Flanigan's Eco-Logic

David Pedesen is the General Manager of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District and the Administrating Agent for the Las Virgenes - Triunfo Joint Powers Authority. These two agencies are developing the PURE Water Project and are building a $466 million facility that will take wastewater and purify it into potable water. Given his municipal water agency's dependence on State Water Project allocat...

Dan Fletcher is the chief operating officer of dcbel , a company with a big mission and valuable products. Dan reports that its mission is "to deliver energy to a household so they can live a without compromise." He is resolute and dcbel delivers resilience, control, and choice. Dan and his colleagues believe that homeowners ought to be rewarded for their investments in solar and batteries and ele...

Alex Macheria is Vehicle Grid Integration Program Manager for PowerFlex , a firm that recently acquired The Mobility House where Alex worked for three years. He brings his love of wheels to the job, tackling the complex world of vehicle grid integration (VGI) and its multiple benefits. PowerFlex helps to connect fleets of electric vehicles, notably electric school buses, to the grid, simultaneousl...

Inna Korobkina joins Ted Flanigan to discuss the nexus between her work in the fashion industry, and his work as a sustainability consultant. They discuss the impacts of fashion on oneself and on the planet. What you wear affects your own wellbeing and at times your health. From a societal perspective, one-tenth of global CO2 emissions are related to textiles... more than all air transportation em...

Zach Woogen is the Executive Director of the Vehicle-Grid Integration Council. He is a self-described "policy and market-design nerd on a mission to equitably decarbonize energy systems." He explains Vehicle Grid Integration (VGI)... an umbrella term that covers managed and smart charging of EVs... shifting when and where charging occurs so that drivers pay less and utilities are not only least im...

Jules Kortenhorst is the co-chair of the Energy Transition Commission (ETC), a group of 50+ "wickedly smart people" dedicated to effective analysis and insights to drive down CO2 emissions and to accelerating the transition to carbon-free energy. The former chief executive officer of Rocky Mountain Institute who grew RMI from a staff of 50 to 600, Jules is passionate about the ETC's critical work...

Kevin J. Patel is a voice for young people, channeling their stories and solutions to address and turn the course on climate change. Born to parents who were climate refugees from India, Kevin took charge in his local South Central LA community, developing community gardens to address the gross inequities of food. He noted that his community had an abundance of fast food, but nothing healthy. This...

Natasha Crowe is the Vice President for Marketing and Communications for Octopus Energy North America . She's been working for Octopus CEO and Founder, Greg Jackson, for 20 years. His vision is to make energy affordable for all, and to make it clean, helping to decarbonize the power sector and stem climate change.  Octopus was founded in the United Kingdom in 2015. Thanks to clever branding and ex...

Dr. Tyler Evans is a physician, academician, and author who focuses on infectious diseases and how to curb them. The conversation begins with a basic question: What is health equity? It's not equality. Instead, it is about access to health care. Dr. Evans has seen the lack of equity first hand, working in countries including Mexico and South Africa. Health equity provides the basics... care, medic...

Joel Makower is the CEO and Chairman of the Trellis Group, formerly Green Bizz. A nationally syndicated journalist and author of more than a dozen books, he has been a strong voice and champion of sustainability for 35 years, aggregating content and convening major conferences to spur action. Green Bizz is "the" annual conference for 2,000+ sustainability professionals, a time for them to connect,...

Travis Baumgardner is the Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer for Sambazon, a company that produces Acai products in Brazil and imports them to America. Acai is a fruit which grows high atop the acai palm trees in the Amazon River Delta where the palms live with the tides every day. Long a staple of the "river people's" diet, acai is loaded with antioxidants. It cuts cholesterol, lowers the risk...

Jay Potter is the co-founder and CEO of Ecor Global, a company focused on repurposing agricultural and urban wastes into bio-based building materials. He is a champion of the circular economy, manufacturing wastes into value. Ecor produces dense particle boards for construction, materials that are organic, without chemical binding agents, and which are fully recyclable. What's he working on this w...

