Mark Dowie describes himself as “Cowhand, guitarist, investigative historian, poet” and journalist.  He’s probably best known as cofounder, editor and staff writer forMother Jones, but during his more than 50-year career, over his he’s also written for many other magazines, newspapers and publications, written eight books and received no less than 19 journalism awards. 

In 1995, Dowie publishedLosing ground: American environmentalism at the close of the twentieth century.  Thirty years later—and 70-odd years since the beginning of that movement, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dowie about the U.S. environmental movement, then and now.

Over the past few years, we’ve heard a lot about artificial intelligence and the algorithms that support public policy, decision making and resource allocations.  By processing reams of presumably neutral data, the algorithms are supposed to produce unbiased results.  But we’ve also heard concerns about the algorithms themselves: what unrecognized assumptions go into their construction and how they can produce different outcomes depending on programmer choices about the data that goes into them.

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Professor David Rehkopf of the Department of Epidemiology & Population Health at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Derek Ouyang, Executive Director of City Systems and Senior Research Manager in Stanford University's Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab.  We’ll be taking about what algorithms are, how they are used to promote environmental justice and guide public funding for disadvantaged communities, and why they can produce different results depending on what goes into them and what comes out. 

What is regenerative agriculture?  Who is practicing regenerative agriculture?  And what are its prospects?  In two weeks, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Stephanie Anderson, author of From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture, which explores how women are leading the movement to transform the U.S. agricultural system and inspiring hope in the face of environmental and social challenges.

 On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States for his second term.  There is considerable trepidation in the environmental policy and activism sectors across the country and, indeed, the world.  Trump’s appointees are committed to deregulation across the board, especially where the environment is concerned, to gutting funding for renewable energy and rescinding the Inflation Reduction Act and increasing fossil fuel production and consumption.

What his Administration might want to do and what it will be able to do are two very different questions. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a discussion on these matters with Dr. Andrew Rosenberg who, most recently, was director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and has had considerable experience in how policies are made and how they are implemented.  That’s not as easy as many people believe.

For more information on this topic, you can also watch "Navigating the Trump 2.0 Deregulatory Agenda webinar" from the Security & Sustainability Forum at: https://tinyurl.com/4e6ck2mn

As California looks forward (!) to the beginning of a new Presidential Administration, there is growing trepidation about what it might mean for the state.  Is it time to secede and join with other West Coast states to create a new country?

Fifty years ago, Ernest Callenbach published Ecotopia, a vision of a new country dedicated to protecting people and the environment. In 2015, on the 40th anniversary of Ecotopia, UCSC held a conference called “Utopian Dreaming: 50 years of imagined futures in California and at UCSC.”  Speakers included a number of academics, critics and dreamers. None of us, of course, imagined that Donald Trump might be the next President of the United States.

Listen to three talks from the conference: a keynote by Kim Stanley Robinson, best-known today for The Ministry of the Future;  a critique by UC San Diego Professor of Latin American Literature and Chicano Literature Rosaura Sanchez; and an account of how Silicon Valley has become the generator of utopian and dystopian futures, by Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University.

You can find videos of the complete conference at https://www.youtube.com/@ronnielipschutz8900.  And you can read an article on California eco-utopias at: https://ksqd.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ecotopia-or-ecocatastrophe.pdf.

To avert the worst impacts of climate change, a transition away from fossil fuels is necessary. However, what this transition looks like and what would make a transition “just,” remain open questions. What workers are missing from “green” economy discussions? What role do workers play in the fight for a future without fossil fuels? How can workers and communities ensure the transition is “just”?

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with UCSC Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies J. Mijin Cha, whose new book, A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future, will be published by MIT Press in December. Her research examines the intersection of inequality and the climate crisis in which the energy transition is leveraged to advance a more just future.

Frequent listeners to Sustainability Now! know that, from time to time, interviews focus on animals, mostly from the perspective of animal rights and whether animals are people, too.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Sy Montgomery, adventurer, naturalist and author, who has been engaging with and writing about animals since the 1980s. She asks questions like “what do chickens know? Does an octopus have a soul? And is it really “turtles all the way down?” She is the author of 38 nonfiction books for adults and children and has garnered numerous awards for them.  Her 2023 book, Of Time and Turtles was a New York Times bestseller, and her new book, What the Chicken Knows, has just been published.

Join Host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Sunaura Taylor, Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley.  Taylor is also an artist, writer, activist and mother, who has just published Disable Ecologies—Lessons from a Wounded Desert.  Her first book, Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation, which received the 2018 American Book Award. Along with academic journals, Taylor has written for a range of popular media outlets. Her artworks have been exhibited at venues such as the CUE Art Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution and is part of the Berkeley Art Museum collection. Among other awards, she has received a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, two Wynn Newhouse Awards, and an Animals and Culture Grant.

A longstanding debate in the environmental and conservation movements is whether protection of natural resources can be reconciled with their economic development?  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation about this question with Larry Selzer, President and CEO of The Conservation Fund, a Virgina-based nonprofit that buys land for conservation and promotes sustainable economic development. TCF works with public agencies to acquire land and hold it until the agencies are ready to purchase it back.  And the organization focuses on protecting working forests and farms, which provide clean air, clean water, and jobs for rural communities.

What happens to your corporeal body, if and when it is buried in the earth?  According to Genesis in the Hebrew Torah, we come from dust and to dust we return.  The original text, however, uses the word עָפָ֣ר ("apar"), which means “earth.”  Most burials in the United States seek to protect the body from returning to the earth through containment, while cremation produces greenhouse gases and leaves behind heavy metals.  Are there other ways to go?  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose, a Seattle-based green funeral home that composts human bodies, turning them into soil that can be spread almost everywhere.  We talk about other end-of-life choices, too.