Welcome
Conversations that go deep on the environment, the climate crisis, and the solutions
Conversations that go deep on the environment, the climate crisis, and the solutions
FOR PEOPLE AND PLANET
conversations that go deep on the environment, the climate crisis, and solutions.
Host Matt Pawa
The Mother Earth Podcast brings you conversations with extraordinary people who inform, inspire and empower us on the fundamental issue of our time: our relationship with the natural world. Host Matt Pawa goes deep with environmental writers, policy experts, young activists, wise elders, environmental justice advocates, entrepreneurs in renewable energy, artists, environmental lawyers, sustainability economists, unsung heroes in communities battling for clean water and clean air, plant-based food enthusiasts, and many others. Each episode will be accompanied by show notes directing you to resources where you can learn more, get involved and take action.
The solutions to the climate crisis and other pressing environmental problems are at hand. We need only join together with courage, resolve and cooperative spirit to do what we already know must be done. It will not be easy but by thinking big and acting with focus and determination we can bring humanity into balance with the natural environment. And by doing so, we can rescue our economy and create millions of good jobs.
Join us around our virtual campfire for information, inspiration and empowerment. For People and Planet, thank you for listening.
19. Dan Esty
You can't solve 21st Century environmental problems with 20th Century laws and policies. We face a climate crisis and a host of intertwined environmental problems. Science and technology have rapidly advanced. Environmental justice has come to the fore. It's time to update environmental policy.
That’s the message of Dan Esty, today’s guest on the Mother Earth Podcast. In this conversation, Dan provides a blueprint for updating our environmental laws and policies. He argues that while 20th Century environmental laws and policies served 20th century purposes, “it’s time to refresh the game plan.”
Dan is a professor at the Yale Schools of Law, Environment, and Management and is director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. He's the author or editor of twelve books, including 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future and the award winning Green to Gold, named a top "green business" book of the past decade. Dan is also the former commissioner of Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and served as a high-ranking US EPA official who helped negotiate the 1992 climate treaty in Rio de Janeiro.
In our discussion, Dan proclaims that we all have the right to a healthy environment and that “a sustainability imperative is a foundational principle for life on the planet Earth in the 21st century.” He calls for an end to externalities and wants businesses to pay for the right to pollute in order to align businesses' need for profit with society's need for a healthy and safe environment. Doing so will also allow for new and better ways for companies to reduce pollution while providing value to both shareholders and a broad set of societal stakeholders.
Learn more about Dan's take on modernizing environmental policy and incentivizing businesses to operate sustainably in this week’s episode of the Mother Earth Podcast.
18. Deeohn Ferris
“I think the power of the Institute for Sustainable Communities is our work facilitating and ensuring that equity and justice and the outcomes that benefit people are embedded in climate change solutions.” Cities are where the majority of the world’s population lives, where most of our energy is consumed, and where most of our products are made. Cities are also places where many people experience the impacts of the climate crisis and where frontline communities deal with the daily impacts of air and water pollution. These trends will only continue: according to the United Nations, by 2050 89% of the U.S. population and 68% of the world population will live in urban areas, substantial increases from today’s levels. Community-level work is thus vital to solving the climate crisis and related problems of air and water pollution. And one of the world’s leaders in community-level environmental work is Deeohn Ferris, president of the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC).
In this episode of the Mother Earth Podcast, we sit down with Deeohn for a conversation about the indispensable role of community-based environmental change. Deeohn and her team work in cities in China, India, Bangladesh and the United States, where they bring together key stakeholders--factory owners, workers, government leaders, NGOs, and folks at the grassroots level--to tackle the critical issues of making the transition to renewable energy, enhancing resiliency, reducing pollution, and making sure that equity is at the center of the process. Deeohn and her colleagues share international best practices and experience, provide technical expertise and training, and build the capacity of local organizations in order to spark creative environmental solutions and lasting change. This is a true bottom-up, inclusive approach; it entails listening to people in the community and ensuring that solutions emerge from within each community rather than being imposed from the outside.
