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Toronto Mayor David Miller talks about representing one of the sixteen major world cities (plus five major banking institutions) to cut carbon emissions by renovating city-owned buildings with the Greenest of practices and the Clinton Climate Initiative: "This is a win win win win win win." This what it takes! Teamwork, optimism, and practical business. LISTEN (11 min)
This is where the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) stuff gets really interesting: whereas the first to parts, released earlier this year, documented the global scientific consensus on climate change and forecast several possible effects, Part 3, to be released tomorrow, offers an array of solutions to minimize the impacts of climate change, and halt any further effects. Will the nations of the world implement these recommendations? Given their obsession with the wording of this document, there's a good chance they will. Center for American Progress Senior Fellow (and author of Hell and High Water) Joseph Romm: "This report has to be signed off on by 120 governments, including the United States, and oil countries like Saudi Arabia. And they can veto any word. So you can take to the bank anything that all those countries agree to." LISTEN (10 min)
Stanford University Climatologist
Stephen Schneider is on the Synthesis Committee for the IPCC report:
"IPCC doesn't tell the world what to do. That's the job of decision
makers, ranging from everybody out there deciding what car or
refrigerator to buy, to government officials trying to figure out what
industries to support and what industries to tax. What we will do is
survey the literature, summarize the arguments of various sides, from
the coal industry to the enviro groups. Then we'll go beyond that and
we'll talk about the scientific merits in those arguments." LISTEN (8 min)
Greenpeace Canada Climate and Energy Coordinator Dave Martin comments on the Harper Administration's rather crafty emissions plan: " (Canadian Environment Minister John) Baird characterized it as turning the corner. I would describe it as hitting a dead end. What Mr. Baird came out with was a deliberate deception." LISTEN (10 min)
Governor Schwarzenegger's environmental adviser Terry Tamminen (author of the kick-ass book Lives Per Gallon ) stops by to break down the Governator's letters to EPA head Steve Johnson, threatening a lawsuit if the EPA does not release California (and a line of other states around the corner) from the Clean Air Act. Doesn't sound very environmental to you? Well, considering that climate change isn't currently being addressed under the current version of the Clean Air Act (we'll see what happens, now that we're post-Mass v. EPA), Schwarzenegger is here actually asking permission to address climate change. But it doesn't sound like he'll be merely asking for long. EcoTalk loves it. LISTEN (10 min)
Elizabeth Kolbert's vivid, intimate accounts of climate change through the eyes of people in the Netherlands, Iceland, and Alaska were initially published in the New Yorker Magazine and later compiled in the book Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Since "Field Notes" was first published, Kolbert has written a stunning piece on ocean acidification, and has profiled one-time boy wonder of the environmental movement Amory Lovins, now 49 years old and still the eternal optimist.
PART ONE (11 min) PART TWO (7 min)
Continue reading "Elizabeth Kolbert: Field Notes From A Catastrophe" »
Oregon Teacher of the Year Award Recipient John Borowski tells Betsy about the pressure he's faced from school administrators to stop teaching his students how science can be practically applied to the largest challenge that they will inherit from us, climate change. Mr. Borowski points to corporate pressure on science teachers nationwide not to tell our kids too much about their future, but he teaches undeterred, determined to respect his students' education and teach them to think critically about the world: "I ask kids to take a newspaper article on the environment and analyze it. I always told them that I'll grade the paper based on two things: you presentation of facts, and how well you analyze those facts. But I'm not going to grade them on their opinion." LISTEN (11 min)
EcoTalk gives major props to the bevy of magazines that are doing entire issues dedicated to one of the only issues that really matters, but when one single page in Newsweek seeks to debunk the other 80 or so pages of the magazine, EcoTalk must take out its scalpel and dissect that malignant piece of paper.
Oh, What a surprise! Noted climate change skeptic Dr. Richard Lindzen! Climate Institute Chief Scientist Dr. Michael MacCracken says that while Dr. Lindzen holds his scientific colleagues to incredibly high standards, he lowers the bar a bit for his own statements: "As I read that piece, and it's only about 7 or 8 paragraphs, I noted down a dozen things that were quite misleading or deceptive." LISTEN (11 min)
Journalist, author of "Boiling Point", and helmsman of the always up-to-date The Heat is Online website, Ross Gelbspan here offers his wide-ranging thoughts on the second part of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released last Friday: "Things that were considered off the charts and unthinkable six or seven years ago are now becoming conventional wisdom." Betsy sizes up the wisdom of her local gym.
