Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

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 for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. In July, the Department of Energy released “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” which downplayed the research, the imp...

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 from 85% of their historical range as a result of  agriculture, rural and urban development and pesticides, and are now threatened in what remains of the San Joaquin Desert.  The Fresno Chaffee Zoo is raising leopard lizards and releasing th...

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 the future.  There is a lot of oil and natural gas in the world and, if and when we wean ourselves from fossil fuels, oil and chemical companies will be looking...

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 waste to towns and communities.  But what happens after the floods, as communities make plans to repair the damages?  Why does rebuilding often become the trigger of intense and extended political and social struggle, sometim...

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 International Seabed Authority. These nodules contain a variety of minerals used in cell phones, electric cars and other high-tech devices and could reduce U.S. reliance on questionable sources of rare earth...

Do you remember the Northern Spotted Owl, icon of the old-growth Redwood Wars of the 1990s?  Well, the Northern Spotted Owl is, once again, under threat.  This time, however, the threat comes from another species of owl, the Barred Owl, a larger and more aggressive bird native to the United States, whose range has been expanding westward as a result of development and climate change. The U.S. Fish...

Carbon is a boon and a bane.  It is at the core of all life on Earth, past and present.  In the atmosphere, carbon is what keeps the Earth’s temperature at tolerable levels.  Yet, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, raising global temperatures and disrupting climate and weather.  California’s cap and trade system is one approach to controlling carbon emissions.  But what is it? How...

Everyone is angry with California’s private utilities.  Rates keep rising, the utilities lack accountability and they are running roughshod over small-scale renewable energy.  Why make your customers so mad? Is that anger justified? And what are the utilities planning for the future?  Join SN! host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Loretta Lynch. Lynch was President of the California Public...

Gray wolves were once ubiquitous across California but the state’s last surviving individual was killed in 1924.  In 2011, the first documented wolf since 1924 was observed crossing into California from Oregon.  Today, there are at least 7 gray wolf packs in California with some 50 individuals.  That’s not so many but 3 counties are worried about wolf attacks on livestock and people and are asking...

Food insecurity and food apartheid are a common challenge in many low-income and minority neighborhoods across the United States.  Big supermarket companies avoid those areas because stores are unprofitable and small stores find that they make the most money on junk foods, sodas and liquor.  Saba Grocers is an Oakland-based organization, founded in 2019, that works with those small stores to enabl...

Tariffs are in the air and on the news. Tariffs are up and down.  Tariffs are in and out. Who knows where they might go and what they might do. But what do tariffs mean for sustainability and the environment?  Will they help or hurt?  Do they matter either way?  Tune into Sustainability Now! to hear Christine Barrington and Ronnie Lipschutz discuss tariffs and what they might mean for the environm...

Big agriculture is Big!  And it appears to be getting Bigger, as the leading companies in four critical sectors—equipment, seeds, fertilizers and chemicals—consolidate in order to dominate their markets and the farmers who buy their products.  Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Jennifer Clapp , who has just published Titans of Industrial Agriculture—How a Few Giant Corporations Came...

UCSC’s Agroecology Farm is known around the world for innovation, training and inspiration.  But before there was a Farm, there was a Garden: the Alan Chadwick Garden , launched in 1967 on a steep, rocky clay hill side. It is still there today, although very few people know of its existence.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz in a conversation with Orin Martin, who has managed the Chadwick Garden since 1...

Episode #36, Sunday, January 10th: Hear Jeffrey Downing, Professor of Art at San Francisco State University and Artist-in-Residence at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Ar t talk about how his work connects culture and nature. Downing was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago for his environmental sculpture in Richardson Bay, designed to mark today’s king tides, which will be swam...

Radio Show, #29, October 4, 2020. Host Ronnie Lipschutz and guest Dina Gilio-Whitaker talk about indigenous environmental justice, environmental philosophy and the restoration of balance between humans and nature. Gilio-Whitaker is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes in the Pacific Northwest, a lecturer in American Indian Studies at California State University, San Marcos and Policy Direc...

Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Andrea Mackenzie, General Manager of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority . For more than 25 years, Ms. Mackenzie has worked in the fields of land use planning, conservation planning, public policy, and finance for open space and agricultural land preservation agencies at county, regional, state, and national levels. The Open Space Authority works to protec...

Sustainability Now! October 6, 2019, History of UC Santa Cruz, with Professor Emeritus Jim Clifford , History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, talking about the University and its history, and his book, In the Ecotone .

Sustainability Now! August 23, 2020. Host Ronnie Lipschutz and his guest Kim Stanley Robinson engage in a wide-ranging  conversation about sustainability, politics, 2020 and after, and how we  might prepare for the future. Robinson is a science fiction author,  California futurist and environmental optimist of the will. His recent  work, such as New York 2140 (2017) has addressed environmental and...

Sustainability Now!, April 5, 2020, Urchins in the Storm, with KSQD engineer Emily Donham , a 5th-year PhD candidate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UCSC.  Emily’s research focuses on how sea urchins, which graze on kelp forests, may be vulnerable to ocean acidication and global warming.  Emily is the producer of “Santa Cruz Naturalist,” which airs on Tuesdays at 7:54 AM, Wednesdays at 3:...

Sustainability Now! #25, August 9, 2020 . Climate Change, Public Health & Birth Impacts, with Dr. Rupa Basu , Chief of the Air and Climate Epidemiology Section at California Office on Environmental Health Hazards in the California Environmental Protection Agency and a lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.  She is coauthor of a recently-published review article in JAMA Open Netwo...

Planetary heating and climate change are in the news more and more, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just issued a very pessimistic report on humanity’s and the world’s prospects. In a revisit of a show from 2020, Host Ronnie Lipschutz and Guest Dr. Rupa Basu talk about about climate change and public health. Dr. Basu is Chief of the Air and Climate Epidemiology Section at Cal...

California is dry, dry, dry and that probably means we are in for a  wild wildfire season. Since the beginning of January, there have been  more than 10,000 wildfires across the state.  So, what are we to do?  Hear from Dr. Sasha Berleman, Wildland Fire Scientist. She is director  of Fire Forward at Audubon Canyon Ranch in Stinson Beach. She is a CA State Certified Burn Boss, a Prescribed  Fire Tr...

Sustainability Now! December 1, 2019, What Do You Do About a Problem Like PG&E?, with Professor Dustin Mulvaney , Environmental Studies at San Jose State University. His research focuses on the social and environmental dimensions of food and energy systems, innovation, emerging technologies and environmental change.  He is author of Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Ju...

Here Comes the Sun!  on Sustainability Now! Sunday, January 9th, 5-6 PM on KSQD January 2022 is Solar Energy Month on Sustainability Now!  On Sunday, January 23rd, we will be welcoming Dr. Ahmad Faruqui, an energy economist who has been deeply involved in solar electricity issues in California.  We will be talking about the pending decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to impose “...

Join Sustainability Now! hosts Brooke Wright and Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Ecology Action's Matt Miller about bicycles, Bike Month, e-bike rebates and local transportation policies and practices, more generally.  Matt is a Senior Program Specialist at Ecology Action in Santa Cruz, where he focuses on urban transportation working collaboratively with local government, businesses, and...