We are now three months away from an election that could determine A LOT, including what our future climate looks like. On this episode, we discuss the 2020 election through the prism of climate change. We talk with Marianne Levelle, a reporter with Inside Climate News, about Joe Biden's evolving climate policy and why he's gotten more aggressive on the issue. And we talk with Time magazine correspondent Justin Worland who recently wrote a cover story for the magazine titled "2020 is our last, best chance to save the planet.
Federal courts recently handed down major decisions against big pipelines that would transmit oil and gas around the country. And other big pipelines are facing legal challenges that may put them out of business. What do these decisions mean for America's continued oil and gas buildout and the Trump administration's campaign for energy dominance? Our first guest is Ellen Gilmer, who tracks environmental policy & courtroom drama for Bloomberg News.
Then, to talk about what the Dakota Access decision means for the rights of America's indigenous people, we hear from Nick Tilsen. He's CEO of NDN Collective, a Native American rights and social justice organization based in South Dakota. Nick is a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation.
This week, President Trump announced he was issuing final rules to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The new rules will limit public review of federal infrastructure projects to speed up the permitting of highways, power plants & pipelines.
Since its passage in 1970, NEPA has been used to ensure that federal agencies consider environmental effects of major projects.
When the proposed rules first came out, we spoke about the impact of these rollbacks with Sharon Buccino, senior director of the lands division of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Harvard is one of the latest in a series of wealthy institutions around the world announcing steps towards pulling their investments in the fossil fuel industry. But Harvard’s announcement has been called too little, too late. Bill McKibben, author of “The End of Nature” and cofounder of 350.org, reflects on what the divestment movement has achieved so far and how it all began. Also, why racial justice goes hand in hand with the fight for a cleaner environment, and the big takeaways that the coronavirus pandemic has for the climate crisis.
This episode comes from our friends at Living on Earth, another podcast about the environment that you should check out.
Harvard Law School is keeping tabs on the regulatory changes of the Trump Administration. What’s the lasting legacy of the nearly 100 environmental rollbacks?
There’s a growing understanding that racial disparities in the U.S. extend beyond policing, to public health and the environment. Communities of color are more likely to breathe polluted air, live near polluting industries and be exposed to toxic chemicals. And now COVID-19 is disproportionately threatening these same communities
Our guest is environmental justice leader Mustafa Santiago Ali. From 1993-2017, Ali served as Senior Advisor for Environmental Justice and Community Revitalization and Assistant Associate Administrator as a founding member of the EPA Office of Environmental Justice. But when the Trump administration proposed drastically cutting EPA’s budget and eliminating the Office of Environmental Justice, Ali resigned in protest. Now Ali is the VP of environmental justice at the National Wildlife Federation.
Joe Biden ran considerably to the right of his top rivals on climate policy. But now that he is the nominee, the Biden campaign is trying to convince climate activists that his campaign is taking the issue seriously.
President Trump ordered meat processing plants to stay open despite workers getting sick with the coronavirus. On this episode, Jacob Bunge, agriculture reporter for the Wall Street Journal, talks about the meat industry, worker safety, farmers' fears, euthanizing pigs and other issues with the food supply chain.
Last week the EPA announced a major change to a landmark regulation that has reduced toxic air pollution like mercury from coal-fired power plants. The vast majority of these plants have already complied with the rule. So why did the EPA roll it back now?
If you've been following climate change, the coronavirus pandemic might feel oddly familiar these days. Many countries have implemented radical policies that would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago to slow the spread of the virus. Is this what it will take to solve the climate crisis? On this episode, climate journalist Emily Atkin on the intersection of climate change and coronavirus.
How does doubt about science play out in a moment like we’re experiencing now where public health and millions of lives depend on good science and trusting scientists? Our guest is David Michaels, an epidemiologist and author of “The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception.”
Industry is struggling during the coronavirus crisis and one way the Trump administration has responded is by suspending enforcement of some environmental regulations. The EPA made the announcement on Thursday.
Companies are usually required to report when they discharge certain levels of pollution into the air or water. But EPA is now telling them to monitor themselves for an undetermined period of time during the outbreak.
Our guest is Rachel Franzin, energy and environment reporter for The Hill.
Yes, Trump has cozied up to oil companies. He’s said we should have taken the oil from Iraq. And it does seem like we are cozying up to petro-state strongmen in Russia and Saudi Arabia. But is this any different from how the United States and other western powers have operated over the last 150 years? Our guest is Matthieu Auzanneau, author of the book Oil, Power, and War which looks at the deep history of big oil’s influence over the affairs of the U.S. and other Western powers.
At more than 100 years old, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act was among the first environmental laws in the United States. Until recently, power companies and other industries could be prosecuted by the federal government for causing egregious bird deaths, even accidentally. Not anymore.
The Trump administration is proposing that only the intentional killing of birds would be prohibited under the act.
