Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

Students eat. But what do they eat? And where does that food come from? Both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture are trying to help small farms sell more of their organic produce to public schools, shortening the supply chain between farms and consumers and encouraging students to eat more salads and other healthy foods. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz and guests Mireya Gomez-Contreras and Alma Leonor-Sanchez from Esperanza Community Farms in Watsonville, along with Pajaro Valley High students Mark Mendoza Luengas and Julio Gonzales, to hear about Esperanza’s farm to cafeteria program and their efforts to help Latine operators of small farms on the Central Coast to earn more revenue for their crops by selling directly to customers.

Bees are in danger; what can we do? Tune into a Sustainability Now! rebroadcast from 2021 to hear a conversation with Eve Bratman, an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Bratman is a political ecologist with interdisciplinary training utilizing social science to explore conservation and land use issues relating to sustainable development politics and policies. She is author of Governing the Rainforest: Sustainable Development Politics in the Amazon, and is finishing her book, called Bee Politics: Protecting Pollinators and the Local-to-Global Challenge of Sustainability, which uses bees as a prism for seeing broader social and ecological phenomena and is premised upon revealing the ways that human society fumblingly strives to protect and preserve their roles in our lives.

Solar electricity is the fuel of the future. But can we go solar without damaging the environment? Solar farms in distant places need transmission lines to get their product to the market. Storage batteries, and especially electric vehicles, require lithium and the stuff must be mined somewhere. And all the while, its seems that the solar enterprise is being undermined by the struggle to control where solar panels can go and who can decide how little wholesale power will cost and how much you, the consumer, will pay. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz as he welcomes back SJSU Environmental Studies Professor Dustin Mulvaney, who has been looking into the environmental consequences of solar farms, transmission lines and mining in California’s “Lithium Valley.”

All of us—well, many of us—are backyard gardeners. And it’s planting season. Backyard gardens are not immune from the impacts of violent and unpredictable weather or the longer-term effects of climate change. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Kim Stoddart, editor of Amateur Gardening and author of The Climate Change Resilient Vegetable Garden—How to Grow Food in a Changing Climate. She lives and gardens in West Wales, where weather conditions are not always optimal. Kind of like California.

We live in a Consumer Society. Rising consumption is good, since it makes the economy grow. At the same time, we face a Climate Crisis. Rising consumption is bad, since it makes carbon emissions grow. People across the Global North believe we must reduce emissions but they are reluctant to reduce their consumption. What can we do? Some advocate ecological modernization by making our goods and services greener. Others argue that only shrinking the economy--"degrowth"--will do the trick. Maybe both are more mythic than technologically or politically feasible. Can we square the circle (or, maybe, circle the square?) and find a path to sustainability? Join SN! host Ronnie Lipschutz for a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Jean Boucher, about the promises and myths of sustainable consumption. Boucher is a senior Research Scientist and Macaulay Development Trust Fellow in Land Use and Societal Metabolism at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland. His research ranges from people's attitudes about climate change and their carbon-intensive lifestyles to the demographic distribution of clean energy technologies, the socio-technical factors that influence cultural and institutional behavior, and macro-scale societal metabolics analyzing materials and energy flows through households and economic sectors.

The elephant seals are back! The elephant seals have made their annual trip back to the California Coast! During the winter months, Elephant Seals turn to love...and fighting... and feeding... and laying around in the sun and rain. This is the prime viewing season at Año Nuevo State Park and Point Reyes National Seashore, where you can watch the two-ton male seals fight bloody battles over the females, the females feeding their large and growing pups, and listen to the odd noises they produce (although they probably think humans make strange noises). This is a rebroadcast of a 2022 interview with Dr. Theresa Keates, who holds a UCSC PhD in Ocean Sciences and is currently a Legislative Analyst with the California Energy Commission. Keates' dissertation research centered on deploying oceanographic tags on elephant seals, which offer both a source of valuable oceanographic data from remote regions as well as a unique platform to investigate these very large marine mammals.

Climate change is transforming what scientists call the land-sea interface, with crumbling cliffs, falling structures, tidal and storm flooding and loud homeowners demanding government action. Should that interface be buttressed and built up to prevent further coastal erosion or is managed retreat a better strategy? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Rosanna Xia (“Shaw”), an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020. Xia has just published California Against the Sea—Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline. She has traveled the state’s 1,200-mile coastline and talked to experts, politicians and the public to see what is happening, what communities are doing and what we can expect for our coastal future.

