This Green Earth

This Green Earth is joined by Carly Ferro of the Utah Chapter of The Sierra Club and Alistair Bitsoi of the Utah Dine Bikeyah to discuss the new management plan for the now reduced Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. The original comprehensive plan for management was superceded by the Trump administration in 2017 with the reduction in area. Carly and Alistair discuss the magnitude of differentiation between the existing and the proposed management plan.

Carolyn Wawra and Troy Holding from Recycle Utah join This Green Earth to discuss the Center's sale of construction materials. ReUse People of America partners with Recycle Utah and delivers these materials. All materials have nails removed and are taken from deconstructed homes of up to 15,000 square feet and include anything from beams, TGI joists, 2x4's, 2x6's, kitchen cabinets and granite countertops.

Jon Gertner, author of New York Times Bestseller The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future , joined Chris and Nell to talk about Greenland's wild past and early adventurers, its importance to climate science, and the impacts of climate change on this remote landscape.

In 2018, the state of Utah initiated a Harmful Algal Bloom (HOB) monitoring program to monitor toxic blooms of cyanobacteria in the state's lakes and reservoirs. Kelsee York and Sarah Beth Ross, the water quality technicians that run this program, joined Chris and Nell to explain what, exactly, HABs are, why they happen, how they are tracked, and best practices to stay safe.

In the second half of the show, we are speaking with Janice Gardner, Conservation Ecologist with Wild Utah Project, a Utah non-profit that focuses on Science in Service of Wildlife and Wildlands. She shares a few of their latest projects – including everything from pollinators to stream restoration - and also how you can get involved and help with field work!

In the first half of the show today, we speak with an author who is being compared to Edward Abbey for his “angry, eloquent, and urgent” writing. Christopher Ketcham, author of This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are ruining the American West joins us in the first part of the show. As an investigative journalist, Ketcham has journeyed around the American West for over a decade, and has found much of the region degraded by private industry operating at public expense. He covers

During the second half of the show, Chris and Nell were joined by local father - son business team Peter and Matt Murray of Stardust Sustainables. This Park City based company produces reusable bags that are also easily compostable, eliminating any waste at the end of their life.

PurpleAir is a Salt Lake based company that manufactures affordable air quality monitoring devices that report data in real time. Better yet, the data they gather is shared online through a map, enabling anyone with internet access to check on air quality in their area, and to make informed decisions about their activity. Founder Adrian Dybwad joined Chris and Nell on the show to talk about his company.

During the second half of the show, Nell and Chris learned about the Burn Smart Program in Summit County from Summit County's environmental health director Phil Bondurant. Residents can receive financial support in order to swap out a wood-burning stove for a cleaner and healthier source of heat. Phil also discussed the County's air quality monitoring efforts with Purple Air and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.

During the first half of the show, Nell and Chris spoke with Michael Erb, post-doctoral researcher at Northern Arizona University, regarding a recent publication by 19 scientists from 8 countries. Using 700 data sources, the group reconstructed 2000 years of climate history to reveal that although parts of the planet have warmed and cooled in the past, no past events compare in magnitude and geographic extent to the unprecedented warming we are currently experiencing. https://www.nature.com