Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation .  But what is SSRF?  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz and new co-host Brooke Wright in a discussion of two SSRF projects in development.  The Watsonville Basic Income Pilot Project will take revenues from sale of solar electricity to a local business and distribute to selected farmworker households as basi...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Shaina Nanavati, a research organizer for the Reclaim Our Power Utility Justice Campaign and staff member of the Local Clean Energy Alliance . Reclaim Our Power is an statewide initiative mobilizing a broad coalition of utility ratepayers, social justice advocates, and allies to develop an equitable, sustainable, decentralized restructuring of Cal...

In this SN! Revisit from 2019, host Ronnie Lipschutz welcomes Robert Stayton, physicist and author of Solar Dividends: How Solar Energy Can Generate a Basic Income for Everyone on Earth .  We’ll discuss the math, physics, economics and politics of his idea and proposal, and whether his utopian vision can be made real by the end of the 21st century.

Plastic is ubiquitous: it rains down on us, it fouls land, streams and oceans, it even turns up in our bodies. And the big oil companies are looking to plastic to keep up profits when fossil fuels are finally banned. What are we to do? SN! host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with guest Jackie Nuñez , founder of The Last Plastic Straw and Advocacy Manager of the Plastic Pollution Coalition.  The Last...

There is an old saying attributed to the 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.”  This show is about law and sausages in California. If you ever took a civics or government class in high school or college, you probably learned about how a bill becomes law through a clean and straightforward p...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz as he speaks with Dr. Suzanne Simard, Professor of Forestry and Conservation Sciences about the social life of trees.   Her new book, Finding the Mother Tree--Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest , has just been published.  According to Simard, communication between trees happens not in the air but deep below our feet in an incredibly dense, complex networ...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz and Dr. Esther Leslie, Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck University in London.  “ Political Aesthetics highlights the complex and ambiguous connections of aesthetics with social, cultural and political experiences in contemporary societies.”  This past January, Leslie published an entry in “The Stone,” a New York Times column on philosophy.  Th...

Gosh, I never realized there was a social ecology in my backyard!” Find out just what those bugs are up to in your garden, as host Ronnie Lipschutz welcomes Azucena Lucatero, a third-year PhD student in Dr. Stacy Philpott's lab at UC Santa Cruz. Lucatero studies the socio-ecology of urban gardens in the California central coast with special interests in biological pest control, community and popul...

These days, we are hearing a lot about plans to transform the country’s energy infrastructure from one based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable energy resources.  President Biden appears to be making this transformation one of his signature initiatives.  Certainly, the technology exists, the money is (probably) there but there is one elephant in the room that no one wants to talk...

It’s beginning to look as though California is headed into another  multi-year drought. The snowpack is meager and contracted water supplies  through the state’s delivery systems are likely to be much less than  requested.  Farmers and cities are looking to groundwater to make up the  difference, but even groundwater is heavily depleted.  Hear Dr. Ruth  Langridge...

The southern sea otter is a keystone species in kelp forest  communities, acting to increase the species diversity and providing  ecosystem services. Despite federal protection since 1977, the southern  sea otter population has struggled to recover and there are only an  estimated 2,800 sea otters in California. Listen to this conversation with Dr. James Estes, Emeritus Profess...

Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Amity Sandage, environmental literacy coordinator for Santa Cruz County Office of Education. Sandage leads a countywide effort to build environmental literacy by increasing student access to outdoor learning. She also supports teachers in using local environmental connections to increase relevance of core classes and to create opportunities for civic and environme...

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with anthropologist Dr. Michelle Merrill, whose teaching and counseling experience led her to establish Novasutras , an egalitarian spiritual movement with scientific sensibilities. Novasutras responds to the need for spiritual community centered on the biggest challenge humanity currently faces: how do we help people through the transition from an “ I...

Radio Show #37, January 24, 2021 : Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with newly-elected  California State Senator John Laird, to talk about energy, resources,  environment and politics, in the state and the country, and his hopes  and dreams for the State Senate.  Laird’s political career began in  1981, on the Santa Cruz City Council, and included stints in th...

Radio Show #35, December 27, 2020: As you may have read in a number of places, not only is the ocean  full of plastic, we are literally living in an ocean of plastic  microparticles falling from the sky.  Before you know it, we will all be  “Plastic People of the Universe.” On this show, Sustainability Now! addresses this and related topics.  Ronnie Lipschutz and Kevin Bel...

Radio Show #34 :   Sunday, December 13th, 5-6 PM  Join Host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Darryl Molina Sarmiento , Executive Director for Communities for a Better Environment ,  a 40-year-old environmental justice organization with offices in both  Southern and Northern California. The mission of CBE is to build  people’s power in California’s communities of co...

Radio Show #33: Host Ronnie Lipschutz and Dave Blume of Blume Distillation do a walking interview and tour of Whiskey Hill Farm ,  its permaculture and regenerative agriculture practices and  technological innovations connecting alcohol distillation and organic  agriculture.  Whiskey Hill Farm is a 14-acre organic farm on Calabasas  Road near Watsonville that employs poly-...

Radio Show #32. In September 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order requiring that by 2035 all new cars and passenger trucks sold in the state will have to be zero-emission vehicles, producing no greenhouse gases.  While there are various types of zero-emission power plants in existence and on design boards, most of these will probably be electric vehicles, or EVs. T...

Radio Show #31. Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Dr. Joseph Stewart ,  a conservation biologist with special interests in biogeography,  prediction, demography, ecophysiology, and climate change. He received  his PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from UCSC in 2018 and is  now a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Science  and Policy. He works w...

Radio Show #30, October 18, 2020 . Did you know that Section 106.3 of the California Water Code states that “every human being has the right to safe, clean,  affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption,  cooking, and sanitary purposes.” Host Ronnie Lipschutz talks with Mayra  Hernandez, a community organizer at the Community Water Center in Watsonville, about saf...

Radio Show #28, September 20, 2020.  Host Ronnie Lipschutz welcomes his guests, Mireya Gomez-Contreras and  Ana Rasmussen, codirectors of Esperanza Community Farms.  Esperanza  Community Farms is a system-changing, sustainable community agriculture  project focused entirely and directly on increasing food security and  good health among low-income families from under-...

Sustainability Now! Show #27, September 6, 2020, Accessory Dwelling Units in Our Backyards : Host Ronnie Lipschutz and his guest, Santa Cruz architect Mark Primack , talk about how we might address the California housing crisis through construction of accessory dwelling units .  Primack has lived and worked in Santa Cruz since the late 1970s, served on the City Council, written Divisible Citi...

Sustainability Now! #24, July 26, 2020 . Environmental Art in Built & Natural Landscapes, with Marisha Farnsworth . “Environmental artists seek to investigate our human relationship with the environment through embedding their artistic practice within it” (“ The Art Story ”). Learn about the practice of environmental art on Sustainability Now! in this conversation between host Ronnie Lipschutz...

Sustainability Now #23 , July 12, 2020, with Len Beyea, addresses sustainable community planning in Santa Cruz and cities in general. Len is a semi-retired energy engineer and commissioning agent, former land-use planner, musician, Interfaith Minister, gardener, dancer, political and cultural commentator. He is host of the Wednesday broadcast of Talk of the Bay on KSQD and shares hosting of Border...

Sustainability Now! #22 , June 28, 2020, with Kalina Browne, 2019-20 RAY Diversity Fellow at the Ocean Conservancy to learn about Climate Change and Black Lives Mattering on the California Coast.  Browne grew up on the Caribbean island of St Vincent and the Grenadines. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Geoscience from the University of Buffalo . She has worked with the Caribbean Community Cli...