Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

According to Simon Dalby, Professor emeritus in the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, global politics over the past 70 years has been driven by an overabundance of "firepower," both nuclear and carbon-based.  The first was used by Great Power to threaten incineration of the world, by intention or accident, in the name of "national secu...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Rachel Kippen about city and county “climate action plans.”  A CAP lays out a community’s roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decade, with input and review by community members and various “stakeholders.” How does a city or county go about developing a CAP, and is it an aspirational document or a plan for concrete ac...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz in welcoming Dr. Helen Caldicott to Sustainability Now!, live from Australia, to talk about the looming threat of nuclear war. According to Dr. Caldicott, the nuclear doomsday clock of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is set at 100 seconds to Midnight, but 20 seconds is closer to the mark. Dr. Caldicott has devoted the last forty-two years to an international campai...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Lani Faulkner, Founder and Director of Equity Transit of Santa Cruz County and Michael Wool, a transit activist and senior at UCSC.  We’ll be talking about Transit Equity Week 2023 , which will run from January 30-February 4th, 2023. Transit Equity Day is a National Coalition movement event celebrated on Feb 4th, in honor of Rosa Parks’ Birth...

Have you ever wondered about the history of the landscapes around you, how they were shaped and by whom?  UCSC Associate Professor of Anthropology Andrew Mathews has and he has studied landscape histories and their transformations in Italy.  Now he has published his research in Trees are Shape Shifters--How Cultivation, Climate Change and Disaster Create Landscapes , a closely-documented...

The world’s climate is changing and it is changing more and more rapidly.  What are we to do?  In two weeks, at the 27th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.  This is the 30th such gathering since 1992 and there is not much to show for all that. Join host Ronnie Schultz and his guests, Professor Sander Chan and Andre...

What if humanity could take a giant step forward towards a climate transformation? We are rebroadcasting Christine Barrington's October 12, interview with Dr. Delton Chen, Founder of the Global Carbon Reward along with Renegade Economist, Della Duncan, who together will headline at a November 2 event at the Resource Center for Non-Violence called Funding for the Future: New Ways to Value Life on o...

Farming is tough enough as it is, but when farmers face the loss of organic certification due to climate-related disasters and wildfires, what can they do? Join Host Ronnie Lipschutz in a discussion with Amber Schat and David Obermiller speak about their experience with such challenges and programs that address them. Amber Schat is a Wildfire Resilience Specialist with the Community Alliance...

Open Farm Tours is back and happening October 8th and 9th! Fifteen south county farms are participating and all are family owned, organic and sustainable. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz and his guests, Penny Ellis, Paul Towers and David Blume. They will talk about the current state of farming in Santa Cruz County and Open Farm Tours. Ellis is the founder and coordinator of Open Farms Tour and organize...

Join Host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Sharachchandra Lele who is coleader of an Expert Writing Group of natural scientists, social scientists and humanities scholars who have published a “Letter to Fellow Citizens of Earth ,” “an urgent call to our global neighbours, to acknowledge the climate crisis, make personal and collective commitments in line with differences in privileges...

In the Shadow of Climate Change: What can the Children Tell Us? with Filmmaker Eric Thiermann Join Host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with filmmaker and media producer Eric Thiermann . During his 40-year career, Thiermann has filmed, produced and directed hundreds of media projects in over 40 countries. These include " Art and the Prison Crisis ," "The Last Epidemic: Medical Consequences of...

Well, Well, Well! Clean Water for Everyone! with Chelsea Tu of Monterey Waterkeeper On Sustainability Now! Sunday, August 21st, 5-6 PM, on KSQD 90.7 FM and KSQD.org Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Chelsea Tu, the new executive director of a new local non-profit, Monterey Waterkeeper, which combines education, science-based policy advocacy and legal action to ensure that all comm...

How a Republican Grandfather Helped Legalize Abortion with Dr. Caroline Tracey On Sustainability Now! Sunday, August 7th, 5-6 PM, on KSQD 90.7 FM and KSQD.org These days, one’s political affiliation is often a clue to one’s position on abortion (and vice versa).  That was not always the case.  During the 1950s and into the 1970s, Republicans were often supporters of abortion as a form of...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz in this Blast from the Past (originally broadcast on May 23, 2021) as he speaks with Dr. Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forestry and Conservation Sciences about the social life of trees.   Her 2021 book, Finding the Mother Tree--Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest , has just been published.  According to Simard, communication between trees happens not in th...

