Over the past several decades, there has been a concerted effort by biologists, economists and others to put a value on nature’s services: what would it cost, for example, to provide clean water the way nature does?  Oxygen, photosynthesis, soil?  Early estimates were around $30 trillion per year; arguably, today they are much higher, over $100 trillion.  But getting from hypothetical calculations to actual incorporation into real work policy and development projects is no easy task.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Daniel Chiu Suarez, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has just published Biologists Unite!  The Rise and Fall of Ecosystem Services, an account of why three decades of academic, activist and policy efforts have failed to incorporate ecosystems services into global economic accounting and action.

The removal of four dams from the Klamath River in Northern California is rapidly becoming one of the great recent success stories in conservation and restoration.  The riverbank habitat is returning to its former condition and salmon have been spotted swimming upriver past the sites where the dams once blocked their passage.  Along with this comes the restoration of the indigenous peoples’ way of life, heavily dependent on those fish.  Join Host Ronnie for an update on the Klamath in a conversation with Amy Bowers Cordalis, who has just published The Water Remembers—My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life.  She is a mother, fisherwoman, attorney, executive director of Ridges to Riffles, and member of the Yurok Nation and its former general counsel.

Who knew that ponds make music?  To the eye and ears, they seem silent and tranquil—except at night when, maybe, choruses of frogs serenade listeners.  But ponds are much noisier than that: you have to be very quiet and have the right equipment to really hear what’s going on.  And there is a lot going on: both the critters and the plants speak out.  Indeed, nature is full of sounds, many of them musical and, quite possible, the forerunners of human music.

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. David Rothenberg, scholar, author, musician and composer and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology whose focus is on animal sounds as music. We talk about his most recent book, Secret Sounds of Ponds, for which Rothenberg tossed a microphone into ponds and heard “an entirely new world, a realm of the unexpected and stirring rhythms and tones of some of the smallest and loudest creatures on Earth.”

Nuclear weapons have been with us for 80 years.  There are fewer today than was the case at the height of the Cold War, but there are more countries with nukes than ever before.  Some heads of state have been, of late, threatening to use them.  If you’ve seen Kathryn Bigelow’s recent film, “House of Dynamite,” you’ll know that human psychology is the linchpin on which the entire system of nuclear deterrence rests: would the President (or Premier or whatever) exchange their capitals for others?  Trade Washington, DC for Moscow or Beijing?

There is reason to be concerned about this question: The United States is planning a $1.7 trillion overhaul of its entire nuclear arsenal, designing new warheads and investing in new bombers, missiles, and submarines to carry them, all in the name of “modernization.”  It’s not that the current generations of platforms and warheads won’t work; it’s more that Admirals, Generals and Presidents don’t trust devices put into operation when they were very young and that there is a lot of money and prestige in having the latest generation of gadgets and lording that over the competing services.  Oh, and new weapons are “manlier” than the old ones.

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Dylan K. Spaulding a senior scientist in the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists. His work focuses on technical issues related to nuclear stockpile stewardship and policies that can reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons.  He recently authored a UCS report entitled “Plutonium Pit Production--The Risks and Costs of US Plans to Build New Nuclear Weapons.”  Its focus is on the stuff that makes warheads go “boom” but along the way, Spaulding covers a lot of other ground and the report is a good primer on nuclear weapons.

Many listeners are probably familiar with the tags found in hotel bathrooms that read: “Save Our Planet,” followed by instructions about reusing and replacing towels, and concluding “Thank you for helping us converse the Earth’s vital resources.”  Reusing towels might help conserve the hotel’s financial resources but does that make any difference for the Planet?  Such “lifestyle environmentalism” is widespread, providing a sense of doing something in a world in which collective action is so difficult.  In two weeks, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Michael Maniates, for a conversation about his new book, The Living-Green Myth: The Promise and Limits of Lifestyle Environmentalism.  Maniates dismisses the notion that individual actions can make a significant impact on the state of the planet.  But if not that, what are we to do?

Lake Tahoe is one of California’s natural jewels but it is under siege and increasingly awash in plastic wastes, as visitors carelessly dispose of bottles and packages and discarded items degrade into small pieces washed into the lake.  What happens to that stuff? As we have been learning, microplastics are everywhere, in the environment and in our bodies.  What are their impacts on people, animals and nature?  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Madison “Madio” Wallner, a UCSC PhD student in Environmental Science, who is studying microplastics and tire particles in Tahoe’s bottom sediments.

The Kenneth S. Norris Center at UC Santa Cruz is one of the little-known jewels of the campus as well as the Monterey Bay Region. Ken Norris was an American marine mammal biologist, conservationist, naturalist, and co-founder of SeaWorld, as well as a professor of natural history at UCSC.  He was the creator of the UC Natural Reserve System, too.  The Norris Center holds a vast collection of insects, plants and seeds from the Santa Cruz Mountains and supports classes, internships and research by UCSC students, faculty and staff.  Join me in two weeks for a conversation about the Norris Center with Professor Ingrid Parker, the Center’s Faculty Director and Chris Lay, the Center’s Director.  Find out about the Center’s treasures and how you can see them!

If you venture out into parks, farms and gardens with various flowering species, you are almost sure to see European honeybees flying about.  When we think of bees, those are the ones that usually come to mind.  But there are more than 1,600 native bee species in California alone, and many of those are threatened with extinction.  Krystle Hickman is a National Geographic Explorer, conservation photographer, and native bee expert who uses her photography to raise awareness about the decline of native bee species and their complex ecosystems.  Her new book, The ABCs of California Native Bees, a compendium of text about and stunning photos of native bees in their California habitats, has just been published by Berkeley's Heyday Books.  Learn how a conservation photographer goes about her work and how she finds those bees.

Millions of Americans see themselves as "conflicted omnivores," worrying about the ethical and environmental implications of their choice to eat animals. Yet their attempts to justify their choices only obscure the truth of the matter. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. John Sabonmatsu, Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.  His recently published book, The Omnivore’s Deception, provides a deeply observed philosophical meditation on the nature of our relationship with animals.  Sabonmatsu argues that killing and eating animals is unethical, regardless of whether they are "free range" or factory farmed. The problem with raising and killing animals for food isn't just that it's "bad for the environment,” but the wrong way to live a human life.

Even before the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb in 1968, we heard warnings that humanity would be doomed to a future of famine, hunger and starvation unless industrial agriculture were unleashed to grow food as efficiently as possible in every nook and cranny of the world’s arable lands to feed the “ten billion.” Those warnings continue today. But is it correct? In “The Enduring Fantasy of ‘Feeding the World’,” a recent article in the journal Spectre, four members of the Agroecology Research-Action Collective challenge those who make this claim.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation about feeding the world with Dr. Adam Calo, Assistant Professor in the Geography, Planning and Environment group at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Dr. Maywa Montenegro, Associate Professor of Agroecology and Critical Technology Studies in the UCSC Environmental Studies Department.