By Billionaires, helps us better understand why having so many ultra-wealthy individuals in this country has a deleterious effect on society. We discuss what Collins calls the idolatry of wealth, look at examples of billionaires harming the environment and the public good (such as in the explosive growth in the private aviation sector), and then break down some practical ways to help solve the problem.

Have you ever thought about how random it seems that gold is worth, well, its weight in gold? This week’s guest on Sea Change Radio, Gustav Peebles, is an anthropologist and monetary policy expert at Stockholm University. He has not only wondered about the way human beings assign value to a particular element on the periodic table, he has pondered what it would look like if we we applied precious valuation to an element that really matters for our own survival, like atmospheric carbon. In his new book, co-written with Benjamin Luzzatto, “The First and Last Bank: Climate Change, Currency, and a New Carbon Commons,” Peebles lays out a novel, scalable way not to just dole out carbon credits, but to actually monetize the conservation of carbon waste. We discuss the fundamentals of a possible carbon banking system, and talk through just how such a concept might roll out.

Studies have shown that international economic aid can be an important component of a developing country’s economy, but that too much aid can actually be harmful, undermining local enterprise and other indicators of independence. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Shannon Fernando, the founder and CEO of Alabaster International, a small nonprofit with some big plans to make a significant impact in the Global South. We look at her organization’s model, learn about the promising African staple crop enset, and discuss the challenges of trying to provide short-term assistance to vulnerable populations while also setting the table for long-term economic health.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 34 million households across America are energy insecure. The Solar for All program was set to provide funding to 60 entities that planned to create or expand existing low-income solar programs and would have enabled 900,000 households nationwide in disadvantaged communities to utilize solar energy to reduce their home energy bills. And yet, the current iteration of the EPA recently announced that the Solar for All Program‘s funding of $7 billion is being terminated. This week on Sea Change Radio – we speak to a solar executive whose organization has had its Solar for All funding rug pulled out from under it. Erica Mackie, the co-founder and co-CEO of the solar nonprofit, GRID Alternatives, joins the program to give us an overview of the services that her organization provides and to discuss the impact of the EPA’s recent decision.

You may have been getting ready to leave the house recently and noticed on your phone that the air quality was going to be less-than-ideal that day. There are a lot of people and technologies behind that seemingly simple process. This week on Sea Change Radio we speak with the CEO of IQAir North America, Glory Dolphin Hammes to learn about her company’s history, its AirVisual product and the evolving field of air quality monitoring. We discuss how crowd sourcing works to give us a clearer picture of air quality, the challenges of getting the word out to the public about unsafe air, particularly in underserved communities, and look at the impact of recent EPA rollbacks.

This week on Sea Change Radio, the second half of our discussion with journalist Nathan Tankus as we continue to try to get a better grip on what’s happening at the Federal Reserve Bank. To quote a recent piece by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, “control over the Fed gives Trump… more tools for extortion. With control over interest rates, he can get America’s biggest corporations and the world’s biggest nations to bend to his will.” In this part of the conversation with Tankus, we talk a bit more about the attempted firing of Federal Reserve Board governor, Lisa Cook, the historical importance of the Fed’s independence and ponder why Wall Street continues to shrug off all of this unsettling economic news.

The Federal Reserve is supposed to be a non-political entity that, with a steady, measured hand, sets interest rates and economic policy in the United States. But, as we are seeing time and time again under this current Administration, absolutely nothing is sacred. If there are levers of power in reach, they will be tested by this authoritarian regime. This week on Sea Change Radio, the first half of our two-part conversation with Nathan Tankus, a journalist and the President of Notes on the Crises, who’s been covering the Fed closely for many years. We hear about the history of the Federal Reserve, learn why its independence is pivotal, and discuss the recent attempts by the Trump Administration to fire the Fed’s first Black woman governor, Lisa Cook, for the flimsiest of reasons.

Just because we live in an age of science, marked by mobile computing, space exploration, and robot cars, doesn’t mean that people don’t still hold firm to beliefs with no scientific basis whatsoever. Case-in-point: rhinos are dying out, due primarily to a human appetite for the supposed healing power of their horns, even though these horns have been shown to have no medicinal properties and may even contain substances toxic to humans. Rhinoceros horns consist of keratin, a dense protein found in human hair and fingernails, but puzzlingly they’re worth more by weight than gold. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Mongabay senior contributing editor Jeremy Hance about the plight of two extremely rare breeds of Indonesian rhinoceros. We discuss efforts being taken to track and preserve them and take a close look at poaching and the brisk trade in illegal rhino horns.

In the 1970’s, coal fueled over half of the U.S. electric grid. Today, that number has dipped below 10%. This week on Sea Change Radio we speak with journalist and author, Bob Wyss, whose new book “Black Gold: The Rise, Reign and Fall of American Coal,“ provides an important retelling of the history of coal in this country. We look at the market forces that shaped coal’s rise, its devastating impact on the environment and human health, and talk about the ludicrous but dangerous attempts by the current Administration to prop up coal even as it’s on life support.