Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, North American Director for 350.org, joins us again this week to discuss the importance of racial justice in the climate fight, how organizers should respond now, and how the movement can become more inclusive. 

Then, Josh Wakely, director of the new Pearl Jam "Retrograde" video, takes us behind the scenes of the making of the video. He explains why he wanted Greta Thunberg involved in the project and why he wanted to address the climate crisis in his art. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Thank you to our sponsor Hero Power. Learn more about Hero Power's nationwide Solar Share program.

Follow 350.org on Twitter

Follow Josh's production company Grace on Instagram

Articles Reference on The Show And Further Reading:

The climate movement's silence by Emily Atkin

There Is No Climate Justice Without Defunding the Police by Brian Kahn

Busy week! Finally, one of the 14 climate lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry will go to court, as Exxon faces trial this week. We talk to Umair Irfan of Vox about what's at stake with these litigation efforts, how it compares to the Big Tobacco in the 1990s, and what the 2020 Democratic candidates are saying about it.  

Then, we are joined by Liz Perera, Sierra Club's Climate Policy Director, talks about why mayors around the country will be flying into Washington D.C., to advocate for a federal clean energy bill. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

Follow Umair Irfan on Twitter @umairfan

Follow Sierra Club on Twitter @SierraClub

Further Reading: 

Jamie Henn pulls no punches when he criticizes Big Oil's role is high prices at the gas pump. As he explains in this week's episode, skyrocketing energy costs can be attributed to oil companies price gouging and war profiteering during the current crisis with the war in Ukraine. And his organization, Fossil Free Media has a new campaign to confront the issue. The organization recently launched STOP, which stands for Stop the Oil Profiteering and is working with members of the U.S. Congress and advocacy groups to pass the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax. On this episode, Henn explains exactly what the tax would do, who would benefit from passing it, and why he believes Big Oil companies are preying on consumers. We also discuss the state of climate activism in 2022, why going after Big Oil is good politics, and how to fight burnout after a number of political setbacks and ongoing crises.

And be sure to check out Clean Creatives and People vs Fossil Fuels.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

The burning of fossil fuels has warmed our planet, polluted our air, and poisoned our water. On top of all of that, fossil fuel companies require billions of dollars in subsidies just to stay alive, and even with those government handouts they were on their last leg in 2016. So why did the Trump Administration focus so much of its efforts on bolstering the dying industry? And what are the long term effects of the pro-fossil fuel administration?

This week, we speak with Dr. Shanti Gamper-Rabindran about her new book "America's Energy Gamble". Dr. Gamper-Rabindran is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

Buy “America's Energy Gamble"

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

This week, Bob Henson gives us an update on the 2020 hurricane season and what happened when Hurricane Laura made landfall last week (3:07). 

Then, Vann R. Newkirk II joins the show to talk about "Floodlines," which looks back on the 15th anniversary of the levees breaking after Hurricane Katrina and the unnatural disaster that followed (32:33). 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss their thoughts on Hurricane Laura, the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and the E.P.A. removing protections from toxic waste from coal plants.

Further Reading:

The Thinking Person's Guide to Climate Change, 2 ed. by Bob Henson

Typhoon Maysak on track to slam South Korea

E.P.A. Relaxes Rules Limiting Toxic Waste From Coal Plants

2020’s “extremely active” hurricane season, explained

Some Louisiana residents won't have power for weeks, if not months, after Hurricane Laura

A post-Laura heat wave has no name

For many concerned with climate change, establishing a carbon fee is a step in the right direction when it comes to market-based solutions. Mark Reynolds of the Citizens' Climate Lobby argues that the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, a bill his group is pushing for in Congress, is a bipartisan way to do exactly that. Mark discusses the bill, his organization's goals, and even tells a few Don Cheadle and Bradley Whitford stories. 

Also, Chad the Bird is back to talk about the damaging deforestation taking place in the Amazon as a result of the policies of Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

The world lost a legendary biologist and conservationist when Dr. Thomas Lovejoy passed away in December at the age of 80. Carter Roberts, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund in the United States, knew Dr. Lovejoy well. So we asked him to join us on the podcast today to honor the memory of Dr. Lovejoy and share what he meant to WWF and talk about the legacy he leaves behind. Carter also discusses the recent passing of another conservation legend, Dr. E.O. Wilson, and what he meant as a luminary in his field and his contributions to WWF.

Later in the show, we replay our May 2020 interview with Dr. Thomas Lovejoy. 

Read Carter Roberts' "In Memoriam—Dr. Thomas Lovejoy"

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

Introducing a new four-part series, Climate Citizen, in collaboration with Global Citizen. Over the next four weeks, we will be discussing some of the biggest issues we face as we combat the climate crisis in 2022 and beyond. This week, we look at halting climate change and limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. To discuss this critical topic, Dr. Simon Evans, deputy editor and policy editor of Carbon Brief, and Azeez Abubakar, Global Citizen Fellow and Policy and Advocacy Chair of the Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network, join the show. We talk about the current projections for global warming, how world leaders need to act in 2022, how activists and organizers can push policymakers, businesses, and individuals to do more, and how increased warming is driving inequality and deadly impacts across the globe. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

About Global Citizen

Global Citizen is the world's largest movement of action takers and impact makers dedicated to ending extreme poverty now. With over 10 million monthly advocates, our voices have the power to drive lasting change around sustainability, equality, and humanity. Global Citizen posts, tweets, messages, votes, signs, and calls to inspire those who can make things happen to act — government leaders, businesses, philanthropists, artists, and citizens — together improving lives. By downloading the Global Citizen app, Global Citizens learn about the systemic causes of extreme poverty, take action on those issues, and earn rewards with tickets to concerts, events, and experiences all over the world. Global Citizens have taken over 28.4 million actions since 2009. Today, these actions, in combination with high-level advocacy work, have led to over $35.4 billion being distributed to our partners around the world, impacting 1.09 billion lives in the fight to end extreme poverty. Check out Global Citizen's Climate Work and follow on Twitter,  YouTube, and Instagram.

Further Reading:

COP26: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Glasgow

I Went to COP26 to Speak Up for Africa’s Youth. I Had Big Expectations, This Was the Reality.

Analysis: Which countries are historically responsible for climate change?

On today's show, we speak to Tom Steyer, former presidential candidate and co-chair of California's Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery, about fighting climate change and this economic downturn simultaneously. This is a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation. Why hasn't the federal government done more to put forth climate legislation? Is climate change the greatest market failure? Are divestment campaigns a good idea? Tom weighs in on all of this and more. 

Ty and Brock also discuss Maddie Stone's piece in Grist about online grocery shopping and Earth's new record for CO2 in the atmosphere. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Thank you to our sponsor Hero Power. Learn more about Hero Power's nationwide Solar Share program.

Follow Tom Steyer on Twitter

Follow NextGen America on Twitter

Recently, the House held hearings on Big Oil to allow former Exxon scientists to testify and explain what the company knew about climate change and when they knew it. E&E News' Nick Sobczyk breaks down the day and what Democrats in the House may want to accomplish with these hearings. Also, as a prominent Republican lawmaker complains about the hearings being held by the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee, Earther's Yessenia Funes explains why that's exactly the right place for these hearings to occur. 

Finally, InsideClimate News' Nicholas Kusnetz reviews the first week of Exxon's trial in New York, tells us the central question that will likely decide the case, and describes some of the courtroom drama that has already occurred. 

AND WE ANNOUNCED A LIVE SHOW WOOHOOO! Get tickets to The Climate Pod Live at Lincoln Hall in Chicago on November 18th at 7 pm here. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

Follow Yessenia Funes on Twitter @yessfun

Follow Nick Sobczyk on Twitter @nick_sobczyk

Follow Nicholas Kusnetz on Twitter @nkus

Further Reading: 

Yessenia Funes' "Why the Oil Industry's Climate Denial Is a Civil Rights Issue" 

For years, we've watched as Bill Weir has brought climate storytelling to one of the biggest news networks on television. On CNN, Bill has traveled the world to cover everything from extreme weather disasters to cutting-edge climate solutions. And throughout an incredibly eventful career, he's learned life lessons he hopes his children and others will consider to preserve what we love most on this warming planet. Bill joins the show this week to explain why chose this career path, what he enjoyed most about his early days as a sports reporter and actor, and what he sets out to accomplish every day on the climate beat. 

Bill Weir is the Chief Climate Correspondent at CNN. He’s an Emmy Award-winning journalist, who has reported from all fifty states and more than 50 countries on every continent. His new book is Life as we Know it (Can Be) - Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest report, Mitigation of Climate Change, provides an update on the planet's current trajectory for global warming, the failings of governments to live up to their climate promises, and the solutions that need to be rapidly implemented to drastically reduce emissions and limit future warming. This is part three of its Sixth Assessment Report.

Dr. Paulina Jaramillo joins us to discuss the report and the section of the report which she was the Coordinating Lead Author, the decarbonization of transportation.

If you haven't already, listen to our conversation here with IPCC lead author Dr. Ed Hawkins on part one of Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. And be sure to check our interview with Prof. Jörn Birkmann on part two of the Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Impacts, Adaptations, and Vulnerability.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

The American Climate Corps, an initiative that will employ 20,000 Americans in its first year to combat the climate crisis, is launching this week as the Biden Administration delivers on another campaign promise. Learning from previous national service programs such as FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps and AmeriCorps, the American Climate Corps will give young people the opportunity to learn new skills, build a pathway to a career in the clean energy economy, and earn a competitive wage.

