Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

Once again, California is dry, dry, dry and that probably means we are in for a wild wildfire season. Since the beginning of 2021, there have been 10,000 wildfires across the state, and those that know are predicting the worst for this year's fire season.  So, what are we to do? Hear from Dr. Sasha Berleman, Wildland Fire Scientist. She is director of Fire Forward at Audubon Canyon Ranch in Stinson Beach. She is a CA State Certified Burn Boss, a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX) coach and leader, and a wildland firefighter with Fire Effects Monitoring, Squad Boss, Crew Boss, Firing Boss, and Incident Commander qualifications.  In this show from June 2021, find out about the risk of wildfires and what we can do to reduce the threat.

This show was originally broadcast on June 21, 2021.

Watch these videos online:

Why These Californians Are Starting Fires On Purpose 

Community-Based Burning: Caring for our Land Together

Andrew Selsky, "Amid clamor to increase prescribed burns, obstacles await," AP News, June 22, 2021.

Until very recently, salmon and other fish attempting to spawn in Northern California’s Klamath River found a number of dams in their way. Over the past several years, in the largest project of its kind to date, those dams have been removed. Now, the watershed is being restored to let the salmon swim upriver and allow other plants and animals to return.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Brook Thompson, a member of the Yurok tribe, restoration engineer, PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz, and author of I Love Salmon and Lampreys, an illustrated book for children.  Her doctoral work is focused connecting water rights and Native American knowledge through engineering, public policy, and social action.

On January 16th, 2025, a fire broke out at the Vistra plant in Moss Landing, California burning for two days and scattering heavy metals and other toxic materials across the plant’s surroundings, including Elkhorn Slough.  What happened there and why did the batteries burn?  What are the impacts of the fire and on the future of renewable energy?

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for three conversations about the batteries and the fire, with Ric O’Connell, executive director of GridLab, who will explain what the batteries are doing there, Dr. Ivano Aiello, Professor of Geological Oceanography at San Jose State’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, who will discuss the results of his research into contamination of Elkhorn Slough, and Dr. Megan Thiele Strong, Professor of Environmental Sociology at San Jose State, who will talk about the health and social effects of the fire on people living around the site.

Here are some resources:

Fire Protection Association, UK "Why do lithium-ion batteries catch fire?"

Never Again Moss Landing

Hunterbrook, "After Vistra Fire, Residents Report Illness, Scientists Confirm Contaminated Soil," Jan. 27, 2025.

Never Again Moss Landing (NAML), "Community Organization Conducts Surface Sampling for Heavy Metals Following Moss Landing Battery Storage Facility Fire," feb. 6, 2025.

Hunterbrook, "New Data Indicates Elevated Heavy Metal after Vistra Fire," Feb. 11, 2025.

Julian Spector, "Why we don't need to worry about the latest grid battery fire," Canary Media.com, Jan. 27, 2025.

(Moss Fire photo @picklerich831 via REUTERS)

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.