A Matter of Degrees

"We must understand that we are in a very specific moment in time, and this window is going to shut on us. But it doesn't have to shut on us, if we act." — Vice President Kamala Harris on A Matter of Degrees Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, we had the honor of joining Vice President Harris live in San Francisco for a conversation about climate leadership, justice, and solutions. She underlined...

The third and final installment of our miniseries considers the question "What can I do?" from a political perspective. Our expert guests share stories of nailbiter elections for local office and the victorious legislative campaign to ban gas in new buildings in New York City. We lay out a four-step guide to getting pro-climate candidates elected, supporting them in office, and keeping them accoun...

In this episode, we continue to unpack the question "What can I do?" The second installment of our miniseries zeroes in on our professional lives — ways to approach climate action within the workplace. We learn that almost any job can be a climate job. And, if need be, we can pursue "career divestment." This episode features Amanda Suter Gallardo , deputy petroleum administrator for the City of Lo...

As climate people, we hear this question again and again: "What can I do?" Many of us are trying to figure out how to help address the climate crisis. So, we're taking on that critical question in a three-part miniseries. The first episode is all about The Personal — key ways we can act on climate in our own lives and create meaningful, durable change. Hint: it involves stoves and cash. This episo...

Welcome back, climate-curious friends — it's time for Season 3 of A Matter of Degrees. This season we'll tackle some critical topics and big questions, starting with one we're all asking when it comes to the climate crisis: "What can I do?" Season 3 kicks off (September 15!) with a three-part miniseries to answer that question. We'll talk with some brilliant folks and illuminate what we can do per...

Welcome back to A Matter of Degrees! While we've been hard at work producing season three of the show, the climate movement has been going through a lot of twists and turns. Most recently, after announcing he would not support climate investments in a budget reconciliation deal, Senator Joe Manchin abruptly made a historic climate deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: the Inflation Reduc...

This episode is a collaboration between A Matter Of Degrees and the Gimlet podcast How To Save A Planet . Take a look at many of the spaces where climate-related decisions are being made — from government to business to media — and you'll notice a numbers problem. Despite being roughly half the people on the planet, women rarely have equal representation in critical climate decision-making spaces....

In the jungles of the Brazilian Amazon, groups of farmers and their families get by on what they can grow with the land beneath their feet. They're known in Brazil as "landless workers," a social movement with the goal of increasing land access and ownership for the country's rural poor.  These landless workers -- sometimes called land guardians or protectors -- are a symbol for the power imbalanc...

This episode is a collaboration between A Matter Of Degrees and the Gimlet podcast How To Save A Planet. Coal-fired power plants are closing at record rates. But many are still scheduled to remain operational for the foreseeable future -- despite losing lots of money every year. How do we shut these uneconomic coal plants down faster? One answer: coal debt securitization. Coal debt securitization...

Since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015, banks and large investors have dumped $3.8 trillion into fossil fuels. It's a staggering number. This is why writer and activist Bill McKibben calls money the "oxygen" that fuels the fire of global warming. While the wildfires burning around the world are getting worse each year, it's like the world's bankers are blowing on those fires, making...

Advocates are turning their attention to a new front in the climate war: the fossil-gas hookups in our homes that fuel burners, boilers, and other household appliances. If we want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to electrify the hundreds of millions of machines inside our homes and buildings as fast as possible. But the gas industry won't go down without a fight. Gas industry fron...

When Hurricanes Maria and Irma hit Puerto Rico in 2017, they destroyed the island's fragile food system. Farms of all sizes were battered, with around 80 percent of the island's crop value wiped out. But a group of Puerto Rican farmers practicing an old way of farming, called agroecology, saw their operations bounce back much faster than conventional farms. What does their experience tell us about...

President Biden's American Jobs Plan promises big investments in the clean-energy economy, including clean energy workforce and education programs. Economic progress and clean climate action are inextricably linked.  But how can we make sure that those dollars go to communities of color who have already been most impacted by climate change and consistently shut out of past federal programs promisi...