PART ONE (11 min) PART TWO (7 min)
Greenpeace Climate Change expert Chris Miller comments both on the paradigm-shifting Supreme Court decision in Mass. v. EPA, as well as the forthcoming second part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report "The devil is in the details on global warming. The report released this week will be those details. It will reference everything from the plight of the polar bear, to impacts to Greenland ice sheets, extreme weather, hurricanes in the Atlantic, draught situations in the Midwest..." LISTEN (11 min)
Never do a story about Maple Syrup on an empty stomach. Betsy contemplates "pancakes with no syrup", as maple sugar maker Arthur Berndt tells of climate change as it can currently be observed in Vermont, home to one of our sweetest natural resources: "The trees are clearly stressed. We would have fewer days that are suitable for maple syrup production." LISTEN (7 min)
Harvard Oceanographer James McCarthy was co-chair of the 2001 IPCC report, and a contributor to this year's edition, the 2nd part of which will be released this Friday. Dr. McCarthy gives us a valuable insider's preview, and offers us this hope:
Betsy: "You say the worst is not going to happen, because..."
Dr. McCarthy: "....because we can't be that stupid " LISTEN (11 min)
On day thirty-two of his trek through Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, renowned explorer Will Steger takes a break to tell Betsy how climate change is effecting the livelihoods of the people who have lived there for centuries: "This is ground zero of global warming." This is also Global Warming 101, Will's initiative to share with us the cultural face of the lands that, through no fault of their own, are the first to experience a man-made climate. LISTEN (11 min)
Betsy (and Bob Marley!) introduce an engaging interview between NRDC George Black and Step It Up 07 torchbearer Bill McKibben. The national rally on April 14th is such a crucial opportunity to channel all of our creative and optimistic instincts towards decisive action to protect the only world that humans have thrived in: "(20 years ago) We could have started with the easy, tepid compromise. Now scientifically, our backs are against the wall." Get involved! LISTEN (7 min)
California Congressman Henry Waxman reflects on a week which saw Rep. Waxman himself presiding over hearings on the Bush Administration's brazen politicization of science; the largest yet (OK, 3,000 is not Dr. King-size, but still) citizen rally in Washington for action against climate change; and the triumphant return of Albert Gore, the man who would be president. Waxman sizes up the momentum, and feels the winds of change at his back: "We have the chance to act. We have the responsibility to act. But we're not going to be given an indefinite period of time to act." LISTEN (11 min)
Center for American Progress Senior Fellow (and author of Hell and High Water) Joseph Romm tells Betsy how impressed he was by Al Gore's performance before the House and the Senate Wednesday. In many ways Gore's testimony was like a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth-- You wanted solutions? Gore gave Congress ten, from mundane to brand-spanking new. Imagine if this guy had been president. LISTEN (11 min)
See Al on YouTube as mentioned on Joseph's blog.
Bill McKibben stops by EcoTalk's Green Street studio to tell Betsy about his new book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future and urges you to Step It Up in your own unqiue way as part of the Step It Up global gathering on April 14th. You've got about three weeks to read up on how others are stepping it up, and to think about the coolest way possible you can open the public's eyes to climate change. PART ONE (7 min) PART TWO (12 min)
Picture courtesy Grist
Adam Kolton, Senior Director of Congressional Affairs for the National WIldlife Federation tells Betsy about the rallies that bolstered a big week for climate change on Capitol Hill: "There's an expectation that Congress start to get things done. Bills need to start passing in one chamber or another." LISTEN (11 min)
Mammologist, biologist, writer, and 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery tells Betsy about water rationing in a draught-striken Australia, his book for all ages The Weathermakers, and how us Yanks can't afford to wait out Bush's term in office. PART ONE (7 min) PART TWO (12 min)
Grist Magazine staff writer David Roberts kept a rather wily running commentary of yesterday's congressional hearings on the White House putting their grubby claws all over taxpayer-funded science. The good guys got some jabs in, but was all the "lawyering" and "technobabble" a distraction from the fact that in the only contest that really matters (Climate Change!), we're falling behind? "It was a political circus" Roberts says. "Trying to pretend that we're arguing about science when what we're actually arguing about is policy, helps the conservatives.