Deeohn and her team focus on communities that are hit hardest by climate change to ensure that no one is left behind when it comes to solutions. For example, she discusses with us the Southeast Florida Compact, a recent ISC project building coastal resiliency solutions in order to deal with sea level rise. Deeohn and her team drew from the programs and solutions implemented in the cities they work with in Asia to implement projects like this one in the U.S.
Deeohn also brings a unique perspective to her work as a Black environmental lawyer who’s been deeply involved in environmental justice issues for many years. Her first job out of law school was working at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, where she saw firsthand the impacts of pollution on Black and brown communities. She was involved in the early years of the environmental justice movement and has remained committed to racial equity in the environmental movement ever since. This commitment is instilled in ISC’s work around the world today.
Deeohn leaves us with a hopeful reminder that she says gets her up and out of bed every day: “people are the ones that make change.” Join us this week for this conversation at the cutting edge of community-based solutions to the climate crisis.
17. Jeff Golden
“I think we need each other to remind ourselves of the stakes and encourage us to remember that, in a way, it doesn’t matter what the odds are, that the good life lies at least in part in doing the best that we can.” One year ago, catastrophic wildfires devastated communities in southern Oregon, including the rural towns of Talent and Phoenix. The fires destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, raced ahead of people trying to escape in their cars, and killed eleven people. Much of the devastation occurred in the district of state Senator Jeff Golden, Chair of the Oregon Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire Recovery. Senator Golden is a rare political animal: a progressive Democrat and environmental champion in a rural, conservative district and a thoughtful, respectful politician who refuses to vilify his opponents.
In this episode we sit down with Senator Golden for an in-depth discussion on the politics of the climate crisis, the wildfires that literally hit close to home for him, and the important climate legislation in Oregon that serves as a national model for progress. We get an inside look at the immense challenges he and his colleagues have faced in enacting environmental legislation, including repeated Republican walkouts in 2019 and 2020 that deprived the legislature of a quorum and were used to block climate legislation, even as the state literally burned. Senator Golden joined us for two interviews that make up this episode: first in October 2020 shortly after the disastrous wildfires tore through his district, and again in August, 2021. The timing of these conversations turned out to be perfect. In the first conversation we hear about why a state cap and trade bill failed while in our recent conversation we learn of the success of a very different kind of climate bill in 2021 that is one of the most far-reaching climate bills on the electricity sector in the nation. We hear not only about the brutal devastation of the 2020 wildfires but also about the successful legislation Senator Golden sponsored in 2021 to reduce the dangers of future fires. We discuss Oregon’s status as one of the few states with no campaign finance limits in the first interview and, in the second, learn about a ballot measure in which the voters took control and authorized campaign finance reform.
Senator Golden’s experience in Oregon offers vitally important lessons for the national efforts to deal with the climate crisis. Despite the difficulty of working in politics in a time where extremism and misleading news are rampant, Senator Golden remains diligent in his commitment to protect the land and the people of his beloved state of Oregon And he offers us nuggets of wisdom from his lifetime as a journalist, logger, carpenter, activist and, now, political leader. Join us this week to hear an authentic, progressive voice of the rural American West.
16. Amanda Sturgeon
“A biophilic building is not just a great connection with the outside. It's also about bringing us the peace and tranquility of nature -- the types of things that make us happy.”This week we sit down for a deep conversation with world-leading sustainable architect and urban planner Amanda Sturgeon. Amanda is the founder of “biophilic design,” which connects people to the natural world through the built environment. For years she was a voice in the wilderness, her sustainable design ideas belittled and dismissed. But she was driven by her abiding love of nature and never gave up. She is now the foremost expert on sustainable building design. And she recently expanded her mission: she’s bringing her biophilic design principles to community planning worldwide in a race against the climate crisis. Amanda is currently head of regenerative design strategy at Mott MacDonald in Sydney, Australia. She formerly was CEO of the International Living Future Institute in Seattle where she led a team that built a global biophilic design movement. In our conversation, Amanda explains how buildings can be designed to produce more energy than they use. We discuss the joys of working and living in a building where you can see the changes in sunlight, hear the rain, and smell the garden. She shares her passion for designing whole communities using sustainable principles. And she takes us through her personal journey starting with a love of nature at a young age to the professional challenges she faced in bringing sustainability principles to the design field. This conversation will leave you convinced that biophilic design is essential to human health and happiness and a critical part of solving the climate crisis.