Energy has been with us for a long time and, over the past 100 years, fossil fuels have been cheap and plentiful. Now we are going to have to pay the piper if we want to limit the future impacts of climate change. How could that happen. Tune in to hear Amory Lovins, cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and long time energy policy analyst and advisor to many utilities, regulators and businesses. Almost 50 years ago, Lovins published a groundbreaking article in the journal, Foreign Affairs, entitled “Energy Strategy: The Road not Taken,” which recommended a renewable-based strategy over one based on oil, coal and nuclear power. Surely, but slowly, that vision is being realized, albeit in a much more complicated and conflicted fashion. Amory will talk about efficient energy use, integrative design, renewable supply (including grid integration), and long-term energy needs and paths to getting to an electrified future.

Monterey Waterkeeper is part of a coalition of organizations seeking to reduce nitrate pollution in the region’s groundwater. Nitrate contamination, the result of over-application of fertilizers, can cause the “blue baby syndrome” and various cancers in adults. The State Water Board recently issued rules that allow growers to continue over-application of nitrogen fertilizers without any deadlines for cleaning up contaminated water. In October 2023, rural Latino community and farmworker groups, environmental organizations, including Monterey Waterkeeper, and commercial and recreational fishing organizations filed suit to overturn the decision. Tune in to hear Chelsea Tu, Executive Director of Monterey Waterkeeper, talk about the problem, the situation and the solution

According to Simon Dalby, Professor emeritus in the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, global politics over the past 70 years has been driven by an overabundance of "firepower," both nuclear and carbon-based. The first was used by Great Power to threaten incineration of the world, by intention or accident, in the name of "national security." The second now threatens the future of life on Earth--human and nonhuman--but Great Powers (and the not-so-great) resolutely refuse to give them up in the name of "national security" and "lifestyle." In 2022, Dalby published Rethinking Environmental Security, an analysis of firepower past, present and future. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a thought-provoking conversation with Simon Dalby about these two threats and what countries are not doing about it.

Nuclear power is being touted as a way of providing clean energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and paving the way to a zero-emission future. There is talk of a “nuclear renaissance,” with small modular reactors (SMRs) replacing the gigawatt nuclear behemoths of the past, quickly and at much lower cost. But the United States’ experience with nuclear, now going back 70 years, turned out to be much more costly than predicted. The country’s one hundred or so operating reactors have generated prodigious quantities of highly radioactive spent fuel that is being stored in so-called swimming pools and caskets adjacent to the plants that produced it. Blame politics, if you will, but it remains waste. And only a month ago, a federally subsidized deal to build a cluster of six SMRs in Idaho collapsed, due to cost overruns and construction delays. So, is that renaissance real or just hope and hype? To find out more, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Professor Allison Macfarlane, Director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at The University of British Columbia. Dr. Macfarlane was chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2012-2014. She holds a PhD in Geology from MIT, was a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which addressed the 70-year old challenge of radioactive waste disposal, about which she continues to write.

Long-time listeners to Sustainability Now! know that we periodically turn to a focus on plastic, whose production is predicted to skyrocket over the next few decades, as fossil fuel companies look for ways to sell their product. Plastics are not forever, although they last a long time in the environment and are piling up across the world’s lands and oceans. Even notionally “compostable” plastics require special handling if they are to be returned to their constituent components, and most of these plastics are not handled specially. If you could make a better plastic—one that would decompose into biological carbon in your backyard compost pile—wouldn’t the world beat a path to your door? Maybe not. Join SN! host Ronnie Lipschutz and Raegan Kelly, Head of Product and Sustainability Lead at Better for All, for a conversation about composting plastics. Better for all is trying to widen use of PHBH, a biologically based plastic that breaks down with minimal treatment in your back yard. We are going to talk about why it is so difficult to get the manufacturers of plastic and plastic products to use PHBH and what Better for All is trying to do about that.

Sequoias are among the oldest living things on Earth, and most of the world’s sequoias are in Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks. Since 2020, according to the National Park Service, almost 20% of that iconic species have been destroyed by wildfires. The parks’ management is planning to repopulate the burned-over areas with thousands of sequoia seedings, in an effort to rebuild six groves. But not everyone supports this project: some ecologists argue that there are enough seedlings growing in those groves to provide the next generation of trees. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz to hear about the pros and cons from Dr. Christy Brigham, Chief of resources management and science at the two national parks and one of the architects of the plan, and from Dr. Chad Hanson, cofounder of the John Muir Project, who is a critic of the plan. Photo credit: Gary Coronado, LA Times

When you go out into the world and walk on the Earth, have you ever wondered what was beneath your feet? Animals and plants, of course, but mostly soil. Soil is a wonderful substance, an essential element in the riot of life that covers the planet’s continents. But soil is not without life of its own: a handful of fertile soil is home to more organisms in a than there are people on Earth. And these organisms are vital to plant and animal nutrition and growth. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz and Dr. Chelsea Carey, Director of Soil Research and Conservation at Point Blue Conservation Science for a fascinating conversation about the life beneath our feet.

