Tag Archives: new yorker

Jeremy Miller on California’s Water Troubles

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JeremyMillerCalifornia’s soggy winter and spring belie its long-term water prospects. While it’s true that the Golden State is experiencing record rainfalls, California’s water problems have far from evaporated. A warmer globe means wilder swings of storms and drought, deluges and scarcity. Is the most populous state ready for these wild swings? What are they doing with the surplus that is literally spilling over aquifers right now? And how will they ensure that groundwater stores are not completely depleted? This week on Sea Change Radio, we hear from environmental writer Jeremy Miller who discusses his recent New Yorker article chronicling California’s deep, systemic water problems. Miller talks about the impact of the flooding in Northern California, shares ideas from experts on how to re-charge the state’s stressed groundwater reserves, and posits that California needs a more sustainable model for fresh water that is less dependent on the snow pack in the Sierra Mountains.

Jem Bendell: Making Heads or Tails of Bitcoin

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JemBendellBitcoin-accepted-hereIf you’ve heard about Bitcoin on the evening news or seen a headline about it, you might have been left with the impression that it’s some sort of online scam or the next Dutch tulip bubble. But Bitcoin and other cryptographic currencies are very real.

Our guest this week on Sea Change Radio is Jem Bendell, a professor of sustainability leadership at the University of Cumbria, the world’s first public university to accept Bitcoin for tuition payments. He explains how Bitcoin works and why he thinks it might help us move beyond the inadequacies and inequities of central bank-controlled currencies toward a sharing economy. Bitcoin has its critics to be sure, but, as New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki has so aptly put it, “the value of currency is, ultimately, what someone will give you for it…”  Listen now as host Alex Wise and Jem Bendell discuss how Bitcoin is valued and the promise crytpographic currency holds for the sustainability movement.

The Resurgence Of The Rake

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This week on Sea Change Radio, we talk about leaf blowers, one of the least eco-friendly items found in the garage or tool-shed of your average American. But in the past two decades these debris blowers have become sort of ubiquitous, almost completely replacing their peaceful, quiet, low-carbon-footprint predecessor, the rake. As the ecological sensibility around the country and the globe continues to evolve, will we see a reversal of this trend? If today’s guests on Sea Change Radio have anything to say about it, the answer is a resounding, “Yes.” First, host Alex Wise speaks with Gretchen Biggs, an environmental attorney and activist who’s working to ban leaf blowers in Greenwich, CT through her organization Greenwich CALM. Then, we hear from Peter Kendall, a resident of a Bay Area suburb whose anti leaf-blower activism was recently featured in a full-length New Yorker article. Pour yourself a glass of iced tea, go ask your neighbor to stop blowing those leaves and dirt onto your stoop and listen to this week’s show as Sea Change Radio advocates for the resurgence of the rake.