Extinction Rebellion Radio

In this episode, we look at the Trump administration's actions through the lens of our climate crisis and ask: how can we find ways to care for one another through the GOP's disastrous dismantling of our democratic institutions? In many ways, the effects of Trump's policies are (or certainly will be) as devastating to people's lives as hurricanes. Access to food, health care, housing, and other ne...

We ponder what an extinction rebellion looks like under this new iteration of American politics, this new iteration of executive power, this new iteration of world affairs. The same basic dynamic of the climate crisis goes on: mass burning of fossil fuels cooks the planet and threatens extinction. But what we do in response might look different. What is mutual aid in the time of a so-called 'unita...

Alycee rejoins the show discussing how USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Developmen) was doing climate mitigation work before it was ripped apart last week by the Trump Administration. We also cover some recent climate news and commentary including a report from a financial modeling company saying that $1.4 trillion in real estate value will be destroyed by the climate crisis. That's real e...

Whiplash on tariffs! Why did President Trump immediately reverse himself on tariffs, first with Colombia, then with Mexico and Canada? It's because he needs their oil. Colombia exports $5.4 billion in oil to the U.S, an amount that's dwarfed by Mexico and Canada. In fact the U.S. gets 60% of its oil from Canada. The tariff postponement has little if anything to do with border 'security' and everyt...

There have been two major presidential addresses in the last two weeks and both had climate change at the center of them. Joe Biden's Farewell Address warned of a developing oligarchy bent on un-doing climate progress, and Donald Trump's Second Inaugural Address stoked outrage at our failure to recover from climate disasters. This episode explains how the way both presidents think and talk about c...

The fires around Los Angeles are obviously caused by climate change, Why wasn't there a better plan for combating them? I'm working on the theory that NO PLAN would have worked. It was not possible to respond quickly and effectively. There's a profound water shortage throughout the region, so they simply don't have enough groundwater to pump. The fire fighters may be well trained but if they don't...

This episode updates climate news from various points in 2024 that we haven't covered yet. The Biden administration is foregoing some emissions cuts they could have had from regulating car pollution. And some good news: Cat lovers will rejoice to hear that the Iberian Lynx, a medium size cat with gorgeous features, is no longer critically endangered. An iconic Hawaiian Banyan tree is reflowering a...

From smog-choked India to flooded Spain to smoke-choked New York to the rain dump in the north of England to the Thanksgiving snow dump on the East Coast of the United States, what do all these things have to do with climate and what can we do about them?

Climate change is pushing us beyond what we can handle as a society. Hurricanes Helene and Milton have left FEMA, the National Flood Insurance Program, and the Small Business Administration are all out of money and at the maximum of their ability to borrow. At this point it would take major Congressional intervention to mount even a normal disaster response. When even a rich country like the Unite...

What's happening in Ukraine is deeply entwined with the climate crisis. Its dependence on fossil fuels that's creating both of these crises. Russia is an expansionist state that exports fossil fuels. This is the structure of whats happening. As long as both of those conditions are present, we are going to have to worry about what Russia will do next. President-Elect Trump is not going to change ei...

Cop 29 is in the trash can of history. This was the 2024 version of the United Nations summit on solving global climate change. When we describe what happened, listeners will think we're joking (we're not). The Chief Executive of the conference offered to exchange oil and gas leases for sponsorships. The big announcement was money for poor countries, but the conference didn't bother to identify th...

With Donald Trump's victory, near-term global progress on climate change seems impossible. How did we get here? This episode looks at each state and shows how deep and wide Trump's appeal was. My view of why has a lot to do with social division. The orientation to blame and attach each other over superficialities, very common on the left, creates an angry divided society on which a candidate of an...

We made this episode in December 2020, after the 2020 election but before President Biden and Vice President Harris took office. It's directly relevant now. Alycee and Matt examine Trump's efforts to rip open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and what Biden might do to stop it (he later did exactly what we said). And we talk about the threat of fascism in American politics. Four years ago, and o...

Tim Walz, Democratic Party Vice Presidential nominee and Governor of Minnesota, has been hailed as a progressive. And he is, relative to other national politicians. But what if we assess him relative to scientific necessity on climate change? The record is mixed. We aim for an even-handed discussion of Tim Walz's record, and of his potential should he and Kamala Harris win the White House. 

Sorry for the delayed posting on this one, folks! Though late, it remains (unfortunately) absolutely relevant. The topic? Climate disasters are happening all over the United States and all over the world, with deadly consequences. The climate crisis is hurting us a right now; it is not a future problem. Extreme temperatures in India, hospitalizations at Trump rallies, dead homeless bodies on the s...

Alycee (who is a lawyer) and Matt (who is not) talk about a few things today, and we start with suing the bastards. As we try to get some action on the climate emergency, do lawsuits work? Suing the fossil fuel companies, suing governments for non-action, what does it accomplish and what does it fail to accomplish? 

In this episode we describe climate disasters covering June and July, including 300 foot high flames hurtling through a UNESCO site faster than a human can run, fires so large we have no means of fighting them, the moon appearing orange around the world from so much smoke in the air, floods that make four story buildings disappear in seconds, on and on (and this doesn't even include the hurricanes...

The Harris vs. Trump election is currently the biggest story in climate policy, so we have more to say about it. What does fracking have to do with the rural vote in Pennsylvania? And how is that connected to carbon emissions from bombs and rockets in Israel and Palestine? It's all connected. Alycee and Matt explain how.

Alycee and Matt analyze the presidential election in climate policy terms. We try to locate Kamala Harris on climate policy, and discuss the implications of her vice presidential pick. Harris has a track record of prosecuting big oil and winning multi-million dollar settlements from them, and she opposed fracking, then later promised she would not ban it. (In line with FCC rules this analyzes but...

The new Vice Presidential Republican nominee J.D. Vance favors taxing corporations, curtailing foreign wars, and clawing back executive pay. At times he sounds more like the running mate for Cornel West than for Donald Trump. So what is going on? Is the so-called New Right that he personifies genuinely different from the traditional Republican Party once in office? Or is Vance bought and paid for...

This episode runs through some of the climate disasters of early 2024 - one after another. It's not easy listening, but it's necessary listening. The news media is drastically under-reporting how dire things already are, right now, which is why so many people think climate change is a future disaster. In fact, it is a present disaster. This episode covers the opening months of 2024.  

Dana Fisher is Professor at American University and Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution, among other titles. She joins us to talk about her latest book, Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action. We talk about shocks to the climate, how that turns into activism, how that turns into policy, or how that fails to happen. We primarily wanted to talk with Dana about her book,...

We’re talking this week with the three Extinction Rebellion activists who disrupted a live performance of An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen on Broadway. The parallels between that 19th century play and the 21st century climate crisis are so strong that critics had to call the theater to confirm that our protest was not part of the production. Matt, the host, less disruptively contributed to t...

How can we be still within ourselves in the face of climate catastrophe and yet active in the world at the same time? Mindful activists, including climate activists, always wrestle with some version of this question. Alycee Lane found her answer amid a deeply personal loss -- the death of her parents -- which inspired her to write  The Wretched of Mother Earth: The Handbook for Living, Dying and N...

We can't tackle the climate emergency without some level of government regulation. Those regulations don't work unless they are enforced. But enforcement isn't happening, not very widely anyway. To understand how and why environmental protections are not being enforced in both the U.S. and the U.K., we talk with Eleanor Godwin, the researcher who compiled and published this information. Eleanor gi...