On this special Earth Day 2024 episode, White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi joins us to explain how the American Climate Corps works, how people can participate, and why more money should be invested in growing the program to expand its reach and impact. We also talk about President Biden's Solar For All announcement which will fund $7 Billion in clean energy grants.

Learn more about the American Climate Corps at www.ACC.gov

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, we look at a few of the more disastrous aspects of climate adaptation and energy management in the face of changing weather and rising temperatures. First, we untangle the messy Pacific Gas and Electric blackouts last week with The Guardian's Susie Cagle, who explains why the power was shutoff for almost one million people and why it's so difficult for the utility to change. 

Then, Paris Martineau, Staff writer, WIRED, joins us to discuss why big tech HQs were spared from the PG&E blackouts despite many of their close neighbors losing power. 

Finally, investigative journalist Jeff Ernst talks about the essay he wrote for California Sunday Magazine and the climate movers in Honduras, who are unable to farm and must relocate to live.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

Follow Susie Cagle on Twitter @susie_c

Follow Paris Martineau on Twitter @parismartineau

Follow Jeff Ernst on Twitter @jeffgernst

Further Reading: 

This week, we look at the widespread destruction that has been caused by the Australian bushfires and misinformation circulating to create a bizarre counter-narrative to argue against climate change as a main factor driving the crisis. 

Brian Kahn of Earther joins the show to explain how this misinformation started spreading and what impact this has had on news coverage. Then, Dr. Bin Jalaludin of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney explains how these ongoing bushfires cause air quality and health problems. Finally, Dr. Stuart Khan (also of UNSW) talks about potential water quality issues caused by the bushfires and how water systems are damaged by the disaster. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Follow Brian Kahn on Twitter

Follow Dr. Bin Jalaludin on Twitter

Follow Dr. Stuart Khan on Twitter

Further Reading:

Dr. Stuart Khan for The Guardian, Bushfires threaten drinking water - and the consequences could last decades

Brian Kahn for Earther, It's Not Arson, You Absolute Fucking Morons 

Jessie Yeung for CNN, Australia Wildfires: Here's what you need to know

Sarah Martin for The Guardian, Emergency payments for people affected by Australia's bushfires 'seriously inadequate'

Ben Butler for The Guardian, Josh Frydenberg demands insurers provide unprecedented detail about bushfire property losses

Lily Mayers for ABC, NSW bushfires leave many struggling without insurance on their homes

Amaani Siddeek for The Guardian, Australia fires: heavy rain and cooler temperatures 'unlikely' to end bushfire threat

Bad actors continue to push fake talking points to obscure the truth on climate change and slow down action. So how we combat these common myths and inspire people to do more? That's the focus of today's show and a new book by our guest, Dr. Genevieve Guenther. In her new book, The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, Guenther argues that climate leaders should use sharper language that argues for transformative action and a windfall of benefits in the face of the massive, destructive threat of climate change. She joins the show to discuss how we talk about the costs of clean energy, why the "India and China" excuse needs to stop in American climate discource, and why dramatic drops in clean energy costs have lead some to be complacent on climate. 

Genevieve Guenther s the founding director of End Climate Silence and affiliate faculty at The New School, where she sits on the board of the Tishman Environment and Design Center. Her research has appeared in both scholarly journals and media outlets such as Scientific American, The New Republic, and MSNBC. You can purchase The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It here.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

On this installment of our series, The Road To COP26 Presented By Octopus Energy, we discuss gender equality and representation with Amiera Sawas, Director of Programmes and Research at Climate Outreach. She explains what we lose when women are underrepresented in climate media, climate negotiations, and climate science authorship, the specific burden women around the world face with the climate crisis, and how COP26 has faired when it comes to achieving its stated goal of achieving "the full and meaningful participation of women and girls in climate action."

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss what's at stake in the second week of COP26 and the depressing reality of nations undercounting emissions. 

Thank you to our sponsor Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity supplier. Octopus Energy is currently serving millions of homes around the globe in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, and Germany. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Further Reading:

Countries’ climate pledges built on flawed data, Post investigation finds

Negotiations at COP26 are about to get a lot tougher

The Australian bushfires keep burning, creating a growing path of devastation and destruction in its wake. One of the many horrific aspects of the crisis is the havoc these bushfires have wreaked on Australia's wildlife. It's estimated that more than one billion animals have been killed.  

Dr. Stuart Blanch, senior manager of Land Clearing and Restoration for WWF-Australia, joins the show this week to talk about how the bushfires have impacted local wildlife, what this means for the endangered koala population, and how climate change is increasingly creating conditions that threaten these habitats from ever being able to recover from the disaster. This is a hard conversation that confronts the reality of the climate crisis, but it is a necessary one. Dr. Blanch is a truly remarkable person.  

To donate to WWF Australia and learn more about the bushfire emergency, visit their website here: https://donate.wwf.org.au/

Follow WWF Australia on Twitter 

Follow Dr. Stuart Blanch on Twitter

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Further Reading: 

David Roberts, "1.5 degrees Celsius: The sad truth about our boldest climate target"

Reuters, "Australia's leaders unmoved on climate action after devastating bushfires"

This is Part 1 of our two-part series covering the 1970s oil crises in America. The conversations in this series help us understand how the oil crises in the 1970s reshaped American politics and our ability to combat the climate crisis for the next 50 years.

Jay Hakes joins the show to discuss his book Energy Crises: Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Hard Choices in the 1970s. Jay was the Administrator of the US Energy Information Administration under President Bill Clinton and the Director for Research and Policy for President Obama’s BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Commission. Jay also served 13 years as the Director of Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Library.

Be sure to check out "Energy Crises"

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

This week, we spoke with Dr. Richard Alley, a glaciologist and member of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaborative, about why this particular glacier - dubbed the 'Doomsday Glacier by Jeff Goodell - could raise sea levels beyond catastrophic levels and cause so much damage to coastal communities around the world. We also discuss how soon and how likely that might actually happen, and the latest findings that his group recently published.

Dr. Richard Alley is the Evan Pugh University Professor of Geosciences at Penn State, where he focuses on glaciology, ice sheet stability, and understanding how Earth’s climate has changed by examining ice cores.

Check out the International Thwaites Glacier Collaborative's presentation to the American Geophysical Union in December 2021.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Further Reading:

The Return of the Urban Firestorm. What happened in Colorado was something much scarier than a wildfire.

As an award-winning director, producer, showrunner, television and film writer, and author of six novels, "Fargo" creator Noah Hawley isn't afraid to tackle some of the biggest issues we face. His most recent work, the novel Anthem, is no different. Billed as "an adventure that finds unquenchable lights in dark corners" and a "leap into the idiosyncratic pulse of the American heart," Anthem takes an unflinching look at our most challenging problems and the obstacles we encounter as a society as we  attempt to address these crises. 

In this wide-ranging conversation, Hawley talks about why he wanted to write Anthem, why climate change plays such a crucial role in his characters thoughts and the novel's environment, how we address conspiracy in our culture, the influence of Kurt Vonnegut, the battle of good and evil in Fargo, and much, much more. 

 Read Anthem here

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

What do activists do when you have a U.S. president that actually takes climate change seriously? May Boeve, co-founder and Executive Director of 350.org and 350 Action, has a plan and she's ready to accelerate action by continuing to push for just, equitable transition to a sustainable future. She joins the show this week to discuss the beginning of the Biden Era and the end of the Trump presidency, and how she finds inspiration to keep fighting for climate. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss Climate Day, executive orders, and state rollbacks on protecting wetlands and clean energy standards.

Subscribe to our new Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website! 

Further Reading/Listening:

Biden is blitzing by David Roberts

New bill would strip protections for many of Indiana's wetlands by Sarah Bowman and London Gibson

If 2023 is anything like its predecessor, this year will be full of transformative events that change the trajectory of climate action across the globe. So what might happen this year that ends up defining our transition to clean energy transition and climate fight in 2023?

To help us answer this question, this week we feature a conversation with Tom Standage, Editor of The Economist's The World Ahead 2023. Tom also serves as Deputy Editor of The Economist and is the author of several books, including most recently “A Brief History of Motion." 

In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss how the war in Ukraine will continue to be a major driver of international change, both in the energy sector and beyond. We also talk about the future of democracy across the globe, inflation and recessions, how the perception of tech leaders is changing, and why Tom is optimistic about the future of climate action. 

Check out the full The World Ahead 2023 as well as Tom's editor note here.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Catherine Coleman Flowers is the author of "Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret" and the founder and current director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice. Since 2008, Catherine has been the rural development manager at the Race and Poverty Initiative of the Equal Justice Initiative. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Climate Reality Project, and as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary.

This week, she joins the show to talk about her career as an environmental justice advocate and her fight against sanitation inequality and the devastating impacts caused by the inability to provide affordable means to properly dispose of waste. We discuss the widespread and harmful problem of wastewater, how it stems from structural racism and class inequality, why it's been a long overlooked issue, and how to address the problem.  

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss 2020's historically active Atlantic hurricane season.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Check out our updated website! 

Further Reading:

The 2020 Hurricane Season in Rewind

In his new book, Paradise Falls, New York Times bestselling author Keith O'Brien details the true story of a working-class neighborhood in western New York that is suddenly confronted with a wide-spread environmental crisis in the late 1970s. O'Brien joins the show to discuss how he researched his book, why he wanted to revisit this story that made national headlines for years, how the tragedy that unfolded almost 50 years ago is still incredibly relevant today, and what we can learn from the ordinary people in western New York that took on the responsibility to become environmental heroes to fight for justice in their community.  