Have you procrastinated on planting a garden or been too busy?  Do you think it’s too late and you’ll have to wait until next year?  Not on the Central Coast!  Join Host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Renee Shepherd , founder of Renee’s Garden and seed entrepreneur extraordinaire.  Not only do we talk about what can be sown now to be ripe and ready late summer and fal...

Are elephants people, too?  Do they have rights?  A recent ruling by a New York state court said that “elephants may be intelligent and deserving of compassion” but that Happy, an elephant confined in the Bronx Zoo, is not a person.   A growing number of human people around the world disagree and argue that both animals and nature have rights . Listen to a Sustainability Now! conver...

Sustainability Now! co-host Brooke Wright speaks with Tahra Goraya , the new President & CEO of the tri-county Monterey Bay Economic Partnership (MBEP).  MBEP works on housing , broadband access, workforce development , renewable energy and climate policy , water conservation,  regional recycling, transportation and more. We will talk with Tahra about her journey into this role and a...

Science by the People! Biodiversity & Community Science with Rebecca Johnson & Alison Young, California Academy of Sciences On Sustainability Now! Sunday, May 15th, 5-6 PM on KSQD 90.7 FM and KSQD.org Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Rebecca Johnson and Alison Young , Co-Directors of the Center for Biodiversity and Community Science at the California Academy of Sciences . Comm...

In the Spring, Elephant Seals turn to love...and fighting... and feeding... and  laying around in the sun. We are just past the prime viewing season at Año Nuevo State Park, during which the two-ton male seals fight bloody battles, the females give birth to young conceived the prior year, the adults mate, and the weaner pups look cute. Join Sustainability Now! hosts Ronnie Lipschutz and Brook...

Electrify California! with Benjamin Eichert On Sustainability Now! Sunday, April 3rd, 5-6 PM on KSQD 90.7 FM and KSQD.org Hosts Brooke Wright and Ronnie Lipschutz speak with Benjamin Eichert, Director of   Let’s Green California —an initiative launched by the Romero Institute in Santa Cruz to create a California Green New Deal and get the core legislation passed into law by September 30, 2022...

A Spectre is Haunting Europe: Nuclear Winter with Dr. Alan Robock & Dr. Joshua Coupe On Sustainability Now! Sunday, March 20th, 5-6 PM on KSQD 90.7 FM and KSQD.org “A spectre is haunting Europe,” but this time it is not communism. Vladimir Putin has put Russia’s nuclear forces on “special combat readiness,” bringing back memories and fears for some of us, reminiscent of the darkest days of the...

What are Seabed Mineral Nodules and Who Wants Them? with Emily Jeffers, Center for Biological Diversity California Assembly Member Luz Rivas recently introduced a bill to ban mining of seabed nodules on 2,500 square miles of sea floor off the coast of California.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle , critics say such mining would “kill marine life, damage habitats and pollute surroundin...

Sustainability Now! Sunday, February 20th: From Food Waste to Soil at Hard Core Compost Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a trip to Hard Core Compost . My guests will be Kumi Maxson and Zav Hershfield, two members of the Hard Core Compost collective. Hard Core uses cargo bicycles to haul food scraps from home kitchens to their composting site on the Westside of Santa Cruz, next to the Homeless Garden Proj...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz in a conversation with Josefina Lara Chavez, Farm-to-Market specialist and Senior Manager, Latinx Farmer Program for the Community Alliance for Family Farmers in Davis. Our focus will be on Latinx farmers in the Monterey Bay Region and their struggle to survive and thrive in the face of an agricultural system that takes little account of them.  Lara Chavez a fourth...

January 2022 is Solar Energy Month on Sustainability Now!  On Sunday, January 23rd, hosts Ronnie Lipschutz and Brooke Wright welcome Dr. Ahmad Faruqui , an energy economist who has been deeply involved in solar electricity issues in California. We talk about the pending decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to reduce compensation for rooftop solar electricity and to charge ho...