As The World Burns: Talking Oil With Daniel Dicker

On the heels of being impeached by the House of Representatives, Donald Trump unsurprisingly created a diversion, having a key Iranian General assassinated by US drones. But as tensions in the Middle East mounted, the price of oil somehow remained relatively steady. Why was this the case? This week on Sea Change Radio, we talk oil with energy expert Daniel Dicker. We discuss the current state of global oil markets, learn the important differences between sweet and sour crude, and examine Dicker’s contention that the best thing for the environment would be much higher oil prices.

Bob Berwyn: Water In The West

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As we embark upon a new decade, many of us are contemplating ongoing environmental challenges and what may be in store for the earth in the decade to come. Fortunately, there are some excellent journalists out there with their fingers on the pulse, whose mission is to uncover environmental news both alarming and inspiring. This week on Sea Change Radio we are checking in with Bob Berwyn, an Austrian-based environmental journalist who writes for Inside Climate News and is in the midst of a three-month tour of the western United States and Mexico. Berwyn discusses the fragile ecosystems west of the Rockies, tells us about permaculture in Oaxaca, and examines the ethical dilemmas that both skiers and ski resorts are facing as the planet warms and snowfall becomes less consistent.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Leadership In Turbulent Times (re-broadcast)

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What makes a great leader? This week on Sea Change Radio, we are honored to have Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin here to give us her take on that question. Goodwin’s book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, just released in paperback, re-examines four US presidents she has studied in the past: Abe Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. She discusses the contrast between these presidents’ leadership and the behavior of the current grifter-in-chief, puts today’s impeachment proceedings in historical context, and hypothesize about how past presidents might have addressed momentous issues like climate change and election tampering. Then, we dig into the Sea Change Radio archives and listen to Rebecca Vallas, a Vice President at the Center for American Progress, talk about the Trump administration’s absurd claims that poverty and hunger are now things of the past in this country.

The Ramez Naam Plan For De-Carbonization, Pt. 1 (re-broadcast)

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Whether or not we use the name Green New Deal to describe a set of aggressive long-term policies that will help humanity in the fight against climate change, most rational people agree that the status quo is completely unacceptable. The potential of a Green New Deal is that it could pave the way for some great minds to devise concrete proposals for reducing greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with one of those great minds, Ramez Naam, a futurist and technologist who’s crafted his own sort of Green New Deal. We delve into the nuts and bolts of Naam’s proposal and the problems it’s trying to solve, as he makes the case for why we may actually see bipartisan support for such a proposal.

Tzeporah Berman on COP25

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Those who attended the 25th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP25 in Madrid this past week were hopeful that it would deepen the commitment of the world’s largest greenhouse gas-emitting nations to fighting climate change. Unfortunately, attendees left Spain disappointed. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Tzeporah Berman, the international program manager for Stand.earth who attended the conference. Berman provides insight into why the conference broke down, what it means for the climate change movement, and how the 2020 US election will influence next year’s summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Gigi Berardi: Eating Well, Eating Wisely

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For many, along with all that good cheer, the holidays bring a bunch of food-related conundrums: what to bring to the pot luck, what to eat and not eat at the company party, what gifts to buy for our culinary-focused friends and family, and how to be ecologically responsible without compromising taste. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with a food expert who can help solve these holiday food puzzlers. Gigi Berardi is a professor of food studies and geography at Western Washington University. Her new book, FoodWISE lays out ways to make better decisions about what we eat. We discuss the differences between frozen and canned foods, take a look at “Big Organic,” and examine how the food industry’s misuse of the word “healthy” has warped its meaning.

John Stoehr: Evangelicals and the Orange Menace

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Has it ever struck you as odd how white evangelicals in this country consistently and enthusiastically back a president with a verifiable history of strikingly lewd behavior? From multiple divorces to bragging about grabbing women by the genitals, from public affairs with porn stars to the suggestion that he’d like to date his own daughter, the man’s moral compass swings wildly away from due North. The evangelical right is historically famous for linking personal morality with fitness to govern. They attacked Bill Clinton unmercifully, for example, for his extra-marital concerns in the 1990s. But when it comes to Donald Trump, white evangelicals seem willing to reconsider this linkage, supporting him in record numbers. What’s behind this mysterious hypocrisy? This week on Sea Change Radio we speak with Editorial Board Founder and Publisher John Stoehr, a journalist who spent his childhood among white fundamentalist Christians. He applies his insights and posits that an authoritarian cosmology and nihilism about the environment enable white evangelical Christians to abandon the Golden Rule in favor of the Orange Menace.

Phil Ting: Policies For Clean Cars and Recycling

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Can you imagine how hard it must be for legislators to know where to focus their energies? The problems that require reform and improved public policy are vast and varied. But as this week’s guest explains, there’s really nothing more important than ensuring clean air and water. Today on Sea Change Radio, we speak with California Assemblymember Phil Ting about his efforts to promote recycling and cleaner cars. We look at the impediments to systemic change, breakdown his proposals, and talk about the amount of political capital required to advance the most fundamental components of life on earth: clean air and water.

Nori + Keeling Curve Prize

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If you ask most people what they think of blockchain applications or cryptocurrency, the response is usually a blank stare of utter bafflement. Well, this week on Sea Change Radio, we are going to try to make some sense of this arcane concept as we re-visit our 2018 discussion with Paul Gambill, an entrepreneur who has devised a carbon dioxide removal marketplace which incorporates blockchain applications. Gambill explains how his startup, Nori, uses this cryptography-based technology, how it plans to ramp up into a vibrant marketplace of buyers and sellers, and why he believes this could actually help reverse the effects of climate change. Then, we speak to Jackie Francis, the executive director of the Keeling Curve Prize as she tells us about her organization’s mission and gives us a glimpse at some of the 2019 winners.

Sammy Roth: Salton Sea Lithium

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If you follow tech news, it’s pretty hard to miss stories reminding us of the tremendous potential that lithium-ion batteries have in store for the world – longer times to gaze into our dazzling new smartphones and longer distances to travel in our cutting-edge electric cars without a re-charge. And yet, most of us probably don’t think too much about the environmental cost of mining all of this lithium. In Australia and South America where 80-90 percent of the world’s raw lithium comes from, the extraction process is dirty and energy intensive. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Sammy Roth of the Los Angeles Times about the promise of extracting lithium in a much cleaner way right here in the US. We learn about plans to extract lithium from the Salton Sea geothermal fields in the Southern California desert, how this process will be viewed by environmentalists and what it could mean for the lithium industry.