Buy Paradise Falls: The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, Dr. Parrish Bergquist joins the show to talk about her new study with Dr. Leah Stokes and Dr. Matto Mildenberger about Americans attitudes toward linking climate policy with other social and economic considerations. Do Americans support the fundamental ideas behind the Green New Deal? She reveals the results. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss Rebecca Leber's piece on Trump's new environmental brags, Lisa Friedman's article on the war against climate science, and David Roberts' piece on how air pollution impacts Black communities. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Thank you to our sponsor Hero Power. Learn more about Hero Power's nationwide Solar Share program.

Follow Dr. Parrish Bergquist on Twitter 

In Davos Man, an excellent new book by New York Times’ Global Economics Correspondent Peter S. Goodman, the case is clear: billionaires are making massive profits off extracting resources from the planet while social services are being gutted. From climate change to COVID-19, Goodman shows how decades of slashing taxes on the richest people and cutting social spending has accelerated the 21st century's greatest crises and threatened liberal democracy around the globe. How is this happening? Why is this happening? What can we do about it? In this in-depth, fascinating conversation, Goodman explains the path we took to get here and the direction we need to take now to better govern our societies and protect the future. 

Buy Davos Man

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Not all climate activism has been popular. Some of the most viral, disruptive protests have been met with backlash, even by some in the climate movement itself. As Dr. Margaret Klein Salamon notes, these activists are operating in "emergency mode," serving as a reminder that the climate crisis is a crisis and nothing should be prioritized above it. 

In the latest edition of her book Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth, Dr. Klein Salamon argues that too few of us are operating in emergency mode, even in the climate fight. So how do we get there? On today's show, we discuss what emergency mode looks like, the data-driven approach to understanding the role of protest in raising awareness and leading to electoral success, and the emotional benefits to honestly reckoning with the climate crisis. 

Read Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, Dr. Genevieve Guenther, founder and director of End Climate Silence, joins the show to discuss how to improve media coverage on climate topics. She tells us what strategies she uses, explains how language plays an important role in climate action, and why her past non-climate career helps her better understand how to communicate the crisis. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss Australia's medical costs due to the 2020 bushfire smoke pollution and efforts to commercialize an Alaskan national forest. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Check out our updated website! 

Check out the End Climate Silence website

On this installment of our series, The Road To COP26 Presented By Octopus Energy, we talk to the Hon James Shaw, New Zealand's Minister for Climate Change, Associate Minister for the Environment (Biodiversity), MP, and Co-Leader of the Green Party. We discuss what he learned from New Zealand's pandemic response and how that should inform global discussions on climate change. We also dig into why COP25 was such a big failure, what could be the biggest obstacles at COP26, and some of the biggest considerations at the intersection of climate action and adaptation and international finance. 

Listen to Minister Shaw's podcast What Comes After What Comes Next

Thank you to our sponsor Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity supplier. Octopus Energy is currently serving millions of homes around the globe in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, and Germany. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Dallas Goldtooth and Jane Kleeb have been fighting pipelines for years. Like so many others, opposing the Keystone XL pipeline has been a remarkable experience in their political and personal lives and part of an ongoing fight to bring about greater racial, economic, and environmental justice. As news last week confirmed TC Energy was finished with the Keystone XL pipeline and water protectors in Minnesota brought more attention to the construction of the Line 3 pipeline, Goldtooth and Kleeb joined the show to discuss how to continue to fight against pipelines, what President Biden needs to do now, and what's at stake as organizers keep up the pressure. 

Dallas Goldtooth is a Keep It In The Ground Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. Jane Kleeb is the author of Harvest the Vote, Chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, and President of Bold Nebraska.

Also, check out Pipeline Fighters and Stop Trump Pipelines.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Since 2000, the United States Global Change Research Program has periodically published a report on its assessment of the climate crisis, its current impacts, its potential threats, and the solutions available to mitigate the worst impacts and adapt as quickly as possible.  Last week, the interagency program published the Fifth National Climate Assessment. Despite accounting for just 4% of the world’s population, as a result of burning fossil fuels for more than a century, the US is responsible for approximately 17% of the global warming the planet is facing today. And while US emissions are falling, they’re not falling fast enough to meet the 2050 Net Zero target established by the Biden Administration. The report explores the health, economic, environmental, and social impacts of the climate crisis that Americans are experiencing now and it clearly states that all of those will get worse if America and the world doesn’t start cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately. 

Allison Crimmins, the Director of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, joins the show to discuss the report’s main findings, the extraordinary costs of the climate crisis that Americans are already facing, and the positive benefits that could be achieved today as soon as we start deploying sufficient mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Read the full report here: https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/

Check out the companion podcast to the Fifth National Climate Assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7EIxjQNbD8&t=8s

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

The climate movement faces mounting pressure in 2024. Record-setting temperatures and extreme weather disasters continue to devastate over a turbulent summer. Prominent plans to roll back environmental regulations and stiffle climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives have movement leaders pushing back on attacks. Is the climate movement able to handle the pressure at this critical moment? 

Few people are as equipped to answer that question as Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. Over his decades of climate and progressive leadership, Rev. Yearwood has advanced climate solutions with policymaking, culture change, direct action, and more. And he's part of a new initiative to educate people on critical issues like climate change during this transmorative year. 

The “2024 & Beyond: Creating Our Shared Future” campaign is reaching out with open town halls to educate and debate on key political issues and building a network of experts and organizations like Center for Climate Justice, Center for Popular Democracy, Hip Hop Caucus, Greenpeace, and Center for Oil and Gas Organizing.  

Rev. Yearwood Jr. joins the show this week to discuss his life and work, how change actually happens in the climate movement, why the climate movement needs to address its own weaknesses, and what strategies will be most effective in advancing progress and fighting off attacks. 

Rev. Yearwood Jr. is the President & CEO of Hip Hop Caucus. He is the host of the award-winning climate and environmental justice podcast The Coolest Show, Senior Advisor of Bloomberg Philanthropies Beyond Petrochemicals Campaign, and one of the most innovative advocates and strategists for racial justice and climate justice. He is a White House Champion of Change for Climate leadership and according to Rolling Stone he is a “New Green Hero.”

Related Links:

2024 & Beyond: Creating Our Shared Future

Hip Hop Caucus

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, we talk to MN350 Executive Director Sam Grant about climate activism and racial justice in Minneapolis. What's the role of a climate organization in the city where the protests started? Sam tells us what he and MN350 plan to do to fight for a more just and safe society.

Then, Data For Progress' Deputy Director for Climate Marcela Muholland on the opening Joe Biden has to win more younger voters. How can climate issues drive voter turnout? Marcela explains.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Thank you to our sponsor Hero Power. Learn more about Hero Power's nationwide Solar Share program.

Follow MN350 on Twitter

Follow Data For Progress on Twitter

Follow Marcela Muholland on Twitter

Articles Reference on The Show And Further Reading:

Great Britain heads for record coal-free period during lockdown

New bill would prohibit the president from nuking a hurricane

On this installment of our series, The Road To COP26 Presented By Octopus Energy, we talk about the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) release of part of a major report on the current state of the climate crisis, AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Hundreds of climate scientists were tasked with providing a physical science basis for policymakers to understand the past, present, and future of global warming. This is the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report on the state of the climate crisis. 

Dr. Ed Hawkins, one of the lead authors of the report, joins the show to explain some of the report's biggest findings, what it means for our climate future, and what we should learn to act now to avoid the worst consequences yet to come. Dr. Hawkins is a professor of climate science at the University of Reading and internationally known for the creation of the climate stripes, which are the visualization of warming over time. Everywhere you look you see Dr. Hawkins' climate stripes, on social media with #ShowYourStripes, on t-shirts, even during the opening ceremony of the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Check out The Climate Pod's YouTube Summary of the IPCC Report

Thank you to our sponsor Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity supplier. Octopus Energy is currently serving millions of homes around the globe in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, and Germany. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Further Reading/Listening:

Learn more about the Warming Stripes

Read AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.

This week, two Pultizer Prize-winning reporters join the show to discuss their new investigative series, “The Drowning South," and how the threat of sea level rise is causing a number of complex problems in America's southern coastal cities. The Washington Post's Chris Mooney, a reporter covering climate change, energy and the environment, and Brady Dennis, a reporter focusing on environmental policy, public health issues and climate impacts, explain why the American south is facing an unusual amount of problems with sea level rise, what's happening in the region compared to other parts of the country, and how flooding is causing a variety of issues testing local areas' ability to adapt.

The first three stories of “The Drowning South” series are available here:

The New Face of Flooding

A Hidden Threat  

Where Seas are Rising with ‘Unprecedented’ Speed

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Two great guests this week! First, Leslie Fields, senior director of environmental justice and healthy communities for The Sierra Club, joins the show to talk about how The Equitable and Just Climate Platform aims to help those most impacted by climate change. Then, John Schwartz, science writer for The New York Times, reviews his reporting on how climate change affected Hurricane Dorian, what scientists fear most with increasingly intensifying storms, and tries to untangle this very strange situation occurring at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). 

Ty and Brock also talk climate denial and, after Jonathan Franzen melted Climate Twitter with his piece in The New Yorker, irrational climate pessimism. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

Follow the Sierra Club on Twitter @SierraClub

Follow John Schwartz on Twitter @jswatz

Further Reading:

Learn more about the Equitable and Just Climate Platform here: https://ajustclimate.org/

John Schwartz in the New York Times, "How Has Climate Change Affected Hurricane Dorian" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/03/climate/hurricane-dorian-climate-change.html

NOAA Chief, Defending Trump on Dorian, Also Tries to Buoy Scientists https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/climate/neil-jacobs-noaa-hurricane-dorian.html

Commerce Chief Threatened Firings at NOAA After Trump's Dorian Tweets, Sources Say https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/09/climate/hurricane-dorian-trump-tweet.html

What on EARTH?! Newsletter: https://app.convertkit.com/landing_pages/455050/

Just in time for the New Year! Two exceptional guests talking about the future of energy! This episode, we're joined by Jigar Shah of Generate Capital and "The Energy Gang" podcast AND Julia Pyper, host of the "Political Climate" podcast and contributing editor for Greentech Media.