15. Bren Smith
“I don't think of myself as an environmentalist. It's a jobs issue. There are going to be no jobs on a dead planet.” When Hurricanes Irene and Sandy wiped out Bren Smith’s traditional oyster farm in the Long Island Sound two years in a row, he knew it was a wake-up call on the climate crisis. Starting yet again from scratch in a life of restarts, Bren began experimenting with ocean farming. Fast forward ten years: Bren is now recognized as the founder, leader and trailblazer of the regenerative ocean farming movement - a proven way of growing food that helps solve the climate crisis by sequestering carbon. Bren knows it works because he does it himself: he grows abundant quantities of shellfish and edible ocean plants at his Thimble Island Ocean Farm along the Connecticut coastline. Unlike land-based agriculture, Bren’s ocean farming system requires no inputs of food, freshwater or fertilizer. And rather than contributing to the fertilizer pollution problem that causes ocean dead zones, regenerative ocean farming actually removes fertilizer pollutants that are running off of land-based farms into the ocean. Fish also thrive near the healthy ecosystem created by his ocean farm. Bren is passionate about growing food in a way that heals the planet but maybe even more passionate about creating good-paying jobs that give workers ownership and independence. So he founded and leads GreenWave, a non-profit that helps people launch and operate regenerative ocean farms all over the country. And he has become a leading spokesperson for the Blue New Deal -- a set of policies to put people to work in good jobs growing food in the ocean in ways that enhance ocean health and mitigate the climate crisis. In our conversation with Bren, he explains how regenerative ocean farming works, how it can feed the planet, create jobs, and help us heal a wounded planet. He discusses his must-read book, Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change. And he shares his incredible life journey from Newfoundland fishing community to being jobless in the U.S. to ocean farming visionary. Join us to learn more about this critical movement that just might save the planet.
14. Mike Calabrese
“The antidote to despair is activism.” How do we achieve happiness in the face of the climate crisis? The climate crisis can be really depressing, but it doesn’t have to make you depressed. That’s the message of drummer Mike Calabrese of the hit band Lake Street Dive. Mike joins us in this episode of the Mother Earth Podcast for a deep conversation on how he went from climate despair to climate hope. From the outside, you would never guess that Mike has struggled with depression or that the climate crisis at one point in his life not too long ago had him seriously down in the dumps. But Mike has an uplifting message for you, a message of hope and renewal; a message about how he went from feeling bad to feeling good by taking action to do his part as a musician and human being to mitigate the climate crisis. He explains how he became much happier, first through meditation and Buddhist philosophy and more recently through actions he’s taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in his personal life, to write music about the climate crisis, and to work with his bandmates to offset the emissions from their touring. Most of all, Mike is now on a mission to speak out and share his passion for solving the climate crisis. We’re honored that he joined us on the Mother Earth Podcast as part of his mission. And we know that you’ll love hearing some of Lake Street Dive’s music that we feature in this episode, including the climate crisis song, Making Do, from the band’s latest album, Obviously.
13. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha
You no doubt have heard about the Flint water crisis and the poisoning of children in this majority Black city. But did you know that an Iraqi-American immigrant pediatrician discovered the Flint water crisis and boldly took on powerful government forces responsible for poisoning her city? This week on the Mother Earth Podcast we sit down with Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha to hear the back story on the Flint water crisis, her own remarkable life journey and how we can all stay safe from old lead pipes and not-so-old fixtures with lead that are still found in many cities and homes across the country.