Dr. Bob McCauley is a naturopathic doctor, an entrepreneur, and author. Thirty-three years ago he founded the Watershed Wellness Center in Lansing, Michigan where he provides health consultations. For each client, Dr. Bob advises, "This is what I would do." For years he has helped clients focus on what they eat because you are not only what you eat, but you are what you can assimilate and use for...

Nikita Khandheria is the founder and CEO of Eria Hospitality, a high-end event planning and execution company in the San Francisco Bay Area that is making waves. Nikita, born and raised in California and India before college in Scotland, says she gets her standard for immaculate hospitality from Asia, her efficiency and decorum from England, and much of her drive from America.  So far, in four yea...

Dr. Barry Davis has had a distinguished career as a physician and bio-statistician. Having begun his academic career at MIT, and getting his MD from University of California at San Diego, and a PhD in applied mathematics at Brown University, he is now a Professor Emeritus at University of Texas School of Public Health. And recently, he has written a book titled, "The Preventioneers: Diseases, Disa...

Tim Christophersen has just released a book titled "Generation Restoration" that provides a roadmap, and conditional optimism, for fixing our relationship crisis with Mother Nature. Its forward by Jane Goodall provides guiding perspectives such as how our global society has shifted from taking resources as we "need" them to "greed" and over use. Goodall also posits that while humans may be the mos...

Etelle Higonnet is the Founder and Director of Coffee Watch. She was born and raised in France, earned her undergraduate degree and law degree from Yale, worked around the world on human rights issues, before pivoting her focus to environmental issues with Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, and others. She is currently based on Copenhagen, Denmark.  In this episode Etelle makes it painfull...

Stuart Jenkins is the founder and chief executive officer of Blumaka, a company that manufactures insoles and shoes for high performance athletes. As a marathon competitor, Stuart was frustrated not to be able to access high performance running shoes, so he designed and now manufacturers and sells his own line. Blumaka also sells its insole technology to Fleks shoes, one of Oprah's top product pic...

Bryan Hannegan is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Holy Cross Energy (HCE), an electric cooperative in the mountains of Colorado. He appeared on the podcast in 2021 talking about how to create the utility of the future. Now he reports on results and the remarkable accomplishment  that HCE operated with 100% renewable power in the month of March 2026. The conversation begins by digging...

Claire Smith, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is the CEO of Beyond Investing and Chief Innovative Officer for Beyond Impact. These two ventures work in concert, one providing impact investing, the other advancing startups for plant-based and cruelty-free businesses.  Claire describes her journey... how she melded two major aspects of her life: her vegan path with her 30-year career in conventional f...

Gareth Evans is the founder and CEO of Veckta, an energy consulting firm that advises businesses on how to take control of their energy costs. Far from taking passive positions, and given rising energy costs, he encourages businesses to explore their options using tools such as onsite energy production, energy efficiency, and energy storage. Veckta develops custom solutions and then employs its pl...

Allen Hershkowitz PhD is an environmental scientist who joined Ted for an update conversation. Allen has worked at the confluence of climate and sports for 25 years. He first recorded on Flanigan's Eco-Logic in March of 2022 highlighting his early influences and early career... including 28 years at the Natural Resources Defense Council. There he met the actor Robert Redford who encouraged him to...

Jon Edlin, his wife, and two small children survived an EF-3 tornado that swept through their suburb of Nashville, Tennessee on a dark night in March 2020. Jon had grown up in Kansas, was used to hearing tornado reports, thought little of them, but quickly ushered his family into their "safe space" when meteorologists' alerts of a tornado on the ground in his neighborhood came through his cell lin...

Laura Deehan has been the State Director for Environment California since 2021 and part of the public interest network since 2021. Ted asks her right up front: What is the state of California's environment? Laura starts with her love of California, the beauty of the state, its wonderful coastline, mountains, deserts, and great valleys. Having grown up in Scotland, she marvels at the weather and ou...

This episode is about repurposing retired offshore oil rigs into reefs, maintaining highly enriched ecosystems for fisheries and marine life. Instead of removing offshore oil rigs when their oil is exhausted, this episode focuses on how they are being repurposed for multiple benefits. Blue Latitude co-founders, Amber Sparks and Emily Hazelwood, join Ted in describing their 10+ year endeavor doing...