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All eyes have been on the Lone Star State recently, watching the grim and undeniable impact of climate change on a population completely unprepared. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with energy market expert Alex Gilbert about the devastating power outages in Texas amid a record freeze. We learn about Texas’s unique power grid, look at what could have been done to prevent the massive blackouts, and examine policies around the globe that could help mitigate the effects of extreme weather events to come.

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In the 1990s, I recall my grandfather remarking upon the new ubiquity of plastic water bottles, “When did everybody get so thirsty all of a sudden?” Indeed, plastic bottles have been proliferating at an exponential rate since the 1970s – the US alone is responsible for tens of billions of single-use plastic bottle waste every year. This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a look at the bottled water industry through the eyes of a relatively small but innovative player in the space. CEO and co-founder of FloWater, Rich “Raz” Razgaitis, joins us to tell us about his company’s product, its mission to help curb America’s seemingly bottomless thirst for single-use plastic bottles, and the ways the bottled water industry is similar to Big Tobacco.

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Webster defines adolescence as “the state or process of growing up.” As a species, we may be smack dab in the middle of our collective adolescence. This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a breath to learn a bit about ourselves from Bill Plotkin, an author, psychologist and spiritual ecologist. We dive into Plotkin’s teachings, outlined in his new book, The Journey of Soul Initiation, about moving from adolescence into adulthood (both metaphorically and figuratively), and how we can all evolve as individuals to become better stewards of the planet.

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The new American majority is multiracial, multicultural, and progressive, and our guest today is working to make sure that it also has a powerful voice in shaping the future of politics in this country. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak to Steve Phillips, author, political activist, and founder of Democracy In Color. We discuss Georgia’s important role in the 2020 election, talk about his friendship with Stacey Abrams, and contemplate potential Democratic strategies in other racially, ethnically, and politically diverse states such as, Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas. Lastly, we dive into the Senate, scrutinizing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s latest shenanigans and discussing the future of the filibuster.

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Which of the Trump-era environmental transgressions made your heart hurt the most? Was it when they loosened CO2 emission restrictions on power plants, removed protections from wetlands, or expanded drilling in all sorts of delicate ecosystems? Or perhaps it was the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement that wounded you most deeply? It’s hard to choose, really. But chin up, there’s a new sheriff in town. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Derek Walker, the VP for US Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund, about what we can expect from the new Biden Administration. We talk about specific environmental policies, some of the heads of key environmental agencies, and the importance of the US rejoining the Paris Agreement.

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It’s out with the old and in with, if not something completely new, something very different. This week on Sea Change Radio, we mark the end of the Trump reign of terror with a look to the future with author Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute. We discuss his ideas for the incoming Biden Administration, analyze some fundamental flaws in our current economic system, and look at the upside of the economic downturn in terms of CO2 emissions.

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According to the State of Alaska website, the state’s name derives from the Aleut alyeska, meaning “great land.” Today on Sea Change Radio we talk about The Last Frontier, and some of the threats to its greatness. A week before the November election, the Trump Administration opened more than 9.3 million acres of old growth stands in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging companies which can now build roads and cut timber in this pristine ecosystem. This  decision reversed protections created by the US Forest Service’s Roadless Rule Policy which this week has been in place for 20 years. Our first guest today is Jim Furnish, a longtime Forest Service official who explains the importance of the Tongass, the significance of the Roadless Rule Policy, and the prospect of a re-reversal once Joe Biden becomes President. Then, we revisit part of our 2015 discussion with environmental journalist Kate Sheppard as she recounts how sea level rise has imperiled the small Alaskan port town of Shishmaref.

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While history books will largely remember 2020 as the year of a global pandemic, it was also the year that Americans began to truly embrace the Black Lives Matter movement. The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor – and most recently the verdict in the shooting of Jacob Blake – brought about an outpouring of support in a year where there were only 18 days when police did not kill someone. We turn the page on 2020 on Sea Change Radio by revisiting two of our discussions about the black experience in this country. First, we hear from Castle Redmond, a managing director at the California Endowment as he talks about growing up Black in the Bay Area in the seventies. Then, a conversation with Maurice Plaines about the relationship between police and Black America.

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As 2020 comes to a close, we are reminded of the old proverb, “It’s always darkest just before the dawn.” Covid deaths in the US have reached over 335,000 and ICU vacancies across the country are dangerously low; the current president is throwing a temper-tantrum and reminding us, once again, that our civic and political systems were not built in anticipation of people completely devoid of honor. On top of it all, we don’t get to finish this doozy of a year with anything close to the celebration it merits. Things do seem dark. But the second part of the adage is about dawn — something bright, warm, and hopeful on the horizon. This week on Sea Change Radio, in part 2 of our discussion with writer and political analyst John Stoehr, we try to turn the page on the Trump era, examine the Democrat/Republican divide in terms of messaging and policy, and talk about the gerontocracy that’s pulling the levers of governmental power in both parties.