When Dr. Mona discovered the possibility of lead contamination in Flint’s water supply in 2015, she gathered key data demonstrating that children were being poisoned and went public with her findings. She was ridiculed and called hysterical. But like her hero, the pioneering public health expert Dr. Alice Hamilton, who fought against adding lead to gasoline a hundred years ago, she stood strong against those who attacked her work. She and others in Flint organized, protested and demanded action. Government officials eventually admitted that the water problem was real and yielded to the pressures of grassroots' demands, a glaring national and international media spotlight and environmental lawsuits. Our conversation with Dr. Mona covers all this and much more, including her family’s flight from Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship and being welcomed as Arab immigrants in the United States.
Dr. Mona is the founder and director of the Michigan State University and Hurley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative. She has testified four times before the United States Congress, is a recipient of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People award, was awarded the Freedom of Expression Courage Award by PEN America, has been recognized as one of USA Today’s Women of the Century and, most recently, received the 2020 CDC Foundation’s Fries Prize for Improving Health. Dr. Hanna-Attisha is the author of the bestselling book What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City.
Join us around our virtual campfire this week for an inspirational story of an unlikely environmental hero.
12. Michelle Wu
“At the end of the day, all climate action is about stepping into the better future that is right within our reach.” Could Boston become the greenest city in the world? Leading Boston mayoral candidate and city council member Michelle Wu believes it can. Michelle may very well be America’s most important municipal climate leader. In our conversation, Michelle discusses her far-reaching vision of Boston as the world’s leading green city and her detailed Boston Green New Deal plan that takes an integrated approach to the climate crisis with policies to address climate justice, housing, food, transportation, support of Boston’s small businesses, and more. Michelle also discusses her experience growing up as a first generation American citizen, and how her family, culture, and her own life experiences shaped her into the forward-thinking leader she is today. Her compelling life story is utterly improbable — as is her rapid rise in the rough and tumble world of Boston politics.
Michelle may very well become Boston’s next mayor. Join us for a compelling conversation and some inspiration on how a new, young generation of leaders is stepping up to meet the ultimate challenge of our time.
11. Nathaniel Stinnett - Special Bonus Episode #2!
The Green Voters’ Whisperer. Millions of Americans list the climate crisis or other environmental issue as their top electoral priority but do not vote. Nathaniel Stinnett knows EXACTLY how to fix this problem and is doing so now. As the founder and executive director of the Environmental Voter Project (EVP), Nathaniel and his team use big data analytics and cutting edge behavioral science to turn these non-voting environmentalists into reliable voters. And they test these methods and have proved they work. In just its first few years, the EVP has seriously succeeded in turning out new environmental voters in local, state and federal elections. In the 2020 presidential election, the EVP turned out hundreds of thousands of environmental voters who formerly were non-voters, including far more voters in Georgia and Arizona than the margins of victory for Biden in those states. In this deep conversation on cutting edge voter mobilization, Nathaniel takes us through this fascinating and absolutely critical approach to turning the tide on the politics of the climate crisis. This conversation may give you more hope on the climate crisis than anything you have heard in a very long time.
Want to get involved in the Georgia runoff elections? Click on the show notes for links to get involved.