We dive into a wide range of energy topics - storage, hydrogen fuel cells, the path to renewable energy, litigation against fossil fuel corporations, and much more on the policies, politics, and predictions that will shape the next decade. We also leave you with an indie Canadian music recommendation and discuss our favorite Jimmy Buffett song. I'm not sure how that happen either, but this is an extraordinary hour of podcasting.  

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Centuries of systematically racist American policy has pushed Black communities into enduring the worst impacts of fossil fuel pollution and climate change. In her new book, Before the Streetlights Come On: Black America’s Urgent Call for Climate Solutions, Heather McTeer Toney outlines how Black Americans experience these injustices - from extreme heat to petrochemical toxins and many more. But as we confront the long history of environmental racism, how do we empower the most impacted communities to lead on climate solutions? In this conversation, McTeer Toney puts forth a plan and an understanding of why we need to attack these injustices with the greatest sense of urgency. 

Heather McTeer is the Executive Director of Bloomberg's Beyond Petrochemicals Campaign. She has also served as the mayor of Greenville, Mississippi and Southeast Regional EPA Administrator. 

Read Before the Streetlights Come On

Learn more about the Beyond Petrochemicals Campaign

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

On this installment of our series, The Road To COP26 Presented By Octopus Energy, we talk to Elizabeth Wathuti, the Global South Co-Chair of the COP26 Civil Society and Youth Advisory Council, about advocating for the Global South as one of the world's foremost young leaders in the climate movement. She explains how COP26 can better represent the needs and solutions of all people around the world and why most global leaders are failing to recognize the rampant inequality between nations during the COVID-19 and climate crises. Elizabeth also recalls how her early love of nature inspired her work and what she's doing to pass that on to a new generation.

Elizabeth is the founder of Green Generation Initiative, which has planted 30,000 tree seedlings in Kenya. She is a recipient of a Wangari Maathai Scholarship and full member of the Green Belt Movement. She was named one of the 100 Most Influential Young Africans by the Africa Youth Awards.  

Learn more about the Green Generation Initiative

Thank you to our sponsor Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity supplier. Octopus Energy is currently serving millions of homes around the globe in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, and Germany. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

This week, Tom Steyer joins the show again to talk about his new role as chairman of Joe Biden's Climate Engagement Advisory Council and get his thoughts on the vice president's new climate plan. We also discuss how to drive climate-concerned voters to the polls, what he's learned founding and working with NextGen America, and how he plans to help win down ballot races with GiveGreen.

Then, world-renowned climate scientist Dr. Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, explains why he's deeply concerned with new climate modeling data that could suggest greater climate sensitivity to carbon emissions and faster global warming as a result. Dr. Rockström explains how we should react and why 2020 is still a super year for climate action. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss their reaction to Biden's climate plan.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel!

Thank you to our sponsor Hero Power. Learn more about Hero Power's nationwide Solar Share program.

Further Reading:

The Gap in Joe Biden's $2 Trillion Climate Plan Reveals the Biggest Fight to Come by Brian Kahn

Joe Biden has endorsed the Green New Deal in all but name by Julian Brave NoiseCat

It's hard to see how the current meat industry is helping anyone but a handful of billionaires. In her new book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat, Forbes writer Chloe Sorvino reveals a fascinating look into this unsustainable system and how people are fighting to fix it. We discuss how the industry consolidated and crowded out competition, the scandals that have rocked the meat industry, and how innovation may come from more than just alternative protein products. 

Chloe Sorvino is head of food and agriculture coverage for Forbes

Read Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, we take a deep dive into how climate change is exacerbating extreme droughts and accelerating wildfires with bioclimatologist Park Williams. Dr. Williams is an associate professor at UCLA's Department of Geography. His particular expertise in the causes and consequences of drought guides us through a wide-ranging conversation on the transformative changes we are seeing in the American West as temperatures rise and how we should adapt to a future of more frequent droughts and dangerous wildfires. Dr. Williams is the recent co-author of the paper, "Uncertainties, Limits, and Benefits of Climate Change Mitigation for Soil Moisture Drought in Southwestern North America," and he explains the biggest findings of the research, how bad drought has been over the past two decades, and how this compares to historic megadroughts. 

You can learn more about Dr. Williams and his research at his website here.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Every year, billions of dollars are spent worldwide on carbon offsets, and the size of the market is expected to grow substantially over the next decade. But do carbon offset projects actually do what they're intended to do in the first place, which is lower carbon dioxide emissions and help communities around the world avoid worsening climate disasters from a warming planet?  Researchers at Corporate Accountability and journalists from The Guardian teamed up to answer this question and to dive deep into the claims of 50 of the largest carbon offset projects in the world. Rachel Rose Jackson, Director of Climate Research and Policy at Corporate Accountability, joins the show today to talk about what they found and what else Corporate Accountability is doing to protect our planet and people around the world from extractive and exploitative companies.

Check out the report here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/19/do-carbon-credit-reduce-emissions-greenhouse-gases

Learn more about Corporate Accountability: https://corporateaccountability.org/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

This is Part 2 of our two-part series covering the 1970s oil crises in America. You can listen to Part 1 with Jay Hakes here.

Professor Meg Jacobs joins the show to discuss her fantastic book Panic At The Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s. We discuss the rise of young Conservatives in the 70s and how the decade empowered them to influence policy for a half century, what Americans were doing when panic set in, and how the experience impacted long-term trust of government in the United States. The 70s were pretty weird! 

Meg Jacobs is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. She is also the author of Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, which won the Organization of American Historians’ Ellis W. Hawley Prize and the New England Historical Association’s James P. Hanlan Book Award. She is also the coauthor of Conservatives in Power: The Reagan Years, 1981–1989.

Buy Panic At The Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Dr. Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize in Economics recipient and Distinguished Professor of Economics at City University of New York, joins the show to talk about what's driving the world's rising inflation rates, how investments in climate solutions would impact inflation and the economy, and the prospects of Congress passing a climate spending bill. Dr. Krugman also provides his thoughts on the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates, whether or not the US is in a recession, and what all of this means for climate investments.

Plus, co-hosts Ty and Brock Benefiel discuss the importance of environmental and climate advocates building political power and the urgency to elect policymakers who will support climate solutions.

Further Reading:

Paul Krugman "I Was Wrong About Inflation"

Paul Krugman "Climate Politics Are Worse Than You Think"

Nathaniel Stinnett "Climate Movement Must Stop Hoping for Political Heroes"

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Solving the climate crisis is about more than just swapping out fossil fuels with renewables. Though renewable energy is required for a sustainable planet, understanding the political, social, and economic structures that have allowed for fossil fuels to be burned long after global warming reached dangerous levels is essential for attacking the root causes of the crisis. Professor Aviva Chomsky addresses these issues in her new book Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice. In this conversation, Professor Chomsky explains why social, racial, and economic justice is just as crucial as science in determining how humans can reverse climate catastrophe. We also discuss the Green New Deal, the Degrowth movement, tension between unions and the environmental movement, and why climate change is a democracy problem. 

Read Is Science Enough?

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

This week, Kim Stanley Robinson, renowned science fiction writer and author of "The Ministry For The Future," joins the show for a wide-ranging discussion on the systemic collapse that's led to the climate crisis, the power and importance of language and fiction in dissecting complicated policies and decisions, his problem with most economists, and what keeps him optimistic about what could happen in the future. He also tells us how the American leftist tradition helped shape his politics in the 1970s as a student and what it has been like writing fiction amid the parallel rise of neoliberalism over the course of his career. 

About Our Guest: Kim Stanley Robinson is an award-winning novelist and New York Times bestseller. He has authored more than 20 books and won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is well known for his bestselling Mars trilogy and in 2008, he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine.

Buy The Ministry For The Future

Further Reading/Listening:

Our conversation with Dr. Stephanie Kelton on MMT

Our conversation with Zachary Carter on Keynes and Climate

Zachary Carter's New York Times OpEd

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website! 

In order for the United States to hit its Net Zero Emissions Goal by 2050, it's estimated that 3,100 gigawatts of wind and 3,500 gigawatts of solar capacity will be need across America. If clean energy developers continue to site and build as they are doing now, the land required to host all of that solar and wind generation will be larger than the state of Texas! In addition to the massive amount of land required for these critical clean energy resources, we also need new transmission lines that bring the electricity generated back to the communities and homes that can actually use it.  All of this development can be harmful to the nearby lands, waters, and ecosystems if careful planning isn't undertaken. That's why The Nature Conservancy released their latest report "Power of Place: National".

This week, we spoke with Jessica Wilkinson, North American Renewable Energy Team Lead at The Nature Conservancy, and Nels Johnson, Senior Advisor for Renewable Energy for the Nature Conservancy, to talk about this report and explain the strategies and technologies necessary to reduce the impacts of America's clean energy transition by as much as 70%.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Three guests this week! First, Rebecca Leber (Mother Jones) recaps Trump's wild environmental speech on Monday and talks about the Green New Deal and Climate Debate!

Next, Katherine Hamilton (The Energy Gang Podcast) helps us understand the issues that might define the 2020 Democratic Primary and what policies she hopes to see implemented!

