Sustainability Now! from KSQD Radio

The San Francisco Bay Area—An Environmental History With David D. Schmidt  On Sustainability Now!  Sunday, July 5th, from 5-6 PM on KSQD Over the past four centuries, the transformation of the Greater San Francisco Bay Region has been extraordinary.  What was once a near paradise for a few hundred thousand indigenous First Peoples is now […]

Secret Sounds of Ponds and Other Animal Music with Professor David Rothenberg, NJ Institute of Technology On Sustainability Now!  Sunday, June 21st, 2026, from 5-6 PM on KSQD Who knew that ponds make music?  To the eye and ears, they seem silent and tranquil—except at night when, maybe, choruses of frogs serenade listeners.  But ponds […]

Everyone talks about climate, but no one does anything about it with Dr. Daniel Swain, UCANR & NCAR Sustainability Now! Sunday, June 7th, 2026 Everyone talks about climate but no one does anything about it.  In recent months, parts of Maui were nearly washed away by Kona Lows that dropped 60 inches of rain.  An […]

Extractive Frontiers: Critical Minerals and Green Capitalism with Professor Thea Riofrancos, Providence College on Sustainability Now! Sunday, May 24th, from 5-6 PM The attack on Iran by the United States and Israel demonstrated, among other things, the necessity of a rapid transition to renewable fuels, like solar and wind.  The technologies for capturing and converting […]

Is that Teflon in your food and water? Good for eggs, maybe, but probably not for you! with Dr. Faith Kibuye, Penn State University On Sustainability Now! Sunday, May 10th, 5-6 PM on KSQD ⁠Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances⁠—commonly known as ⁠PFASs⁠ and “forever chemicals”—have become ubiquitous in the environment and are being found almost everywhere […]

Microplastics: invisible, insidious, and…fixable with Dr. Myra Finkelstein & Dr. Steven Mentor on Sustainability Now! Sunday, April 26th on KSQD We’ve heard a lot about the problem of microplastics pollution. Just how bad is it?  What are its causes?  What are microplastics doing to us and the world?  Is anything being done to stem the […]

“We think they’ll kill someone” indigenous resistance in Oaxaca, Mexico with Anjan Sundaram, The Stringer Foundation On Sustainability Now! Sunday, April 12th, 5-6 PM Indigenous peoples around the world are under threat, especially from massive development projects engineered by governments and corporations, which promise to destroy the lands, forests and waters on which those pe...

Transformative Climate Communities in California With Nancy Faulstitch and Eloy Ortiz, Regeneración Pajaro Valley  on Sustainability Now! Sunday, March 29th, 2026 The State of California has created a program called “Transformative Climate Communities,” focused on making low-income, urban areas more resilient, efficient and responsive to housing, energy and climate challenges. What does this mean...

The Past and Future of Sustainable Communities with Peter Calthorpe, Architect & Urban Designer Sustainability Now! Sunday, March 15th The world’s cities are big and getting bigger.  By 2050, 80% of the world’s people will live in cities. Can cities be made sustainable?  Who is thinking about this? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation […]

Biologists Unite! The Rise and Fall of Ecosystem Services with Professor Daniel Suarez, Middlebury College  on Sustainability Now!  Sunday, March 1, 2026 Over the past several decades, there has been a concerted effort by biologists, economists and others to put a value on nature’s services: what would it cost, for example, to provide clean water […]

The Water Remembers—My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life with Amy Bowers Cordalis Ridges to Riffles Indigenous Conservation Group On Sustainability Now, Sunday, February 15th, 2026 The removal of four dams from the Klamath River in Northern California is rapidly becoming one of the great recent success stories in […]

Plutonium Pit Production–The Risks and Costs of US Plans to Build New Nuclear Weapons with Dr. Dylan K. Spaulding of the Union of Concerned Scientists On Sustainability Now!  Sunday, January 18th, 2026, 5-6 PM on KSQD Nuclear weapons have been with us for 80 years.  There are fewer today than was the case at the […]