10. Leah Stokes - A Season One Special Bonus Edition
on the 2020 Elections
Voters are Stoked on clean energy as the climate crisis solution. Leah Stokes has burst onto the scene as one of America’s leading experts on voting behavior and public policy as they relate to the climate crisis and renewable energy. She’s an assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she’s also affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Department. Stokes’ research regularly appears in top-tier academic journals; her opinion pieces and articles have been published in leading media outlets, including The New York Times, Vox, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, CNN.com and the Los Angeles Times. And for good reason. Leah’s research has put her finger on the pulse of what American voters want from their leaders on energy and climate change policy. Her recent book, Short Circuiting Policy, exposes how electric utilities have taken money from their monopolized customers and used it to undermine clean energy standards while jacking up rates. In this episode, Leah walks us through the latest research on voters’ thinking on environmental issues and explains why she enthusiastically supports Joe Biden’s climate and jobs plan. She also explains the corrupt currents running through the nation’s electricity and political systems, as well as what to do about it. And she encourages us to remember that the environmental movement is broad and diverse, and that the best policy solutions are the ones that are inclusive and promote justice.
Want to get more involved in the 2020 elections? It’s not too late to volunteer and/or donate. At the end of our conversation with Leah, listeners are directed to several organizations that are engaged in grassroots voter work. Or click on the show notes and scroll down to “Get involved in the elections.”
9. The Reverend Lennox Yearwood
“Climate change is our lunch counter moment for the 21st Century.” “Rev” has brought the climate crisis and hip hop music into radical convergence. In the early 2000s, his life took a dramatic turn -- from studying biblical archaeology to founding the Hip Hop Caucus, which organizes and leads the Hip Hop generation in using its political and social voice as the political arm of Hip Hop. Rev is now one of the most influential people in Hip Hop political life. He leads the national Respect My Vote! Campaign; since its inception, numerous celebrity partners have joined the campaign during election cycles including T.I., 2 Chainz, Amber Rose, Future, Keyshia Cole, Vic Mensa, Charlamagne tha God, Keke Palmer, Omar Epps, and more. The campaign set a world record of registering the most voters in one day in 2008 (32,000 people in the US). His People’s Climate Music project released the hip hop album HOME (“Heal Our Mother Earth”) featuring Common, NE-YO, Elle Varner, Karmin, Raheem DeVaughn, and Crystal Waters, among other luminaries. He is the host of the podcast The Coolest Show as part of the Think 100% Climate project using music, radio, film and overall activism to engage young Black people in the climate movement. In 2014, Rev issued A Zero Emissions Manifesto for the Climate Justice Movement, calling for a rapid transition off of fossil fuels; since then he has been arrested multiple times for climate protests as he brings the tools of the civil rights movement to bear on the climate issue. In this episode, Rev calls people of all colors and faiths to action on climate as a moral imperative on par with the greatest social movements in our history. And we learn about his personal journey from divinity student, to Air Force chaplain opposed to the Iraq war, to crusading climate hip hop, political champion.
8 & 8.5. Bracken Hendricks
The man with the climate plan. Bracken is America’s leading policy expert on solving the climate crisis. He co-wrote the climate plan for Governor Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign, which became the go-to plan for all Democratic candidates running for president. That plan has been updated and now lives on as the Evergreen Action Plan, a comprehensive set of policy solutions for the climate crisis that Bracken and colleagues have made available to all political candidates at the national, state and local level. None other than Joe Biden now has adopted large parts of the Evergreen Action Plan in his own climate plan. We spoke with Bracken both before and after Biden announced his climate plan and we are releasing these conversations in two episodes. In Episode 8.0 (August 20, 2020), Bracken gives us a frank and insightful assessment of how Biden’s plan stacks up to what the science mandates we must do to avoid climate chaos. In Episode 8.5 (August 27, 2020), Bracken explains the key policy pillars of standards-plus-investment-plus-justice of the Evergreen Action Plan and why this plan is vital to our future. And he inspires us with a vision of America that leads the world into a clean green future, invests in all her people with a broad range of policies to revitalize rural and urban areas, ensures that fossil fuel workers and their communities are not left behind, welcomes everyone into the middle class with good jobs, provides opportunity for young people during an economic crisis, and ensures climate justice for people of color and frontline communities. Yes we can do all this -- tune in to find out how.