Finally, comedian Connor Ratliff (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Chris Gethard Show) explains #TeamEndlessWinter!

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

Buy Connor's album at https://statechampionrecords.bigcartel.com/product/the-spirit-of-ratliff

This week, Climate Reality's Strategic Partnerships Manager William J. Barber III joins the show to tell us about the organization's upcoming Leadership Corps' Global Training from July 18-26. Barber III explains how this year's event will provide a greater focus on environmental justice and discusses the piece he recently co-authored in The Nation with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, "Racism and Covid-19 Are a Lethal Combination."

Then, Silja Halle, Coordinator of Women, Natural Resources, Climate & Peace for the United Nations' Environment Programme, and Dr. Amiera Sawas, Senior Climate and Gender Justice Advisor at ActionAid UK, join the show to discuss the new UN report that highlights links between gender, climate, and security.

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss Dharna Noor's "Apparently It's Sue Big Oil Week" and "Climate Lawsuits Are Coming For Koch Industries" 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Thank you to our sponsor Hero Power. Learn more about Hero Power's nationwide Solar Share program.

On today's show, we're having some fun with one of our first in-person interviews with Adam Gardiner, guitarist/vocalist for Guster and co-founder of REVERB, which has helped lead the music climate revolution since 2004. We discuss why Adam started using his rock fame to promote climate action, how artists can green venues and help unite the music community to address the climate crisis, and what campaigns REVERB is focused on now. We recorded this live a few months ago, just hours before Guster took the stage and it's fantastic. 

More on REVERB:

REVERB is a nonprofit dedicated to empowering millions of individuals to take action toward a better future for people and the planet. REVERB partners with musicians, festivals, and venues to green their concert events while engaging fans face-to-face at shows to take environmental and social action. Check out their current campaigns, ways to take action, and help volunteer. Follow REVERB on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

For 70 years, building out and expanding American highways have been core parts to the entire US transportation project. But the initial effort to connect cities and states has created gigantic problems in the subsequent decades. Instead of fixing many of these critical issues, too often we see cities and states double down on the problem and make our transportation system worse. And carbon emissions from the transportation sector are a huge part of the climate fight. So what do we do about highways as these roads continue to expand and draw investment?

Our guest, Megan Kimble, has been looking for the answers. In her new book, City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and The Future of America's Highways, she both looks back at the origins of the American highway system and examines today's fight to determine what is happening and how decisions are being made that design our transportation system. We discuss the "freeway fighters" that are working to remove highways and prevent highways from being expanded, how federal investments favor highways over transit, how highways have been used to exacerbate racial inequities, and why climate activists are helping to make change. 

Megan Kimble is an investigative journalist and former executive editor at The Texas Observer. She has written about housing, transportation, and urban development for The New York Times, Texas Monthly, The Guardian, and Bloomberg CityLab. 

Check out City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and The Future of America's Highways

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, Zephyr Teachout, Fordham law professor and author of Break 'Em Up, joins the show to discuss how weakened antitrust regulations have led to environmental and employee harm, how fossil fuel subsidies have prevented stronger competition from renewables, and why breaking up monopolies is good for the planet.

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss the 60 Minutes segment on climate change and the differences between the Green New Deal and Joe Biden's Clean Energy Plan. 

Buy Zephyr Teachout's Break 'Em Up here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250200891

Join our book club and read All We Can Save: https://www.theclimatepod.com/post/join-us-for-the-climate-pod-book-club-all-we-can-save

Further Reading:

What Joe Biden was trying to say about the Green New Deal

How Joe Biden's climate plan compares to the Green New Deal

NEXT MONDAY: The Climate Pod is live at Lincoln Hall at 7 pm. GET YOUR TICKETS HERE

***

This week, we discuss the outbreak of bushfires in New South Wales in Australia. Peter Hannam of The Sydney Morning Herald joins the show to discuss the situation in New South Wales and how climate change is contributing to the problem.

Then, we talk to Stanford University's Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson about strategies and timelines for a 100% renewable energy future. He explains where he has found success, what technologies aren't working well, and what gives him hope about the transition to renewable sources. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

Follow Peter Hannam on Twitter 

Follow Mark Z. Jacobson on Twitter

Further Reading: 

Is there a link between climate change and bushfires? by Peter Hannam

The health and climate impacts of carbon capture and direct air capture by Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson

In 1986, Felicity Barringer was freelancing for the New York Times in Moscow when the Chernobyl Disaster occurred. She recounts her experience from that time as an American journalist in the Soviet Union, talks about being followed by the KGB, and shares what she liked about the HBO miniseries' "Chernobyl" and what she believes it got wrong about the disaster. This is a fascinating conversation.

Also, Chad The Bird delivers his weekly essay on Chernobyl. As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

This week, we talk to Julian Brave NoiseCat about a variety of climate issues. He tell us about his journey to the climate movement, how the Green New Deal developed, how the Democratic Primary process has influenced climate policy, and how the experience of Indigenous communities should help inform our adaptation to the climate crisis.

Plus, The Hill's Rebecca Klar discusses a recent study that examines some of the national security concerns that we face as global temperatures warm.

And returning guest Chad The Bird interviews climate activist Brian Ettling about the GOP walkout in Oregon. What the hell is going on there?

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Follow Julian Brave Noisecat on Twitter

Follow Rebecca Klar on Twitter

Follow Brian Ettling on Twitter

Follow Chad The Bird on Twitter

Further Reading:

THE FINGERPRINTS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL ARE ALL OVER THE CLEAN FUTURE ACT by Julian Brave NoiseCat, Leah C. Stokes and Narayan Subramanian

Report warns climate change could become 'catastrophic' global, national security threat by Rebecca Klar

Oregon Republicans are subverting democracy by running away. Again. by David Roberts

Rising Sea Levels, Coastal Erosion: New Report Says Half the World's Sandy Beaches at Risk From Climate Change By 2100 by Frank Jordans

On this installment of our series, The Road To COP26 Presented By Octopus Energy, Runa Khan, founder and Executive Director of Friendship International, joins the show to talk about the work her organization has done to help people displaced by the climate crisis, and why more needs to be done by the richest countries in the world at COP26 and beyond to help developing nations mitigate emissions and adapt to a warming planet.

Learn more about Friendship

Alexander Kauffman's article about Biden's climate finance pledge

Thank you to our sponsor Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity supplier. Octopus Energy is currently serving millions of homes around the globe in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, and Germany. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

This week, Neasa Hardiman, writer and director of Sea Fever, joins the show to discuss her ecological thriller film and why she was thinking about the climate crisis while telling the story. We explore how science and scientists are portrayed in film and why environmental destruction can be some of the scariest stories to tell.

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel are also joined by special guest Cody Benefiel (total coincidence on the name), who talks about climate change in film. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Check out our updated website! 

On this installment of our series, The Road To COP26 Presented By Octopus Energy, we welcome Indian environmental and climate justice activist John Paul Jose to the show to discuss how young leaders are fighting to make their voices heard at COP26 and the strategies activists are using to make real change at this critical event and beyond. We discuss how young leaders are pushing climate action that delivers just and equitable outcomes, how to elevate the voices of more young people in the Global South, and why new climate organizations led by younger people are making a bigger impact.

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss big (but complicated!) announcements on phasing out coal and the major ways in which youth leaders are transforming the climate conversation around the globe.

Thank you to our sponsor Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity supplier. Octopus Energy is currently serving millions of homes around the globe in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, and Germany. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Further Reading:

‘A continuation of colonialism’: indigenous activists say their voices are missing at Cop26

Over 40 Countries Pledge at U.N. Climate Summit to End Use of Coal Power

For decades, the biggest pushback against renewable energy was that it was more expensive to generate than electricity that came from the burning of fossil fuels. But all that changed in 2016 when both solar and wind-generated electricity became cheaper than electricity generated by coal and natural gas, at least when using the industry-standard metric, Levelized Cost of Energy. Despite the fact that renewable energy has overcome its biggest obstacle and can now be generated cheaper than fossil fuels, investments in fossil fuels continue to increase and new renewable generation development is not keeping pace with increases in demand. What happened?

Brett Christophers is a Professor at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University. He joined the podcast this week to explain why price isn't the most important metric to look at when determining the prospects for the development of clean energy projects. His new book, "The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet", provides some answers to the question of why renewables aren't growing as quickly as we need them to, given that the price of renewables have fallen well below their fossil fuel counterparts. His critiques of capitalism, energy markets, and our fascination with the Levelized Cost of Energy are some of the most compelling arguments you're likely to hear on why we need transformative changes instead of incremental reforms to our existing economic system, especially when it comes to how electricity is bought and sold.

Read "The Price is Wrong"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

It's incredible how dramatic climate science can be. That was my first thought after I watched the new documentary, Canary, which chronicles the life and career of Dr. Lonnie Thompson. This week, the subject behind the film, Dr. Thompson, and the co-directors of the documentary, Danny O'Malley and Dr. Alex Rivest, explain how the film came together and the thrilling story behind its development. We discuss how to tell compelling climate stories, what motivates their work, and what decades of glacier science can teach us about the climate crisis.  

Lonnie G. Thompson, a Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University, and senior research scientist, specializes in paleoclimatology, ice cores, and climate change. 

Alex Rivest is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained PhD Neuroscientist. Having worked alongside Nobel Prize winner Dr. Susumu Tonegawa, his research has been published in two of the most highly renowned scientific journals, Science and Nature Neuroscience. 

