Who's Saving the Planet?

In episode 22, Tony and Lex meet Bertrand Piccard — the legendary pilot who circumnavigated the globe with a solar-powered aircraft. Before that, he completed the trip in a hot-air balloon! He's also a psychiatrist. A hypnotist. And a hang-gliding champion. And Captain Piccard is still traveling the world. Only this time, he's on a quest to find 1000 solutions that can protect the environment in a profitable way. As founder/chairman of the Solar Impulse Foundation, he's globetrotting to all corners of the planet, presenting these solutions to world leaders and key decision-makers, urging them to fast-track their implementation. The future looks a bit brighter with Captain Piccard guiding us at the helm. 

Farms, and specifically dairy farms, were traditionally a centerpiece of economic livelihood and cultural heritage in the rural North East. In the last 70 years they've come under tremendous economic pressure, forcing closures across the north east and migration of dairy production to Midwest and Southwest. This week we speak with Dan Horan, CEO of Five Acre Farms, about the marketing and supply chain solution he's developed to give those farms, and farmers, a fighting chance. 

And, a special guest on the intro! Dear friend, environmentalist, and Yale School of Forestry grad, Andy Beck, lends his expertise on the importance of small scale farms to provide context. 

Back to Dan... Five Acre's strategy is to consolidate the farms behind a single brand, which sells at a premium. This signals to the customer the quality is better and that their purchase supports local farms, while providing enough of a profit margin to keep those farms in businesses.

Considering the alternative, it better work. Mid/small scale farms were once the lifeblood of the US, providing generational job security, purpose, high quality food and farming practices that are sustainable. The challenges these days are immense: government regulation including a price control on milk (unique across commodities), large scale farms that sacrifice quality for profit while destroying the health of the land and creating torturous conditions for animals, pressure to move to monoculture (single crops) that reduces the vitality of the soil (really bad for lots of reasons) and more. Dan digs into (sorry, unavoidable pun) how branding and marketing may provide the tools the little guys need to fight back.

When you're unemployed, sites like LinkedIn or Indeed feel more like a rabbit hole than job-search platforms. That's especially the case if you're on the hunt for something more niche... specialized... or challenging. For Evan Hynes, climate change is the "mother of all challenges." And there were no websites that made finding a job in this space conducive. That is, until, Evan launched one. This week, WSTP hosts Tony and Lex sit with the founder of Climate.Careers. Discover what corners of the industry are hiring, what trends bode well for remote workers and why it's crucial to find that intersection where your passions and talents converge. 

The 5/6th grade class of NYC's Pine Street School host this episode of Who's Saving the Planet, and they're bringing the heat! Since March they've been schooling from home, and they want to know what will need to change before they can get back to the classroom. Who better to answer those questions than WSTP longtime friend and guest, CEO of the Center for Active Design Joanna Frank. Join them as they dig into the important questions, like: will the subway be safe? Do we have to wear masks? What about the air in the buildings, how do we know it's clean? 

Most of our episodes are dedicated to people who are saving the planet today, but in this edition of CONTEXT we dig into how we're preparing the next generation to save the planet tomorrow. The team at TED-ED, led by founding director Logan Smalley, and  has long been in the business of making complex issues accessible, entertaining and actionable for students of all ages. The TED-ED team transforms the expert videos on the TED  platform into animated versions geared toward a younger audience- and then they dub those videos in a variety of language so students from all over the world can participate in the panacea of learning. 

They've recently expanded their offerings to include a curated series of videos  specifically designed for teaching about our home, called Earth School. Before digging into the episode we suggest you take a spin through the classroom, check it out here: https://ed.ted.com/earth-school The  program is composed of 6 weeks, each of which has a particular theme, like the Nature of Society, or the Nature of Change. Each week they've selected five videos on that particular topic, and provided supporting material like follow up lessons, discussion board, and teaching tools. As Logan says in the episode, the idea is to not just provide the teachers with a dimensional tool (video), but a three dimensional platform that goes deeper into subject allowing for further research, segmenting the students into appropriate teaching groups, and much, much more. 

But wait, there's more! The team at TED has created a somewhat cryptic (stay tuned, it's evolving!) project called COUNTDOWN. Here's the website: https://countdown.ted.com/. The overarching message is that we have a limited time to take our global carbon emissions down to zero, and it's going to take all of us to get there.  The project is still undergoing some tweaks (responding to the Corona world), so it's not exactly what the specific outcome will be, but given their previous work it's absolutely worth getting involved and paying attention. 

