Climate One

The Trump administration has taken aim at green energy, but one technology has largely been left untouched: batteries to store wind and solar electricity. California alone surpassed 13GW of battery storage last year, and Texas has become the fastest growing market for the technology. But producing batteries isn’t without its downsides, especially when it comes to mining the necessary raw materials...

In 2013, 9-year-old Ella Roberta died from a severe asthma attack. She became the first person in the United Kingdom (and possibly the world) to have “air pollution” listed as the cause of death on her death certificate. Her mother, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, founded the Ella Roberta Foundation and has become a global voice for clean air. Globally, the World Health Organization says that air poll...

We’re all feeling the effects of the fossil-fueled climate crisis, but young people will not let this threat to their future go unchallenged. They’re taking it to the courts. In the last year, youth plaintiffs have had notable legal successes in Montana and Hawaiʻi, challenging that those states were violating their constitutional rights in continuing to burn fossil fuels. In Hawaiʻi, the ruling c...

Climate disruptions and growing risk are upending insurance markets, leading many insurers to abandon parts of the country all together. Due to fires, floods and other extreme events, more and more homeowners are facing rapidly rising premiums or being dropped from their insurance plans altogether. Increasing numbers of homeowners are taking refuge in the state insurance plans of last resort, stra...

In a previous Climate One episode, we discussed the good, the bad, and the ugly impacts of artificial intelligence. But AI isn’t going away. Humans rarely give up a nifty new tool unless something better comes along. AI’s share of energy consumption is enormous, and the Department of Energy estimates that data center energy demands will double or even triple in just the next three years. Demand on...

Three years ago, Congress passed President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in climate action in U.S. history. The IRA set in motion a sweeping set of investments in nearly every aspect of energy and climate, mostly in the form of subsidies and tax credits, to boost domestic production of electric vehicles, batteries and carbon-free energy. Those investments have flowed to e...

Nature can feel distant from our everyday lives. Maybe it’s a place we visit on the weekends, a getaway from the hustle and bustle, something “out there,” just beyond the edges of our neighborhoods. But we are part of it, and as more and more people consider their impact on the Earth, sustainable practices are extending even to death, where green and natural burials are gaining popularity.  Within...

When individuals want to take action on climate, it’s often in the form of electrifying a home, voting, or maybe even traditional activism. Those are very important, but we often overlook how individual skills and talents can also make a difference.  This week we’re highlighting creative forms of climate action. Pattie Gonia is a drag queen, environmentalist and advocate for inclusivity and divers...

Matt LaBrot was the Tesla sales manager who got so fed up with how Elon Musk’s public persona affected the brand that he published a website called “Tesla Employees Against Elon.” He was subsequently fired, allegedly for "using company resources to build a website that did not align with the company’s perspective." For our pod audience, we’re dropping this extended version of Greg Dalton’s convers...

In 2024, BloombergNEF predicted electric vehicles would make up nearly half of U.S. new car sales by 2030. Now, they’ve revised their projection down to less than 30%, just one year later.  In a time when we need to be speeding up the energy transition, EV sales in the U.S. are stagnating. Sales of Teslas, once the king of electric vehicles, are collapsing. What’s behind the slowing demand? And wi...

Summer is here, temperatures are rising — and so are electric bills. That also means many people are facing a severely overlooked issue: power shutoffs. In 2024, over 600,000 households in the United States had their power shut off due to an inability to pay. When that happens, people cannot turn on their lights, keep food refrigerated, or cool down the home. And regulations preventing shutoffs du...

Carbon dioxide is a big deal. It’s responsible for about half of global heating. But what about the other half? There’s actually good news here: Nearly half of the temperature increases driving climate disasters come from super pollutants, most of which don’t stay in the atmosphere for nearly as long as carbon dioxide — which can last for centuries. Methane, for example, is about 80 times more pot...