Danny O'Malley is a Grammy nominated and James Beard nominated film director. Best known for his work on Netflix's Chef's Table, where he serves as co-executive producer and a director.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Rent Canary

As the planet warms, droughts will be prolonged and communities around the world are going to be without the most critical resource to sustaining human life – water. By 2030, global demand for freshwater will exceed supply by 40 percent and two-thirds of the world's population will face regular water shortages. At the same time, as the planet warms, glaciers, which currently contain two thirds of all the freshwater in the world, are calving new icebergs at an alarming rate. This has lawmakers, scientists, and corporations asking "Can we harvest these icebergs for freshwater?"

This week we're joined by Dr. Matthew Birkhold, associate professor at the Ohio State University, and author of the new book "Chasing Icebergs: How Frozen Freshwater Can Save the Planet". Our conversation goes into how iceberg harvesting could work, how soon that it might become a viable option, and what the potential risks are to the environment and surrounding communities.

Buy 'Chasing Icebergs'

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

“Among the growing effects of the climate crisis, the evolution of hurricanes is one of the more immediate and destructive.” Our oceans are warming. Superstorms are intensifying. In Porter Fox's new book, the accelerating danger resulting from these two realities of the climate crisis is on full display. And Fox is no stranger to the ocean - as a longtime sailor and decades-long climate writer, he literally confronts deadly storms in his reporting. Now, with latest book, Category Five, Superstorms and the Warming Oceans that Feed Them, he's unpacking what he's heard from scientists and explorers alike to mark the changes we've already seen with oceans and superstorms and what's in store as warming accelerates. He joins this week to talk about the damage we're seeing from natural disasters, the disparity in disaster responses, and why he wanted to combine memoir and climate science for this book. 

Porter Fox is a writer and author of books like The Last Winter and Northland. He writes and edits the award-winning literary travel writing journal Nowhere, teaches at Columbia University School of the Arts and is a MacDowell Fellow. 

Read Category Five, Superstorms and the Warming Oceans that Feed Them

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Sonia Shah's new book The Next Great Migration is an essential read for the climate movement. What are most people missing when it comes to migration across the globe? Shah discusses the common misconceptions, where it originated, and the awful history of many environmental leaders promoting xenophobia and ecofascism. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss the Texas winter weather emergencies, renewable energy myths in a crisis, and how the most energy insecure are being impacted. 

Subscribe to our new Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website! 

Further reading:

Dr. Jesse Jenkin's Twitter Thread

Jeff Beradelli's Polar Vortex Explanation

Energy Efficiency for All

As US Department of Energy Deputy Secretary Dave Turk told us, "2023 is the year of implementation!" That's why we had him on our show to discuss the Biden Administration's historic investments in clean energy technologies and the infrastructure required to ensure they're resilient, available to everyone, and deployed as rapidly as possible. We also discuss the latest nuclear fusion breakthrough and how the global energy crisis resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine will evolve in 2023. This is a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation with someone who has dedicated his career to deploying clean energy around the globe.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, author and climate activist Jamie Margolin joins the show to talk about her new book, Youth to Power. We discuss how she found her voice in activism, how the youth movement is help powering climate action, what it's been like dealing with politicians, and activism in the COVID era.  

Then, Dr. Michalea King joins the show to discuss being the lead author on a new study on the Greenland Ice Sheet. What does it mean if the ice sheet has hit the "point of no return"? We dig into the science. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss wild temperatures in Death Valley and a new study on air pollution. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel!

Further Reading:

Buy Youth to Power by Jamie Margolin

World Economic Forum: 2020 set to be first or second warmest year on record

Excessive Heat Awareness

Future of Human Climate Niche

Ditching fossil fuels would pay for itself through clean air alone  By David Roberts

Death Valley reaches 130 degrees, hottest temperature in U.S. in at least 107 years by Jeff Berardelli

As our environment changes, so do our brains. Climate changes impact our physical environments is many noticeable ways, but it's also changing us on the inside as well. Clayton Page Aldern is a neuroscientist turned environmental journalist who has unpacked this phenomenon in his new book, The Weight of Nature: How A Changing Climate Changes Our Brains. He joins the show this week to discuss how our brains adapt to climate change and limits we face, how shifting baseline syndrome impacts climate action, what's happening to our brains under rising temperatures, and what climate changes tell us about broader ideas surrounding free will. 

Clayton's work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Vox, Newsweek, The Economist, Scientific American, and Grist, where he is a senior data reporter. 

Read The Weight of Nature: How A Changing Climate Changes Our Brains

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, Ben Franta joins the show to talk about his latest paper, "Weaponizing Economics: Big oil, economic consultants, and climate policy delay”. He explains how fossil fuel companies knew for decades that their product was warming the planet and instead of investing in new energy options, leveraged economic experts to help slow necessary action to combat the climate crisis. We also discuss Harvard University's decision to divest from fossil fuels, which Ben advocated for as a student of Harvard University almost a decade ago.

Ben is currently a graduate student at Stanford University focusing on the history of denial and delay tactics by the fossil fuel industry. He is also cofounder and current Director of Accountability Research for the Climate Social Science Network, a global network of social science scholars doing research on climate politics headquartered at Brown University.

Follow Ben on Twitter and LinkedIn

Check out Ben's TedTalk

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! We will be live on YouTube this Saturday, September 18 at 4 pm ET. Come say hi!

This week, actor Rainn Wilson joins the show to discuss his new docuseries with SoulPancake, "An Idiot's Guide To Climate Change." We discuss how he became passionate about the climate crisis, what he wanted to explore in the series, and what he and the SoulPancake team hope to accomplish with it. 

Then, Kathy Baughman McLeod, Director of the Adrienne Arsht–Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at the Atlantic Council, joins to talk about naming heatwaves. She helps us better understand the danger of extreme heat and how to raise awareness on the issue. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss Hurricane Laura, updates on the California wildfires, and the New South Wales (NSW) Bushfire Inquiry report, and something about Exxon Mobil and the Dow Jones that Brock didn't entirely understand. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel!

Further Reading: 

Laura is now a hurricane and is forecast to strengthen more before hitting the Gulf Coast

Australian bushfires likely to happen again -- and they could be even worse, inquiry warns

California Has Australian Problems Now 

Exxon Mobil Exits: The Dow Drops Its Oldest Member

This week, we speak with US Representative Donald McEachin (D-VA) about the environmental justice measures contained within the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the Build Back Better Act. Rep. McEachin, representing the 4th Congressional District of Virginia, co-founded the United for Climate and Environmental Justice Task Force in the House and has been instrumental in raising awareness for environmental justice in Congress.

Co-hosts Ty and Brock Benefiel also discuss the prevalence of climate change in popular art, Elon Musk's recent comments about government subsidies, and who topped their Spotify Wrapped for 2021.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

On this installment of our series, The Road To COP26 Presented By Octopus Energy, Dr. Jane Goodall, the legendary primatologist and anthropologist, joins the show to discuss why she wanted to serve as a COP26 Advocate, how everyone can get involved to fight climate change and the destruction of the natural world, and what she's learned over the course of her life and work that gives her hope for a better future. Dr. Goodall is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the organization Roots & Shoots. Most recently, she is the author of The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.

Thank you to our sponsor Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity supplier. Octopus Energy is currently serving millions of homes around the globe in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, and Germany. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

In 2018, economist William Nordhaus won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his Dynamic Integrated Climate-Economy model, which was the first neoclassical growth model to incorporate the impacts of a warming planet on the global economy.  While celebrated for its economic innovations, the DICE model and its outputs have been criticized by climate scientists for not adequately considering the devastating impacts that a rapidly warming planet will have on the environment, human wellbeing, and the economy.  Conventional attempts of forecasting GDP impacts of a one degree increase in global temperatures using the DICE model typically produce estimates of little more than a 1% decrease in global GDP. Critics argue that by downplaying the future economic costs resulting from a warming planet, these types of economic models make it easier for policymakers to justify delaying actions now to reduce emissions and slow or even stop global warming.

But in a new paper titled "The Macroeconomic Impact of Climate Change: Global vs Local Temperature", Dr. Adrien Bilal and Dr. Diego Kaenzig unveil a new model to predict the impact that global warming will have on the global economy. Their findings suggest previous studies were significantly off and, in fact, global GDP will be drastically reduced if the planet continues to warm on its current trajectory. Dr. Bilal and Dr. Kaenzig join The Climate Pod to discuss their new paper, how their approach differed from previous attempts at quantifying the economic impact of climate change, and what this means for policymakers.

Dr. Adrien Bilal is an Assistant Economics Professor at Harvard University.

Dr. Diego Kaenzig is an Assistant Economics Professor at Northwestern University.

Read the paper here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32450

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Every year, humans generate over 2 billion metric tons of solid waste worldwide. Where does it go after you're done with it? How does it impact communities and economies and ecosystems around the world? How can we solve such an enormous and growing problem?

Oliver Franklin-Wallis dives deep into these questions and more in his new book "Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future."  Oliver spent years traveling the globe to research and understand the complexities of the global waste crisis, its causes, and its potential solutions.  He joins the show this week to discuss what he found and to help explain why this is such a complicated yet critical problem to solve.

Plus, co-hosts Brock and Ty talk about the cringeworthy first Republican Presidential Debate and the continuation of climate denial from America's rightwing politicians.

Buy Wasteland

Further reading:

From Emily Atkin's Heated: How Vivek Ramaswamy makes money from climate denial

This week, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs joins the show to give his thoughts on the international diplomacy he says is needed to end the Russia-Ukraine War. In April 2022, Professor Sachs and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network issued a statement calling on the United Nations Security Council to increase diplomatic efforts to bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine. Professor Sachs also explains how this war has diverted resources and attention away from solving the climate crisis at a time when the world can't afford not to transition to a more sustainable future.