Abuse of soil, the atmosphere, and communities of color have gone hand in hand. Through reclaiming ancestral connection to the soil, Black farmers are healing the entangled harms of colonization, capitalism, and White supremacy and moving agricultural climate solutions forward in the process.  In this episode, we feature an audio essay that wrestles with these themes. The essay is titled "Black Go...

Baked into the American Jobs Plan is an ambitious proposal to set a federally-mandated Clean Electricity Standard of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035. It would put the US on track to get emissions under control and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. That is, if it gets through Congress.  In this episode, Co-host Leah Stokes speaks with a variety of guests who are part of the broad coal...

Fossil fuel companies are tapping into America's "best and brightest" at top banks, public relations and advertising firms, law firms, and strategy consulting firms. These organizations supply critical services to keep the fossil fuel industry humming: creative work, strategy, legal representation, financing. They're services that oil and gas companies need to remain powerful. In this episode (our...

We're back with another live edition of the show! So much is happening in the Biden era. We didn't want to wait until our second season to unpack all the activity. This week, we feature a conversation with Julian Brave NoiseCat that we recorded at the Crosscut Festival.  Julian is a writer, activist, and policy expert with a deep understanding of Washington climate politics. Julian was actually a...

As we work on season 2, we're sharing a live episode of the show that we just recorded at the Bloomberg Green Summit. The conversation is all about where things stand in the lead-up to global climate talks in the fall.  We were fortunate to get Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland, to talk about this topic with us. Mary served as the President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commis...

In 2013, a series of attack ads blitzed television sets across Arizona. They warned of a dire threat to senior citizens. Who was the villain? Solar energy. These ads came from front groups funded by Arizona Public Service, the state's largest utility. It was part of a years-long fight against rooftop solar that turned ugly. "I mean, for Star Wars fans, APS became the Darth Vader of electric utilit...

We're pleased to introduce an episode of "How to Save a Planet," produced by our friends at Gimlet and Spotify. The show is co-hosted by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg.  "How to Save a Planet" has a lot of similarities to our own, so we think our listeners will like the stories they tell. In this week's episode: a story about the Black Lives Matter Movement and how the fight for black l...

This week, we have a special episode featuring activist and researcher Nikayla Jefferson. Most of us are in the first stage of climate grief: denial. But what does it feel like to enter the stage of grief? And how is that grief different for black people? Even if you've seen the impacts of climate change up close, even if you've felt the tropical winds whip your cheeks, stood in floodwater knee de...

This week, we have a special episode about the long and winding energy transition in an often overlooked place: the Navajo Nation—the largest Indian reservation in the United States. Journalist and climate policy expert Julian Brave NoiseCat is our guide. Ten percent of Navajos lack access to electricity. Some spend up to $700 per month on fuels to travel to places with electricity, or charge elec...

We've made a carbon mess. How do we clean it up? Imagine the atmosphere as an overflowing bathtub. The water keeps gushing from the tap. Clearly, we need to turn it off. We have to bring emissions of heat-trapping gases down to zero, stat.  But even after we do that, we still have a mess on our hands. So, we need to open the drain, let some water out.  In this episode, we'll explore the different...

It's official. Joe Biden will be the next president. And he ran on a platform that put climate at the top of the agenda. There's still a lot of tension. What will happen to the balance of power in Congress? Can we make progress on climate, even with Democrats losing down-ballot races? Even with so much uncertainty, there's actually a lot of good news. In this episode, Leah and Katharine dig into w...

In July, the FBI charged Larry Householder, Ohio's Republican Speaker of the House, with a conspiracy to pass a $1.5 billion bailout in return for $61 million in dark money. The racketeering was allegedly orchestrated by Householder and the utility FirstEnergy to kill Ohio's renewable energy law and prop up aging coal and nuclear power plants. What's happening in Ohio is part of a broader story pl...