7. May Boeve
The founder of climate activism. As the Executive Director of 350.org, May is integral in generating the urgency for solutions to the climate crisis. She played a critical role in several historic climate demonstrations, including the 2014 People’s Climate March in New York City, the 2018 Rise for Climate global day of action and the 2019 Climate Strikes. She has been at the forefront of the nation’s most important environmental campaigns, including the Keystone XL Pipeline and divestment movements. May shares with us her journey from being a college student who helped found the group that became 350.org to international climate leader. And we learn how May came to the painful understanding of the role privilege played in her success and how she began a tireless effort to build a racially, economically and geographically diverse coalition as the only way to solve the climate crisis.
6. Zygmunt Plater
The greatest fish tale ever told. As a young law professor, Zyg and a ragtag army of law students took on all three branches of the federal government and every corporate interest in the country that drinks from the public trough. Their famous battle to save the Little Tennessee River and the livelihoods of small farmers with an Endangered Species Act lawsuit is an utterly epic tale full of twists and turns. Zyg offers timely insights and inspiration for environmental activists today fighting the government and entrenched corporate interests.
5. Philip Shabecoff
The dean of environmental journalism. As the environmental correspondent for the New York Times from 1977 to 1991, Philip rang the alarm bell loud and clear on the coming climate crisis, loss of species, the ozone hole, environmental racism and more. But his reporting on the dire state of our environment and what it meant for humanity spelled the end of his job for America’s most prominent newspaper. Philip went on to found Greenwire and write several books on the environment, including A Fierce Green Fire: the American Environmental Movement, which has been made into a movie narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabelle Allende, and Meryl Streep. Philip offers insight and wisdom on the crisis that he tried so hard to prevent with his prescient reporting.
4. Saul Griffith
The Green New Deal is easier than we think. America’s leading energy expert, inventor and entrepreneur has written the roadmap for the Green New Deal. Saul and his colleagues at Otherlab undertook a comprehensive study of the U.S. energy system under contract from the U.S. Government. His research shows that we can transition quickly off of fossil fuels and onto renewable energy. Doing so will not only halt the climate crisis, it will reduce air pollution and water pollution, save billions of dollars in healthcare costs, create millions of good new jobs, and rejuvenate our economy for decades to come. Saul leads us step-by-step through the decarbonization process. And he reminds us that we met a challenge like this once before: America turned its industrial system on a dime to produce the “Arsenal of Democracy” that saved the world from facism.
3. Dr. Robert Bullard
The father of environmental justice. Dr. Bullard is an award-winning author of eighteen books covering topics from community resilience to environmental racism. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University. A leading advocate against environmental racism and of the Environmental Justice movement starting in the 1980s, Dr. Bullard shares his knowledge and expertise as to how and why race and class map closely with pollution, unequal protection, and vulnerability. He points us to smart growth solutions, including open spaces and parks, walkable neighborhoods, and mixed income developments as the way to promote racial equality in a healthy environment for all our people.
2. Jamie Margolin
“It’s time to live out youth to power in all its forms.” So says this high school senior and climate activist in her book Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It, available June 2. Jamie sprang onto the national scene in 2018 as a founder and co-executive director of Zero Hour, which organized the first-ever national youth climate march. But Jamie and her young colleagues had to learn activism on the job and on the fly. Youth to Power is the book she wishes she had when launching and learning to run Zero Hour. This how-to guide—chock full of valuable lessons explained in concise prose—is a must read for any young person trying to better their world through activism. Jamie shares with us key lessons from Youth to Power, takes listeners on a tour of the youth perspective on the climate crisis, and shows us that hope only comes in the form of action.
1. & 1.5. Bill McKibben
America’s leading writer on the climate crisis. Bill is an author and founder of 350.org, which organized the first planet-wide, grassroots climate movement, and has staged twenty thousand rallies around the world. Bill discusses the ideas in his latest book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, and his three-decade journey from introverted author to crusading global activist on a mission to save humanity from the climate crisis. Please note this episode was recorded prior to the pandemic.