Check out Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Further Reading:

The U.S. pledged billions to fight climate change. Then came the Ukraine war

After years of obstruction from their Republican colleagues, Minnesota Democrats used their state trifecta to pass one of the most aggressive clean energy bills in America. Last week, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed the 100% Clean Energy by 2040 bill which makes The North Star State one of just 5 American states with a goal of decarbonizing its electricity sector by 2040. We spoke with Minnesota House Majority Leader and chief author of the bill, Rep. Jamie Long, about how the bill came to pass, what Minnesota voters think of clean energy policy, and how other states can fill the void created by a federal government that's currently being held back from passing more climate legislation by Republicans unwilling to address the climate crisis.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

It's our 200th episode with David Roberts on the day the Inflation Reduction Act is signed into law! This is a very special one for us. One of our favorite guests, who was very cool to us early on when we were just getting started, is back to the talk about the biggest climate legislation in US history. Roberts is a longtime climate/energy writer that now runs the newsletter/podcast Volts, about clean energy and politics. He joins the show to unpack the Inflation Reduction Act, what he thinks will be the major benefits of the bill, how Democrats got the biggest investment in US climate history passed, how this compares to the Waxman-Markey failure, and what happens to the climate movement next. 

You can subscribe to Volts here.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

World leaders are meeting at COP25 in Madrid, Spain as a wave of new reports continue to be released outlining the growing climate crisis. Will this make a difference? What's at stake for COP25? The Guardian's Environmental Correspondent Fiona Harvey joins the show from Madrid to report on the summit. 

Then, Fiona McPherson, Senior Editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, joins the podcast to explain why "climate emergency" was 2019's Oxford Word of the Year. This is a very good conversation with a lot of really good words. 

Two Fionas in one show! Give it a listen and thanks for being great. 

This episode was sponsored by Hero Power, a 100% renewable energy option that provides affordable, reliable electricity to Illinois residents at the same price as ComEd. Learn more at myheropower.com.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Follow Fiona Harvey on Twitter

Follow Oxford English Dictionary on Twitter

Further Reading:

Climate crisis: what is COP and can it save the world by Fiona Harvey

Word of the Year 2019 by Oxford Dictionaries 

Jeff Goodell is the author of more than a few books on climate change, but none are more timely than his most recently release, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. Heat is not only the most deadly extreme weather event, but has also dominated news cycles for months as waves of scorching temperatures have hit across the globe. Jeff joins the show to discuss 2023's extreme heat, why heat is so deadly and what we can do about it, how heat is transforming our cities, and what keeps him up at night with some of the greatest threats we face with the climate crisis - diseases, glacier melt, deadly heat waves, and more. 

Read The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, we discuss the underwhelming results at COP25, as the World Wildlife Fund's Vanessa Perez-Cirera joins the show to talk about her experience in Madrid and where she feels the summit fell short. An incredibly insightful and informative discussion. 

Then, Rob Bilott, author of "Exposure" and the real-life inspiration for the film "Dark Waters," talks to us about the dangers of "forever chemicals" and his years-long legal battle against polluting corporations. How did this happen? What do we do now? Rob helps us better understand the issue. This is a great conversation with a true environmental hero. 

This episode was sponsored by Hero Power, Chicago's newest 100% renewable energy option that provides affordable, reliable electricity to Illinois residents at the same price as ComEd. Learn more at myheropower.com.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more!

Follow Rob Bilott on Twitter

Follow Vanessa Perez-Cirera on Twitter

Further Reading/Action:

COP25: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Madrid

Get Rob Bilott's book "Exposure" https://www.amazon.com/Exposure-Be-Confirmed/dp/1501172816

Learn more about "Fight Forever Chemicals" here

Learn more about the World Wildlife Fund here

With a bipartisan agreement reportedly in place on a smaller Senate infrastructure package, President Biden has signaled he will not sign the bill without additional legislation to address climate change. Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) joins to talk about why the clean electricity standard is essential to good climate policy and action on the crisis, how it can pass through the Senate's reconciliation process, and how the standard actually works. 

Then, Allison Fisher, director of the climate and energy program at Media Matters, joins the show to talk about their new study on Special Report with Bret Baier and how Fox News' flagship news hour is using its platform to spread climate misinformation and doubt. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Further Reading:

6 crucial climate actions the Senate left out of its infrastructure deal

Biden Administration Backs Oil Sands Pipeline Project

For decades, misinformation campaigns have effectively muddied the waters when it comes to Americans understanding the truth about climate change. We're joined this week by the creator and host of the Drilled podcast, Amy Westervelt, to talk about the origins of climate misinformation and how this still persists today. Also, our climate correspondent, Chad The Bird, delivers an audio essay on ExxonMobil. It's a great first show!

Follow us on Twitter @climatepod

Email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com

Please rate, review, subscribe on iTunes and subscribe on Spotify!

Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion HiFi. Follow him at thepassionhifi.com. 

The negative impacts of climate change are almost always depicted on a global scale and decades-long timeframe. However, the positive impacts of reducing the use of fossil fuels are realized at the local level and almost immediately. The co-authors of the recently published paper, "Reductions in Premature Deaths from Heat and Particulate Matter Air Pollution in South Asia, China, and the United States Under Decarbonization", found that the near term health benefits of moving to a clean energy-fueled society far outweigh the costs of the clean energy transition, because death rates from air pollution and excessive heat are reduced drastically. How much and when those death rates depend on region-specific variables, but across the board, any country that decarbonizes will see both near term and long term benefits to the health of their citizens.

Dr. Drew Shindell, the Nicholas Professor of Earth Science at Duke University, joined The Climate Pod this week to discuss the paper that he co-wrote and other research he has done on methane and the co-benefits of transitioning our world beyond its current reliance on fossil fuels.

Follow Dr. Shindell's work here: https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/shindell

Read the paper here:  https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2312832120

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

This week, Tim Jackson joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Post Growth: Life after Capitalism. He discusses how we reshape our economy to be in better balance with our natural world, prioritize our well-being, and truly value the aspects of our society that create real prosperity - and how we got so far off-track. Tim Jackson is the Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity and Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey in the UK. His previous book, Prosperity without Growth, was a Financial Times book of the year and UnHerd’s book of the decade! 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Learn more about the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity

Legendary TV weatherman Al Roker joins the show this week! He discussed the escalation of extreme weather events, the disproportionate impacts of the climate crisis on frontline communities, and how we can all act to help mitigate the worst impacts of global warming. This is a wide-ranging, fun conversation with one of the most beloved figures in television news. How cool?!

This interview was recorded live at the TED Countdown Summit in Detroit, Michigan, which brought together a group of global innovators, business executives, scientists, policymakers, artists, activists and more.  

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Another year has come to an end. In 2022, we saw a number of events unfold across the globe that further emphasized the need to address the climate crisis with greater urgency and accelerate the transition to clean energy. This is Part Two of our look back of the year with some of the biggest newsmakers we spoke to in 2022. We'll review the second of the year and some of the biggest developments in the climate fight to happen in 2022 - from the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act to establishment of an international loss and damage fund to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and critical elections around the globe.

Featuring excerpts from our 2022 interviews with White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, Bill McKibben, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Sen. Tina Smith, Rep. Ro Khanna, David Roberts, Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Saleemul Huq, Harjeet Singh, Brian Tyler Cohen, Gernot Wagner, Mitzi Jonelle Tan, Oliver Milman, and Norwegian Climate Minister Espen Barth Eide. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, two expert guests, Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Yonah Freemark, join the show to talk about the American Jobs Plan and how we can better decarbonize our economy with smart infrastructure spending. Professor Sachs explains how to best aim spending plans to create sustainable jobs, build up a green economy, and reduce inequality in the process. Freemark tells us why transportation emissions keep increasing, how to get fewer cars on the road, and the importance of federal and local coordination on transportation plans. 

About Our Guests:  Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, and an SDG Advocate for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. He is the author of several books including The End of Poverty, The Age of Sustainable Development, and The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions. He hosts the new podcast Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs.

Yonah Freemark is a senior research associate in the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, where he researches the intersection of land use, affordable housing, and transportation. You can read his recent Op-Ed "How to ensure Biden's climate-focused transportation plans turn out sustainable and equitable" in The Hill. You can follow his work at Urban.org or his blog The Transport Politic.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website! 

This week, Kurt Andersen, best-selling author, co-founder of Spy magazine, former editor-in-chief of New York magazine, and legendary journalist, joins the show to discuss his new book, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America - A Recent History . Kurt discusses how a paradigm shift in recent decades has radically transformed the American economy for the worse and set the conditions to accelerate the climate crisis. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss the Sébastien Roblin's recent piece on how the U.S. military will have to respond to climate change at home. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel!

Buy Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America - A Recent History

This week, Saul Griffith joins the show to talk about his new book Electrify: An Optimists Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. Saul is the co-founder and Chief Scientist of Rewiring America, a non-profit dedicated to widespread electrification and decarbonization. We discuss how replacing or adding just a handful of products in our homes and our businesses can help transform and decarbonize our electricity grid, making us all healthier and saving us money at the same time.

Brock and Ty also discuss the "People vs. Fossil Fuels" protests happening in front of the White House.

Check out Rewiring America

Check out Saul's Sankey diagram of America's energy use

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. 