PART 1 (11 min) PART 2 (7 min)
Carbon Coalition co-chair Ted Leach tells Betsy that in New Hampshire, "people just need to open their eyes and they know that something isn't right. In 1977, there were 48 ski areas in New Hampshire. Today, there are 15. In the early 1970s, 80% of the Maple Syrup in this country was generated in New England, and 20% in Canada. Today, it's just the reverse." Never ones to sit still ("Live Free or Die" after all), hundreds of townships have resolved to stop climate change in its tracks, by making any presidential hopeful go through them. LISTEN (11 min)
Alaska WIlderness League Executive Director Cindy Shogan sits down with Betsy to urge all of us to stand up and be counted on March 20th in Washington, DC. LISTEN (11 min)
As long as this absurdly early presidential campaign season is underway, EcoTalk might as well get its two cents in. Simply hearing environmental platitudes on the campaign trail represents progress, but it is our job to tell them what we expect from them on energy policy and climate change. Here Tony Massaro, Political Director for the League of Conservation Voters, talks about how they and other green groups are putting heat on politicians in every single congressional district in the United States. LISTEN (10 min)
As Betsy says, "More proof that we all live downstream." When it comes to pollution and environmental degradation, it's often not so much what we bring on ourselves, its what we pass along to others. A new report out this week draws conclusive links between carbon emissions in China and India with intensifying storms in the Pacific North. Report co-author Renyi Zhang, a scientist at Texas A&M's Department of Atmospheric Sciences says that storms are not necessarily becoming more plentiful in the Northwest, but that they are increasing in strength and intensity. LISTEN (11 min)
Link:
As Michigan State Professor Harm de Blij tells Betsy in this fascinating interview, "Geography is the only science that combines analysis of natural environments in the context of human society." So why have Americans become so ignorant of Geography, just at the moment when the Earth and its problems are ever more inter-related? Professor de Blij's new book, Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism, answers, and guides us forward. LISTEN (12 min)
Vaughan Turekian, Chief International Officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science talks about the noble skepticism that underscores all legitimate scientific inquiry, and how that differs from the straw men scientists being propped up by of the climate change deniers: "When 2500 scientists-- and I there are actually more than that-- that say that humans are impacting the climate, then humans are impacting the climate." LISTEN (8 min)
Cathy Zoi of the Alliance for Climate Protection tells Betsy about the launch of the SaveOurSelves campaign and the star-studded (Pharrel! Chili Peppers! Snoop Dog! Bloc Party! Bon freakin' Jovi!) LiveEarth Concert Festivals slated for July 7th. She also speaks to the droughts in her sometime home Australia that are pushing public opinion towards greater conservation, and a more considered look at our relationship to the Earth's resources. LISTEN (11 min)
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders tells Betsy about his letter to the American Enterprise Institute in response to their offer of $10,000 to any scientist who would challenge science showing that global warming is human-caused, so that they can continue to sow confusion, and put the brakes on all the progress we, the majority, are making: "It is a sad state of affairs when major corporations like Exxon Mobil and others are trying to cast doubt on the scientific work being done by very serious scientists on such an important issue." Betsy wonders, "Don't they live on this planet?" Senator Sanders also shares his hopes for the passage of The Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act of 2007 that he is co-sponsoring with California Senator Barbara Boxer.
PART ONE (11 min) PART TWO (7 min)
Betsy's climate change debate buddy Chris Horner (of the Competitive Enterprise Institute) pays a visit to EcoTalk to continue the conversation they had last week on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes. The difference in Horner's tone between his Fox and EcoTalk visits is striking, and underscores the ways in which he and like-minded cohorts continue to dangerously mislead the American people. Here Horner frequently hides behinds a dense wall of techno-babble that none of the scientists that we've had on our show have ever come close to touching. PART ONE (10 min)
In the second part of our talk with Chris Horner, New York Times climate reporter Andy Revkin (and author of The North Pole Was Here) checks in to fact-check some of Horner's more erroneous points. PART TWO (8 min)
John Coequyt of Greenpeace explains the HotSeat project.
LISTEN (11 min)
Yesterday evening Betsy was on Hannity and Colmes for a debate titled Is the global warming hysteria scientifically sound? That says it all. You can watch on YouTube or (bigger file, better image, slower download) on Air America Radio.
Joseph Romm, former Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Energy under President Clinton and current Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress talks about last week's landmark IPCC report. Dr. Romm's new book is Hell and High Water: Global Warming—the Solution and the Politics
LISTEN (12 min) Read his blog
Can we convert from an economy based on coal to a new energy future? New research out of Washington State says "Absolutely". Patti Glick, Senior Global Warming Specialist with the National Wildlife Federation, gives Betsy the rundown on this notably optimistic report. LISTEN (8 min)
