The IMPERATIVE Podcast

In this episode I had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Wendy Pentland, a personal coach, and a recently retired professor of occupational therapy at Queens University. 

I’d been thinking for some time that it would be worthwhile doing a podcast that explores the anxieties and fears that so many listeners are telling me they are experiencing around the emerging realities of Climate Change, and how they might better cope with them or channel them in a positive direction. 

Wendy has worked as a professional coach for more than 15 years, coaching over 500 people in all walks and spheres of life -  professionals, academics, executives, in the private sector, public sector, large organizations, small businesses, private practices, academia, healthcare and medicine. With all that experience, I thought Wendy would be the perfect person to help us explore our climate-change worries. 

Wendy’s coaching approach is grounded in the belief that people are motivated primarily by two desires: to fulfill their own potential and to make a meaningful contribution to the world; to make a difference. People frequently have difficulty fulfilling these desires because they govern themselves with beliefs and fictions that hold them back and blind them to what may be greater possibilities. 

I thought I would interview Wendy, but in the end, she interviewed me. It turned out to be the best approach. Instead of listening to Wendy and me talk in very general terms about how we might all deal with our common climate-change worries, you get to hear a world-class coach help me with my own personal climate-change worries.  So, I am standing in for you, the listener, because for coaching to work, it has to be very personal and specific.  However, I am pretty sure that everyone listening will find something they can apply to themselves from this interview on my fears and sadness about the state we are in.  As with all the interviews in the series, we end up agreeing on the importance of hope, even in the face of the wicked challenges now on our doorstep.

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Wendy-Pentland

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The theme of Episode 013 is hope. There are clearly no easy answers, and no easy fixes to the terrible environmental and social problems ahead of us. But I continue to believe that however dark the future may seem, pessimism and defeatism are not going to help. So, I thought it might be worthwhile for us to recall some of the thoughts our previous podcast guests had about hope and optimism in the face of the tremendous challenges we now face. This episode is a compilation of excerpts of some of the conversations I had with guests about hope and optimism. I hope you enjoy it!

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Hope_in_Dark

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

It’s been a real pleasure producing this series! I’ve learned a lot, as I hope you have!  So thanks very much for tuning in! Instead of trying to summarize all of the ideas explored over the year, I have instead focused on three themes that really seemed to resonate with listeners, and have pulled excerpts from the podcasts that best exemplified these themes. I also thought it would be appropriate to close this year’s podcast series with excerpts of the answers to the question that I typically asked at the end of each interview. And that is: “What advicewould you offer listeners about what they can do to be a part of making a difference in meeting the challenges of the 21st Century imperative?”

I look forward to returning in 2019 for another year of podcasts where we will continue to explore the approaches and insights of scientists, designers, planners, engineers, business entrepreneurs, and other successful change-makers, who are finding effective ways to meet the challenges of21st Century Imperative.

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Pod_Year_Review

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this podcast I had the great pleasure of interviewing Rahul Mehrotra. Rahul is a practicing architect and educator, splitting his time between his professional practice in Mumbai, and teaching at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, where he is a professor and Director of Urban Design program. Rahul has executed a wide range of projects across India, and has also written, co-authored and edited dozens of books on Mumbai, its urban history, its historic buildings, public spaces and the planning process.

In our podcast I talk with Rahul about the social and environmental purpose that underpin much of his work, as well the important insights he has gained from his research of the Kumbh Mela, and later explorations of impermanent habitations that may provide us with important understandings for how we might more effectively respond to future large-scale migrations of climate refugees.

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Rahul_Mehrotra

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page. 

In this episode, I speak with Peter Howard, an expert on sustainability and climate change policy, and more recently, carbon sequestration.

Peter and I discuss how to develop effective climate and carbon policy, as well delving into how biological carbon emissions sequestration technology works, including how it might be scaled to address ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

His career to date has included a combination of both public and private sector experience, including positions as an Ontario Government policy maker at the Ministry of the Environment, as a management consultant for Price Waterhouse Cooper, and currently, as the Vice President of Sustainability and Project Development at Pond Technologies - a Canadian biotech start-up.

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Peter_Howard

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this podcast I spoke with Dale Prest, CEO of the Climate Forest Company (CFC). We talked about the global carbon cycle and our future ability to reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and existing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide through more effective forest management practices. As the CEO of CFC Dale explores and devises strategies to fight climate change through sustainable forest management, for example, by incenting maritime woodlot owners to manage their forests to store carbon, and by creating innovative forest products that displace fossil-fuel intensive products like concrete and steel.