There’s so much hard and heavy news out there right now, climate related and not. It feels like decades of progress is being lost. But — good news! — there are many solutions that can be deployed right now. This week we’re featuring conversations with three big thinkers who are bringing those solutions to light and showing why — even when times seem at their worst — they have no room for doom.  Aw...

In January, congestion pricing went into effect in New York City. The policy’s implementation took decades; along the way, multiple moments suggested that it wouldn’t happen at all. Now, drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street during peak hours are required to pay a toll. Meanwhile, other cities like San Francisco are considering a similar initiative. But Trump opposes New York’s plan. Gov...

“In the course of saying no with their bodies, they were met with more violence… including moms who were carrying babies on their backs and were pushed to the edge of the river — and had to choose the river.” That’s Abby Reyes, author of “Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars and the Rise of Climate Justice.” In today’s episode, she shares deeply emotional stories of the price paid by enviro...

Would you stand up against a giant corporation to stop toxic chemicals from harming your town’s water? Could you get policy enacted to cut emissions affecting people living in your state’s “diesel death zone?” How would you launch a global campaign to stop the construction of a new port threatening marine life on your island? Every year, the Goldman Environmental Prize is awarded to six grassroots...

We're living through a climate emergency. The best way to begin addressing this crisis is by talking about it. Join co-hosts Greg Dalton, Ariana Brocious and Kousha Navidar as they guide you through empowering conversations that connect all aspects of the climate crisis — the scary and the exciting, the individual and the systemic. Subscribe today wherever you find your podcasts. Learn more about...

About fifty years ago, multiple environmental disasters forced a reckoning with how we care for the Earth. President Richard Nixon signed numerous environmental protection bills into law in the 1970s, including what is considered to be the nation’s green Magna Carta: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).   Among many other moves to eliminate or weaken federal environmental regulations and...

Climate progress is stalling at the federal level, making local action more critical than ever. “In an increasingly urbanized world, cities must play the leading role in achieving our climate goals,” says San José Mayor Matt Mahan.  But what does that look like in practice? What role can cities play in accelerating the transition to a fully electrified economy across all sectors? And how does he p...

It’s so easy to spiral into a climate doom loop. But solutions to the crisis are out there! Even as federal action stalls, states, local organizers and innovators across the U.S. are charging ahead with climate progress. What responsibility does the media have in elevating the solutions that exist and are working? And how can artists help reframe the climate conversation and shift the narrative fr...

Rep. Jared Huffman has represented California’s 2nd District — from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border — for over a decade. During that time, he has championed climate issues and fought to protect California’s public lands, prevent offshore drilling, pushed for financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels, and introduced legislation to tackle plastic pollution. Now, turmoil in the f...

Summer is coming soon, and for many that means vacation. While traveling far and wide can be an amazing experience, the carbon cost of traveling is significant. But what if we could rekindle a sense of awe in our own neighborhoods?  After years of extreme expeditions all over the world, adventurer Alastair Humphreys spent a year exploring the detailed local map around his home. His new book “Local...

On April 21, Pope Francis died at the age of 88. The Catholic Church's first Latin American pope was known for his humility and his efforts to make his religion more inclusive and welcoming around social issues like same-sex marriage. Pope Francis was also a climate leader. In honor of his passing, this bonus episode revisits a Climate One episode from 2015 that focused on the Pope's views on clim...

Since its creation under President Richard Nixon in 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has worked to reduce pollution and toxic exposures to ensure that Americans have clean air, clean water and clean soil. The EPA has also sought to reduce emissions to address climate change. Now that the Trump administration is in power, the EPA is being threatened with a 65% reduction in their budge...

More than 3 billion people rely on seafood as a primary source of animal protein. But waters are warming, and fish are moving. Are those fish, and the communities that have relied on them for centuries, in trouble? We go around the world, from the rocky shores of New England to the picturesque island of Niue, to investigate how three popular fish are doing. Along the way, we meet people who are pr...