In her 2022 book, "Cannibal Capitalism", Professor Nancy Fraser argues that "capitalism harbors a deep-seated ecological contradiction that inclines it non-accidentally to environmental crisis."  Like the contradictions of capitalism that Karl Marx predicted would lead to crises and capitalism's ultimate downfall, Professor Fraser compelling lays out even more contradictions of capitalism that have all led to the multitude of crises humanity faces in 2023.  Racism, gender oppression, the lack of care, the threats to democracy, and the climate crisis are all inevitable consequences of capitalism, according to Professor Fraser, and none can truly be solved without turning our backs on capitalism altogether.  Professor Fraser joins The Climate Pod this week to dive deep into these topics and more.

Co-hosts Brock and Ty also fondly remember their favorite Jimmy Buffett songs and the late musician's odd connection to The Climate Pod.

Buy "Cannibal Capitalism"

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

This week, Zach Carter, author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, joins the show (14:58) for a wide-ranging and in-depth conversation on the legendary economist and what a Keynesian approach to green recovery should look like. Would Keynes support a Green New Deal? We dig into it. 

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss the record-setting heat in California and wildfire outbreaks across the Western states. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel!

Further Reading:

California wildfires: Fire chief says dozens of major blazes have state in 'dire situation'

80% of the buildings in an eastern Washington town were destroyed during a Labor Day firestorm

Record Heat Wave Creates 'Kiln-Like' Conditions In California

California Facing Santa Ana Winds After Sweltering in All-Time Record Heat and Wildfire Smoke

https://weatherwest.com/

PG&E power shutoffs expected to last through Wednesday

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-generate

Nothing to see here, folks

This week, Nathaniel Rich, award-winning journalist and author of Second Nature: Scenes From a World Remade joins the show to talk about what he's learned covering the scientists, politicians, and corporations that are reshaping our planet and its inhabitants for better and for worse. 

About Our Guest: Nathaniel Rich is an award-winning journalist and author. In 2019, he wrote "Losing Earth: A Recent History", and his 2016 New York Times Magazine article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare" was turned into the feature film "Dark Waters".

Buy Second Nature: Scenes From a World Remade

Further Reading/Listening:

Our conversation with Rob Bilott

Our conversation with Zephyr Teachout

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website! 

This week, Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, joins the show to discuss the history of the conservation movement. Michelle explains how conservation expanded beyond local efforts to an international movement, why so many inspiring and problematic people alike have taken up the conservation fight, and what climate activists can learn from the historic fight to stave off extinctions. 

About Our Guest: Michelle Nijhuis is a project editor at the Atlantic, a contributing editor at High Country News, coeditor of The Science Writers’ Handbook, and has has been published in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. 

Buy Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

Subscribe to our new Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website! 

On this installment of our series, The Road To COP26 Presented By Octopus Energy, we welcome back Rep. Sean Casten to the show to discuss what global solutions we need to accelerate the adoption of clean energy and what needs to be accomplished at COP26 to help make it happen. We also talk about the obstacles facing the world's clean energy transition - from fossil fuel subsidies and misinformation across the globe to inaction in Congress at home - and what the state of U.S. domestic policy means for the world's ability to decarbonize. Finally, we discuss Rep. Casten's successful #HotFERCSummer campaign and why he wanted to shed spotlight on this crucial regulatory commission.

Co-hosts Ty Benefiel and Brock Benefiel also discuss the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and why governments and financial institutions need to quit funding and subsidizing fossil fuels if they want an inhabitable planet.

Thank you to our sponsor Octopus Energy, a 100% renewable electricity supplier. Octopus Energy is currently serving millions of homes around the globe in countries like the United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, and Germany. 

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Further Reading:

COP26: World leaders promise to end deforestation by 2030

David Wallace-Wells is no stranger to contemplating the most disruptive and devastating outcomes of the climate crisis. His pivotal 2019 book, The Uninhabitable Earth, and 2017 article of the same name detailed some of the worst disasters that awaited humanity if action on climate was further delayed. Still, in 2021, even he's surprised by what he's seeing unfold. Record floods, out of control wildfires, and sweltering heatwaves are all placing constant pressure on nations and delivering tragic outcomes around the globe. "We are already not prepared for the warming we have today," Wallace-Wells told us. 

In this wide-ranging conversation, Wallace-Wells talks about his new piece "How To Live In A Climate 'Permanent Emergency,'" how this year's unprecedented climate catastrophes should shape adaptation measures immediately, how his thinking has changed since the publishing of The Uninhabitable Earth, what he thought about the recent leaked IPCC report, and what he hopes global leaders will do to address climate change at the upcoming COP26 and beyond.

Subscribe to our Substack newsletter "The Climate Weekly": https://theclimateweekly.substack.com/

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our new YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group. Check out our updated website!

Further Reading/Listening

Dr. Thomas Lovejoy on Avoiding Catastrophic Biodiversity Loss in the Amazon

Parts of the Amazon Go From Absorbing Carbon Dioxide to Emitting It

The DeSmog Team on the COVID-19 and Climate Denial Connection

On Monday, the Trump Administration announced changes to weaken the Endangered Species Act. This decision comes just three months after the United Nation's Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released a study that reported up to 1 million species are now threatened with extinction around the globe.

We discuss these changes and what it means with Chris D'Angelo, environmental reporter for the Huffington Post, and Angela Grimes, CEO of Born Free USA. 

Also, Chad the Bird is back to talk about feral hogs and animal migration.

Read Chris' story on the changes to the ESA here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-endangered-species-rule_n_5cf7b7b4e4b01713bed4df9b

You can follow Born Free USA on Twitter and Facebook @bornfreeusa and Chris D'Angelo on Twitter @c_m_dangelo. Follow Chad The Bird on Twitter @chadthebird and listen to his podcast, "Chad The Podcast."

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and more!

COP29 is over. A new agreement has been struck. So what the hell happened?

Climate reporter Dharna Noor is here to explain. She was on the ground during the conference to cover it all and she's on the show this week to deep dive into the results and what it means for global climate action. Dharna discusses the complexities and stakes surrounding COP29, how the central theme of climate finance shaped the conference, and the key takeaways of the final agreement. We also discuss the tension between the Global North and South during negotations, the wild events that unfolded during negotiations, and the importance of good reporting and press coverage during these multilateral discussions. 

Dharna Noor is a fossil fuels and climate reporter at Guardian US. Prior to that, Dharna was the Boston Globe's climate producer, worked as a staff writer at Earther, where she also co-produced a season of the podcast Drilled on the fossil fuel industry's influence on education.

Check out Dharna's reporting here.

Check out all of The Guardians's COP29 reporting here. 

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.

Prior to the New Deal, millions of rural Americans were quite literally living in the dark. Though electricity had been available for decades, it was out of reach for most living in America's  countryside post-World War I. That all changed within a decade. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's approach to the power sector during the Great Depression transformed electrification and public utilities on rural life and dramatically modernized the American home throught the nation. In his new book, Democracy In Power, A History of Electrification in the United States, Sandeep Vaheesan explores the rapid economic and social changes brought about by the New Deal through initiatives like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Rural Electrification Act and argues that many lessons from the era are relevant today's push for climate action.

Sandeep joins the show this week to explain how public competition in the 20th century stimulated power consumption and improved living standards in America. He explains why Americans were ready for change during the New Deal era, how federal initiatives would later power wartime efforts, and how decisions during FDR's presidency still impact the current landscape of public and cooperative utilities. We also explore the racial and gender inequality of the era and how many New Deal programs exacerbated injustices. Finally, Sandeep argues for public leadership in achieving decarbonization targets while ensuring democratic principles in power management.

Sandeep Vaheesan is the legal director at the Open Markets Institute. He leads their legal research and advocacy, including the amicus program. 

Read Democracy In Power, A History of Electrification in the United States.

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel and our Substack, The Climate Weekly. 

In 2008, the world economic system was rocked by a financial crisis that stemmed from risky mortgages being securitized and sold as safe investments to unknowing investors.  Misaligned incentives, unpriced risk, deceptive selling practices, and a lack of regulatory scrutiny throughout the financial industry led to the Great Recession, the consequences of which we're still feeling in a variety of ways today.

While somewhat different from what preceded the 2008 financial crisis, there are clear parallels with what's happening in the home insurance and mortgage markets in areas most at risk to damage from climate-worsened storms.  As large, traditional insurance companies are leaving states like Florida, California, and Louisiana because the damages from hurricanes, floods, and wildfires have become too large, new insurance companies are replacing them. These companies are smaller, less diverse, and rely on a ratings agency known to provide good ratings to underserving companies. Unsurprisingly, when climate catastrophes hit, these insurers often go bankrupt, leaving home owners and their banks with a destroyed home and asset without the funds to rebuild or even repair.  And the implications of this aren't isolated to the local level, because most of these mortgages are securitized and sold at the national level.

This week, Prof. Pari Sastry joins the show to discuss her recent paper "When Insurers Exit: Climate Losses, Fragile Insurers, and Mortgage Markets".  This paper explains how the home home mortgage, insurance markets, and global economy are interconnected and how the climate crisis is impacting all three.  As the world is still recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, it's shocking to see the early stages of what appears to be some of the same causes play out today.  And we know that the climate crisis is only going to increase the number of severe weather events, which will put an even greater strain on insurance and mortgage companies, further worsening an already fragile relationship.

Prof. Pari Sastry is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Columbia Business School where she focuses her research on climate finance.

Read "When Insurers Exit": https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4674279

As always, follow us @climatepod on Twitter and email us at theclimatepod@gmail.com. Our music is "Gotta Get Up" by The Passion Hifi, check out his music at thepassionhifi.com. Rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! Subscribe to our YouTube channel! Join our Facebook group.