The Living Green Myth: The Promise and Limits of Lifestyle Environmentalism with Dr. Michael Maniates Sustainability Now! Sunday, January 4th, 2026, 5-6 PM Many listeners are probably familiar with the tags found in hotel bathrooms that read: “Save Our Planet,” followed by instructions about reusing and replacing towels, and concluding “Thank you for helping us […]

Microplastics in Lake Tahoe: How did They get There? What are they Doing? With Madison “Madio” Wallner on Sustainability Now!  December 21st, 2025, 5-6 PM on KSQD FM Lake Tahoe is one of California’s natural jewels but it is under siege and increasingly awash in plastic wastes, as visitors carelessly dispose of bottles and packages […]

The Norris Center for Natural History at UCSC: What is it?  Why is it there? With Professor Ingrid Parker and Center Director Chris Lay On Sustainability Now! December 7th, 2025, 5-6 PM on KSQD The Kenneth S. Norris Center at UC Santa Cruz is one of the little-known jewels of the campus as well as […]

The ABCs of California Native Bees with Krystle Hickman, Conservation Photographer and National Geographic Explorer on Sustainability Now!  Sunday, November 23rd, 2025, 5-6 PM If you venture out into parks, farms and gardens with various flowering species, you are almost sure to see European honeybees flying about.  When we think of bees, those are the […]

The Omnivore’s Deception What We get wrong about meat, animals and ourselves  With Professor John Sabonmatsu, Worcester Polytechnic Institute On Sustainability Now!  Sunday, November 9th, 5-6 PM Millions of Americans see themselves as “conflicted omnivores,” worrying about the ethical and environmental implications of their choice to eat animals. Yet their attempts to justify their cho...

The Enduring Fantasy of ‘Feeding the World’ with Professors Adam Calo and Maywa Montenego  On Sustainability Now! Sunday, October 26th, 5-6 PM Even before the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb in 1968, we heard warnings that humanity would be doomed to a future of famine, hunger and starvation unless industrial agriculture were unleashed […]

An Hour Wasted with Tom Lehrer A KSQD Tribute to the Man and His Music     Tom Lehrer, the musical satirist par excellence of the 1950s and 1960s, died this past July at age 97.  Many listeners and their progeny grew up listening to and singing his compelling compositions: easy to remember, easy to […]

Conserving California’s Lands and Coastal Waters: A Progress Report with Meghan Hertel, Deputy Secretary for Biodiversity and Habitat at the California Natural Resources Agency In October 2020, Governor Newsom issued Executive Order N-82-20 which establishes a state goal of conserving 30% of California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030 – known as 30×30. The 30×30 goal […]

What’s Happening with Climate Law across the World, the United States and California? with Professor Alice Kaswan, University of San Francisco School of Law What’s up with climate change and climate law?  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it is going to cancel the “endangerment finding” of 2009 that provided the legal basis […]

Save the Valley Dragons! Restoring the Blunt-Notes Leopard Lizard to the San Joaquin Desert with Dr. Michael Telemeco & Dr. Michael Westphal On Sustainability Now!  Sunday, August 31st, 5-6 PM Who knew there was a desert in the San Joaquin Valley inhabited by the “valley dragon,” aka, the “blunt-nosed leopard lizard.”  The lizards have disappeared […]

What’s In Those Plastics, Anyway? with Professor Susannah Scott, Chemistry, UC Santa Barbara The world is awash in plastic. According to a study published in 2020, total production of plastics since 1950 is now over 10 billion tons, with more than half of that simply discarded.  And the production of plastics will only increase in […]

After the Floods–The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City with Professor Ken Conca, American University on Sustainability Now! Sunday, August 3, 5-6 PM on KSQD As the recent deadly floods in Central Texas remind us, Nature bats last.  There seem to be a growing number of severe weather-related disasters that kill many people and lay […]

The False Promise of Deep-Sea Mining with Professors D.G. Webster and Susan Park on Sustainability Now!  Sunday, July 20th, 5-6 PM The United States has indicated that it will begin to explore commercial mining of mineral nodules on the international seabed, in violation of the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea and the […]