In our conversation we discuss how the sustainable management of forests is an important opportunity for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations – that are now over 400ppm. Dale points out that current clear-cutting practices by many of the world’s forest harvesting companies accounts for 20 percent of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere (!), and that simply by changing forest management and harvesting methods we could make a huge dint in our global greenhouse gas emissions. We also talk about the global carbon cycle, and our future ability to reduce both emissions and existing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Dale_Prest

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Brad Bradford.

I first met Brad in 2011 when he was the President of the Canadian Association of Planning Students, and I was speaking about Resilience in the face of Climate Change Impacts at the annual CAPS conference he had helped organize. I distinctly remember being very impressed when I first met Brad, especially by his keen awareness of the planning issues associated with Climate Change, as well as complex realities of trying to address these issues.

Brad is now an urban planner and community activist, with specialty expertise in sustainable and district energy planning, a passionate cyclist and competitive bike racer, and he is now entering the world of politics by running for Toronto City Council in Beaches-East York (Ward 19). 

Until leaving the City of Toronto to run for City Council, Brad was responsible for Stakeholder Engagement and Special Projects in the Office of the Chief Planner at the City of Toronto where he spent his time working with government, the private sector, non-profits, and community groups to broaden discussions around the kind of city we want to be. Brad is passionate about in the interconnected issues of inclusivity, affordability, transit and the environment.

Through his role at the City, and as a future City Councillor, Brad is working to diversify voices in decision-making and bring more people to the table to discuss city-building issues. In 2016 Brad won the Canadian Institute of Planners President’s Award for his work on the FutureFORWARD Task Force. And as an avid cyclist, Brad launched the Toronto Hustle project in 2017 to develop the next generation of Canadian athletes, while providing a platform for active transportation advocacy across North America.

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Brad_Bradford 

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Brad Bradford.

I first met Brad in 2011 when he was the President of the Canadian Association of Planning Students, and I was speaking about Resilience in the face of Climate Change Impacts at the annual CAPS conference he had helped organize. I distinctly remember being very impressed when I first met Brad, especially by his keen awareness of the planning issues associated with Climate Change, as well as complex realities of trying to address these issues.

Brad is now an urban planner and community activist, with specialty expertise in sustainable and district energy planning, a passionate cyclist and competitive bike racer, and he is now entering the world of politics by running for Toronto City Council in Beaches-East York (Ward 19). 

Until leaving the City of Toronto to run for City Council, Brad was responsible for Stakeholder Engagement and Special Projects in the Office of the Chief Planner at the City of Toronto where he spent his time working with government, the private sector, non-profits, and community groups to broaden discussions around the kind of city we want to be. Brad is passionate about in the interconnected issues of inclusivity, affordability, transit and the environment.

Through his role at the City, and as a future City Councillor, Brad is working to diversify voices in decision-making and bring more people to the table to discuss city-building issues. In 2016 Brad won the Canadian Institute of Planners President’s Award for his work on the FutureFORWARD Task Force. And as an avid cyclist, Brad launched the Toronto Hustle project in 2017 to develop the next generation of Canadian athletes, while providing a platform for active transportation advocacy across North America.

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Pamela Robinson.  Pamela is the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Strategic Initiatives for the Faculty of Community Services at Ryerson University, an Associate Professor for the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson, and a registered professional planner. Her areas of expertise include urban sustainability, environmental design and planning, urban governance, and public engagement.

I have admired Pamela’s work in the urban sustainability space for a number of years, so it was a real pleasure to have the opportunity to talk with her about urban planning and the challenges of the Twenty First Century Imperative. 

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Pamela_Robinson

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page. 

In this episode I had the pleasure of speaking with Eric Corey Freed, an award-winning architect, author, and global speaker.  His role and title at Morrison Hershfield, an international Building Science firm, is “Sustainability Disruptor,” a role that has him identifying solutions to problems most teams didn't know were holding them back.  If you’ve ever seen him present or watched one his TEDx talks, you will know that he is as much a stand-up comedian as a sustainability thought-leader, so I was very excited to sit down with him and discuss the challenges presented by the Twenty First Century Imperative.

Eric is the author of 11 books, including "Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies.”  In 2012, he was named one of the 25 "Best Green Architecture Firms" in the US, and one of the "Top 10 Most Influential Green Architects."  In 2017, he was named one of Build's American Architecture Top 25.  He holds a prestigious LEED Fellow award from the US Green Building Council.

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Eric_Corey_Freed

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.