Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

The United States has indicated that it will begin to explore commercial mining of mineral nodules on the international seabed, in violation of the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea and the International Seabed Authority. These nodules contain a variety of minerals used in cell phones, electric cars and other high-tech devices and could reduce U.S. reliance on questionable sources of rare earth and other metals. Opponents counter that the ecological damage imposed by such mining would far outweigh any benefits.

But there is another argument for letting sleeping nodules lie: deep-sea mining is a multi-billion-dollar solution to problems that do not exist.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a discussion with Professors D.G. Webster of Dartmouth College and Susan Park, from the University of Sydney.  They, along with several colleagues, recently published “The false promise of deep-sea mining,” a critique of the proposal focused on terrestrial mineral availability, limited social benefits and supply chain economics.

Do you remember the Northern Spotted Owl, icon of the old-growth Redwood Wars of the 1990s?  Well, the Northern Spotted Owl is, once again, under threat.  This time, however, the threat comes from another species of owl, the Barred Owl, a larger and more aggressive bird native to the United States, whose range has been expanding westward as a result of development and climate change.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife has devised a plan to protect the Northern Spotted Owl: shoot Barred Owls.  Scientists, conservationists and the public are torn: should humans intervene to prevent animal extinctions by competitors and invasive species if they threaten the survival of endemic ones, or should we let nature take its course?  And since humans have intervened in nature for thousands of years, everyday and everywhere, what is the right thing to do?  How can we decide?

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a rerun of a conversation with Hugh Warwick, spokesperson for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, who has been looking into this dilemma around the world. He has just published Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation.  Warwick is a frequent speaker on wildlife conservation in public talks and on British radio and TV. He also runs courses on hedgehog conservation.

Warwick with hedgehog photo © Zoe Broughton

Carbon is a boon and a bane.  It is at the core of all life on Earth, past and present.  In the atmosphere, carbon is what keeps the Earth’s temperature at tolerable levels.  Yet, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, raising global temperatures and disrupting climate and weather.  California’s cap and trade system is one approach to controlling carbon emissions.  But what is it? How does it work?  And are there other ways to achieve the same objectives?  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation about cap and trade and how the resources it generates could be put to better use, with Dr. Barbara Haya, director of UC Berkeley’s Carbon Trading Project, and Stephen Lezak, a Visiting Fellow at BCTP.

Everyone is angry with California’s private utilities.  Rates keep rising, the utilities lack accountability and they are running roughshod over small-scale renewable energy.  Why make your customers so mad? Is that anger justified? And what are the utilities planning for the future?  Join SN! host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Loretta Lynch. Lynch was President of the California Public Utilities Commission from 2000 through 2002 and continued as a CPUC Commissioner until January 2005.  Since then, she has been a strident advocate for the protection of ratepayers and against corruption in the utility industry, a role in which she continues today.

Gray wolves were once ubiquitous across California but the state’s last surviving individual was killed in 1924.  In 2011, the first documented wolf since 1924 was observed crossing into California from Oregon.  Today, there are at least 7 gray wolf packs in California with some 50 individuals.  That’s not so many but 3 counties are worried about wolf attacks on livestock and people and are asking for permission from the state to allow more aggressive hazing, including shooting wolves with beanbags and rubber bullets.  Is this really necessary?  To learn more about gray wolves in California, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Amaroq Weiss, Senior Wolf Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity

Food insecurity and food apartheid are a common challenge in many low-income and minority neighborhoods across the United States.  Big supermarket companies avoid those areas because stores are unprofitable and small stores find that they make the most money on junk foods, sodas and liquor.  Saba Grocers is an Oakland-based organization, founded in 2019, that works with those small stores to enable them to sell fresh produce sourced from minority farmers across the region.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Lina Ghanem, director and co-founder of the Saba Grocers Initiative in Oakland.

Here is another podcast of interest: Staff of Life is a locally-owned grocery store competing for consumer dollars in a market dominated by corporate giants.  And so we ask:

 How does a local grocery store survive in a marketplace of corporate giants? 

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Gary Bascou, Co-Founder of Staff of Life Natural Foods for a conversation about how a locally-owned grocery store can survive 56 years to be among the last to stand in a market dominated by corporate grocery giants. 

 Topics include the culture that gave rise to “natural” and “organic” food markets; how those foods gave rise to Staff of Life Natural Foods Market; and how Staff of Life survives 56 years of competition with corporate food giants. 

Show Recording:  Staff of Life: Local Grocer V. Corporate Giants 

Radio:  www.santacruzvoice.com 

Host:  www.metrofarm.com  

Sponsor:  TimeShare Media 

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Tariffs are in the air and on the news. Tariffs are up and down.  Tariffs are in and out. Who knows where they might go and what they might do. But what do tariffs mean for sustainability and the environment?  Will they help or hurt?  Do they matter either way?  Tune into Sustainability Now! to hear Christine Barrington and Ronnie Lipschutz discuss tariffs and what they might mean for the environment and the planet. Lipschutz is neither an economist or an expert on the design or history of tariffs but has had many opportunities to study and write about taxes and the environment.  He’s promised to keep economic jargon to the minimum and intelligibility to the maximum.

Big agriculture is Big!  And it appears to be getting Bigger, as the leading companies in four critical sectors—equipment, seeds, fertilizers and chemicals—consolidate in order to dominate their markets and the farmers who buy their products.  Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Jennifer Clapp, who has just published Titans of Industrial Agriculture—How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters.  Clapp is Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

UCSC’s Agroecology Farm is known around the world for innovation, training and inspiration.  But before there was a Farm, there was a Garden: the Alan Chadwick Garden, launched in 1967 on a steep, rocky clay hill side. It is still there today, although very few people know of its existence.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz in a conversation with Orin Martin, who has managed the Chadwick Garden since 1977 and where he is widely admired for his skills as a master orchardist, horticulturalist, and teacher.  Tune in to hear about Orin’s role at the Chadwick Garden, as well as its origins and history since the 1970s.  You’ll be well-prepared to visit it when UCSC reopens.

You can read Orin's oral history for the UCSC library here.  A website dedicated to Alan Chadwick is here.  And oral histories of organic and sustainable farming on California's Central Coast are available here.

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

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

Episode #36, Sunday, January 10th: Hear Jeffrey Downing, Professor of Art at San Francisco State University and Artist-in-Residence at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art talk about how his work connects culture and nature. Downing was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago for his environmental sculpture in Richardson Bay, designed to mark today’s king tides, which will be swamped by rising sea levels in the future.

According to a website describing his work: “Jeff Downing’s sculpture is informed by the humor and pop sensibility of the California artist Robert Arneson; by the stripped-down economy of Alberto Giacometti’s figures; and by the spontaneity and energy characteristic of the work of Pablo Picasso. Downing’s work with dog imagery depends on chance discovery of form but seeks to invoke feelings concerning the human condition and our varied relationship with the natural world. In Jeff Downing’s world view, studying the dog – with all of its expressiveness, intelligence and sensitivity - leads us to a better understanding of the connection between culture and nature.”

You can hear previous broadcasts of Sustainability Now! at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.  Check out Marisha Farnsworth, an Oakland-based environmental artist, who appeared on the show on July 27, 2020.