As the husband of a teacher this one hit home for me. Thanks for listening in, and thanks to Logan and the TED team for the work they're doing- bravo! 

A mechanical bug just might be the answer to solving the world's plastic problem — a 6 billion-ton problem. That's how much plastic is in the environment. It piles up onto our land into trash heaps, and clogs our oceans, forming islands. It's beyond gross. "The question still remains," Scarab Tech co-founder Simon Davis tells us. "What on Earth do we do with this ever growing mountain of plastic?" 

Simon and his fellow co-founder, Jeffrey Barbee, have an answer. These beetle bros educate Lex and Tony on the technological advancements they made by "feeding" their mechanical creation excess trash, which is then transformed into fuel that can power electrical grids. So not only is this "Dung Beetle" gobbling up our garbage, it also has the ability to solve an extremely important issue: energy poverty.

Impoverished communities either rely on archaic solutions like coal, or have zero energy resources at all. Meanwhile, plastic continues to pollute local water resources. Can a fire-belching beetle come to the rescue? Sounds like science fiction, but it's not — this "scarab" solution can solve a very real, and devastating, crisis. 

Consumer facing companies are in the news constantly touting "green" initiatives, socially responsible campaigns, and feel good stories that make you wonder whether the marketing budget is bigger than the actual investment in changing their business practices for the better. And those are the one's who are defending a consumer facing brand- what we don't hear about are the companies farther up the supply chain that don't have a consumer presence and aren't as sensitive to negative impacts on their brand, but none the less have a tremendous impact on the environment. Getting these companies to care about, let alone change, their effect on the environment is a huge challenge, and vitally important. 

That's where Mighty Earth comes in. CEO Glenn Hurowitz explains how they've developed a "perfect storm" tactical approach to achieving the strategic outcomes that will influence upstream businesses like Cargill- one of the world's largest producers of meat. He explains how in order to get these massive companies, generally happier to work in the shadows than expose themselves to consumer facing pressure, Mighty Earth employs a multi-layered influence campaign involving consumer awareness, grassroots activation, financial pressure, political influence, and competitive deterrence. 

And because it's an election year (and we just couldn't resist), we dig into the political moment we're in now, and the one we need to be in come November 4th. How will we rally the political capital needed to push through an ambitious climate agenda? What lessons from previous administrations are salient, and how can we use them to not make the same mistakes in the future? 

With their powers combined, planeteers Lex and Tony bring you this super-sized episode featuring one of the most brilliant scientists working in the renewable energy industry today. He's Dr. Reginald Parker — aka Dr. Green Power! His base of operations is in "Hot-Lanta" — but the solar panel technology he innovated can be found all over the world. His mantra: "Use energy better and then use better energy!” Listen in as Dr. Parker reveals the genesis of his startup, Optimal Power Solutions, and the positive impact it has on the environment — starting with hospitality! So as the country begins to open up again and you find yourself itching to travel, you just might end up booking a room at a "smart" hotel that's monitored by Dr. Green Power himself through his Artificially Intelligent bots. The upside for business owners? Lower energy costs and higher profits. The upside for us? A cleaner and healthier planet. Last but not least, Dr. Parker unveils how he and his MIT classmates influenced the creation of one of Lex and Tony's favorite superheroes — Captain Planet! Fitting, since this episode was recorded on National Superhero Day. Tune in now for a nerd celebration unlike any other. 

“Sometimes you need to understand that a small change in a big problem is a big change.” Words of subtle wisdom from the founder of Eva, Tamara Mumcuoglu.

In this week’s episode we discuss the technology Tamara and her team developed- specifically, a means of recycling old concrete in order to reduce the need for a harmful byproduct of coal power plants in creating new concrete- but also how much humanity is required to attempt something ambitious. Tamara is a gifted scientist, having invented a new adaptation of a wind turbine in graduate school. She had her first moment of inspiration as an entrepreneur  shortly thereafter, that no matter how good the solution, if it isn’t solving a problem there’s not a market for it. So when she started her second company, Eva, she went looking for the problem first. We discuss the solution she crafted, the path that led her there, and the lessons she learned along the way. In a personal note, it’s was inspiring to see someone technically brilliant express such humanity.