This despite recent research that finds a nearly 30% decline in birds from North America - that’s a loss of nearly 3 billion birds - over the past 50 years.
Our guest is Brad Bortner, one of 17 former directors and high-level appointees from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who co-signed a letter denouncing the move.
Did the Trump administration manipulate wildfire science to promote the logging industry? An investigation in the Guardian newspaper says yes.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is often called the Magna Carta of environmental law. President Nixon signed it into law 50 years ago this month. And President Trump honored the anniversary by announcing plans to drastically scale back the law.
On this episode, we dig into what many are calling Trump’s biggest environmental rollback yet with Sharon Buccino from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Word leaked a few weeks ago that the EPA is poised to finalize a rule to limit the types of scientific studies that can be used to create new regulations. The proposal -- named “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science” -- would require public health researchers to release their raw scientific data in order for their work to be considered when the EPA sets regulations. These regulations dictate things like how much pollution companies can release into the air and water.
When the rule was first proposed, the agency received nearly 600,000 comments, the vast majority of them in opposition. One of those came from Dr. Mary Rice, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She also studies the effects of air pollution on lung health. On November 14th, Dr. Rice was one of 5 scientists to testify before the House Science Committee on the proposed rule.
Wildfires have once again spread across California...and millions of residents have been living without power for weeks. The deliberate blackouts by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, or PG&E, are an attempt to prevent power lines from starting new fires, a real possibility in dry and windy conditions.
Hundreds of the fires that started last year in California are believed to have been sparked by equipment from power companies — including the state’s deadliest fire. The Camp Fire was caused by a faulty electric transmission line. 85 people died and the town of Paradise was leveled.
Some have called for nationalizing PG&E to keep it accountable for the safety and maintenance of its equipment and the reliability of its service.
Across the country there's a patchwork of grids providing power to Americans, and *they* still mostly rely on fossil fuels to keep a steady flow of electricity. A couple of years ago, President Trump signed an executive order to speed up environmental reviews and approvals of infrastructure projects that are a high priority for the country, like making improvements to the grid.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has created policies to prop up financially struggling coal and nuclear power plants to ensure the electricity grid is resilient and reliable. But the main character in a new book by Wall Street Journal energy reporter Russell Gold looks beyond fossil fuels to power the grid. The book focuses on one man's mission to get more renewable wind energy online, and into American homes and businesses through transmission lines, and a more thoughtful connection of the nation’s grids. The book is called Superpower.
Last time round, climate change got a measly five minutes and 27 seconds of airtime in the debates. During this primary season, it got seven hours in one night alone. CNN’s recent town hall provided each of the 10 candidates an opportunity to lay out their plan to deal with climate change. It was substantive. And it was long. On this episode we talk takeaways with Leah Stokes, a professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She read all the candidates' climate plans, watched all 7 hours, and has a lot to say about it all.
A top climate scientist resigned from the Agriculture Department this month. Lewis Ziska says the USDA buried his research. He's one in a line of researchers who've left the federal government because they claim the administration is censoring climate science.
Today, nuclear plants provide 20% of US power generation. But according to a report last year by the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists, of the 99 nuclear reactors nationwide, owners have shut down six in recent years. Seven more are slated for retirement. In the age of climate change, the Union’s director of energy research and analysis, Steve Clemmer, doesn’t want the demise of this carbon-free power source. In this episode, we talk with him about his report, The Nuclear Dilemma.
The Trump administration has rolled back more than 80 environmental regulations but some states are fighting back. No state has been more active in the resistance against Trump's environmental deregulations than California.
Case in point: last week, news broke that four of the world’s biggest automakers brokered a secret deal with the state to make more fuel-efficient cars in coming years, directly undermining the Trump administration.
On this episode we talk with Jared Blumenfeld, chief of the California EPA about how and why the state stands up to Trump.
Surrounding by several members of his cabinet, President Trump recently gave a speech at the White House touting his own environmental record. Even though he’s tried to rolled back environmental regulations at a record pace, Trump painted a picture of a country where economic growth has occurred as the environment has gotten cleaner.
On this episode, we fact check the speech with Rebecca Leber of the Mother Jones.
The Trump administration recently rolled out the affordable clean energy (ACE) rule. Critics say it basically does nothing to prevent climate change at a time when global warming is turning into an existential crisis. Our guest is Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School and founder of the school's environmental and energy law program. She served in the Obama White House as counselor for energy and climate change.
Recent reports stress the urgency of reducing carbon emissions to check the worst effects of climate change. On this episode we listen in as some very knowledgable experts wade into the possibilities, obstacles and potential solutions.
The panelists: Paulina Jaramillo, associate professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and co-director of the Green Design Institute; Ivonne Peña, an energy analyst who has worked for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the U.S. and the Colombia's Energy and Gas Regulatory Commission; and Greg Reed, a professor of electric power engineering at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering, and director of Pitt's Center for Energy and the Energy GRID Institute.