Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

The southern sea otter is a keystone species in kelp forest  communities, acting to increase the species diversity and providing  ecosystem services. Despite federal protection since 1977, the southern  sea otter population has struggled to recover and there are only an  estimated 2,800 sea otters in California.

Listen to this conversation with Dr. James Estes, Emeritus Professor  of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UCSC.  Estes is author of Serendipity: An Ecologist’s Quest to Understand Nature and appears in “The Serengeti Rules,”  a 2019 film about “five unsung heroes of modern ecology,” of which he  is one.  Of course, Jim is best known for his research on California sea  otters, once almost wiped out, then recovered and now again threatened  by marine toxins, disease, orcas and agricultural chemical runoff.

More information is available on the Tinker & Estes Lab’s  web page.

Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Amity Sandage, environmental literacy coordinator for Santa Cruz County Office of Education. Sandage leads a countywide effort to build environmental literacy by increasing student access to outdoor learning. She also supports teachers in using local environmental connections to increase relevance of core classes and to create opportunities for civic and environmental action.  You can learn more about the state's environmental literacy goals in "A Blueprint For Environmental Literacy: Educating Every California Student In, About, and For the Environment" (2016).

Previous broadcasts of Sustainability Now! are archived here, on KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with anthropologist Dr. Michelle Merrill, whose teaching and counseling experience led her to establish Novasutras, an egalitarian spiritual movement with scientific sensibilities. Novasutras responds to the need for spiritual community centered on the biggest challenge humanity currently faces: how do we help people through the transition from an “Industrial Growth Society” to an “environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling human presence on the planet“?

You can hear previous broadcasts of Sustainability Now! here on Anchor, at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.

Radio Show #37, January 24, 2021: Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with newly-elected  California State Senator John Laird, to talk about energy, resources,  environment and politics, in the state and the country, and his hopes  and dreams for the State Senate.  Laird’s political career began in  1981, on the Santa Cruz City Council, and included stints in the State  Assembly and Jerry Brown’s second administration as Secretary of Natural  Resources. He has just begun his term in office and represents Senate  District 17, which includes Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo Counties in  their entirety, as well as portions of Monterey and Santa Clara  Counties.

Radio Show #35, December 27, 2020: As you may have read in a number of places, not only is the ocean  full of plastic, we are literally living in an ocean of plastic  microparticles falling from the sky.  Before you know it, we will all be  “Plastic People of the Universe.”

On this show, Sustainability Now! addresses this and related topics.  Ronnie Lipschutz and Kevin Bell, co-founder and co-director of the  Sustainable Systems Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, discuss the  biodegradability of plastics and which ones don’t really break down.  Along with a raft of SSRF volunteers and interns, Bell has been  conducting research into the plastics recycling dilemma and the  diffusion of plastic through the environment and also looking for ways  to make sure that take-out containers and utensils are truly  biodegradable and compostable.

If you'd like to read more about the plastics problem, here are three recent publications of interest:

"Choked, Strangled, Drowned: The Plastics Crisis Unfolding in Our Oceans," Kimberley Warner, et al., Oceana, November 2020.

"The Mixed Message of Earth-Friendly Design--Does buying more elegant objects help heal the planet?" Blake Gopnik, New York Times, December 11, 2020.

"Biodegradable, Hygenic, and Compostable: Tableware from Hybrid Sugarcane and Bamboo Fibers as Plastic Alternative," Chao Liu, et al., Matter 3, 1–14, December 2, 2020.

Radio Show #34:  Sunday, December 13th, 5-6 PM  Join Host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Darryl Molina Sarmiento, Executive Director for Communities for a Better Environment,  a 40-year-old environmental justice organization with offices in both  Southern and Northern California. The mission of CBE is to build  people’s power in California’s communities of color and low-income  communities to achieve environmental health and justice by preventing  and reducing pollution and building green, healthy and sustainable  communities and environments.  CBE provides residents in heavily  polluted urban communities in California with organizing skills,  leadership training and legal, scientific and technical assistance, so that they can successfully confront threats to their health and well-being.

Radio Show #33: Host Ronnie Lipschutz and Dave Blume of Blume Distillation do a walking interview and tour of Whiskey Hill Farm,  its permaculture and regenerative agriculture practices and  technological innovations connecting alcohol distillation and organic  agriculture.  Whiskey Hill Farm is a 14-acre organic farm on Calabasas  Road near Watsonville that employs poly-cropping, permaculture  techniques in six large greenhouses to create “food forests” of  multi-layered polyculture. Dave is CEO and Director of Research and  Development at Blume Distillation and Whiskey Hill Farm.  He is author  of the critically acclaimed book Alcohol Can be a Gas! and  has been engaged in one sort of farming or another for more than 40  years.  This is an edited version of the full 70 minute tour, which you  can hear at: https://sustainablesystemsfoundation.org/201124_0004-mp3/

There is now a video of this tour available on You Tube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AymRxdkyAf8&feature=youtu.be

Radio Show #32. In September 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order requiring that by 2035 all new cars and passenger trucks sold in the state will have to be zero-emission vehicles, producing no greenhouse gases.  While there are various types of zero-emission power plants in existence and on design boards, most of these will probably be electric vehicles, or EVs. This goes along with a parallel push to electrify the state by 2045. Getting from here to there will be no easy task.

Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Beverly DesChaux, President of the Electric Auto Association of CA Central Coast about Newsom's mandate and related topics.  We’ll talk about electric vehicles, past, present and future, and how they could become an electricity storage solution to the ups and downs of the California electrical grid.  We’ll also discuss “virtual power plants,” which are based on the aggregation and remote control of rooftop solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles as part of the electricity grid.

You can find out more about EVs at: Plug-in America, the Sierra Club, and the Monterey Bay Electric Vehicle Incentive Program.

And you can contact Beverly at [email protected].

You can hear previous broadcasts of Sustainability Now! at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.

Radio Show #31. Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Dr. Joseph Stewart,  a conservation biologist with special interests in biogeography,  prediction, demography, ecophysiology, and climate change. He received  his PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from UCSC in 2018 and is  now a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Science  and Policy. He works with the US Forest Service and the California  Department of Forestry and Fire Protection on forest regeneration after  wildfires and the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and species  migration.  You can find more about his work at http://stewartecology.org/ and https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5fMCYtEAAAAJ&hl=en.

The opening tune is “Sky Pond,” performed by American Pika aka Greg Douras, a musician and mountaineer from Colorado.  Joe has  done research on the American Pika, a small mouse and rabbit-like  critter that lives in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains.

Radio Show #30, October 18, 2020. Did you know that Section 106.3 of the California Water Code states that “every human being has the right to safe, clean,  affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption,  cooking, and sanitary purposes.” Host Ronnie Lipschutz talks with Mayra  Hernandez, a community organizer at the Community Water Center in Watsonville, about safe water and the human right to it.  The Community Water Center works towards realizing the Human Right to Water for all communities in California through education, organizing, and  advocacy. The Center has offices in Visalia, Sacramento and Watsonville.