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for this Blast from the Past with Dr. Helen Caldicott. According to Dr. Caldicott, the nuclear doomsday clock of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is set at 100 seconds to Midnight, but 20 seconds is closer to the mark. Dr. Caldicott has devoted the last forty-two years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction and nuclear catastrophe. She calls this “Global Preventive Medicine.” Caldicott is also the subject of “If You Love This Planet,” which won an Academy Award in 1982 for best documentary.

For uncounted millennia, the creatures of the world’s ocean have been hunted, captured and killed by human beings. For most of that history, however, this was done for subsistence purposes. Only over the last few centuries, was the slaughter of whales, seals, otters, turtles, sharks and other marine species justified in the name of capitalism and industry. Beginning in the late 1960s, exposing and preventing this continued decimation became the mission of individuals and groups dedicated to direct action meant to disrupt those who continue to hunt, capture and kill. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with one of the best-known of these activists, Captain Paul Watson, who recently published his memoir Hitman for the Kindness Club—High Seas Escapades and Heroic Adventures of an Eco-Activist. Watson was a cofounder of Greenpeace, founder of Sea Shepherds and most recently established the eponymous Captain Paul Watson Foundation which “aims to educate and raise awareness about the illegal exploitation of oceanic ecosystems and marine species, while also establishing an international anti-poaching entity to enforce conservation laws and treaties.” Watson has commissioned and skippered numerous ships and campaigns, fought against the murder of marine species for more than half a century, has been on the forefront and frontline of direct action to protect the biodiversity of Earth’s marine environments.

What do you know about CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1970 and signed into law by then-Governor Ronald Reagan? For more than 50 years, CEQA has been used to inform decisionmakers and the public about the potential environmental impacts of proposed projects but, in recent years, it has been applied in situations for which it was not designed, especially new housing development. In response, both Governor Newsom and the State Legislature are seeking to amend the law to prevent various activists and opponents from obstructing new housing. Not so fast, say the law’s supporters. They point to a recent report by the Rose Foundations that CEQA has had little, if any, impact on housing projects across the state. So, who is correct? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Professor Deborah Sivas of the Stanford Law School. She teaches environmental law, directs the environmental law clinic and has represented various environmental organizations in the courts. We will talk about CEQA and whether it is really standing in the way of more housing in California.

The Rights of Nature is one way to rethink the relationships between humans and Nature, but are there other ways to think about those connections? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Rosalind Warner, professor of political science at Okanagan College in British Columbia and Research Fellow with the Earth System Governance Project. Warner is studying the role of kinship metaphors in Earth System Law, with kinship connoting more ethical relationships among humans, Nature and earth’s non-human inhabitants. Earth System Law is an emerging body of legal precepts, principles and practices that bring together ethics and law with the planet’s dynamic physical and biological cycles. Tune in to hear a new take on human-nature relations.

More than 50 years ago, Christopher Stone, a UCLA law professor, wrote a groundbreaking book Should Trees Have Standing? in which he argued for the right of trees to be represented in courts of law. Since then, the Rights of Nature movement has taken the world by storm; some countries have encoded such rights into their constitutions. But what does it mean to say that trees, rivers and animals have rights? Does the “rights of nature” make any practical sense? And who is pushing for such rights? Join Sustainability Now! host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Katie Surma, a reporter at Inside Climate News. She has been covering the “rights of nature” beat at ICN since 2021 and has written extensively on the topic. Find out whether the trees and critters in your back yard and all around us are people, too.

According to those who know, we are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction, this one brought on by the activities of human civilization that are resulting in a species extinction rate that is estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than natural extinction rates. So far, efforts to protect endangered plants, animals and insects have proven inadequate to the challenge. What are we to do? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Professor Douglas Tallamy, who teaches in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. He is the author of Nature’s Best Hope—a New Approach to conservation that Starts in Your Yard, published in 2019, and a just-published companion version for children, subtitled How You Can Save the World in Your Own Yard. Both books propose what some might consider a radical approach to protecting species through transformation of front and back yards into conservation zones.