Sustainability In Your Ear

Environmental doom hangs over the youngest generations, who need a clear path to climate recovery to regain their optimism. Earth911 talks with Dr. Erica Dodds, chief operating officer of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, a young expert in climate anxiety and international development working to raise awareness about direct air carbon capture technologies. Her organization believes that aggressive investment in scaling up current early-stage carbon capture strategies can restore the environment to pre-industrial CO2 levels by mid-century, long before many expect the technology to make an impact. Her team organizes local youth and legislative learning programs, and they are launching local chapters around the country. Visit their site to get involved.Dodds explains how ocean carbon sequestration can help humans store massive amounts of CO2. Her compelling vision for a return to the climate in which humans evolved includes the idea that the atmosphere can be mined for CO2 to use as the raw material in low-carbon cement, fuels, and other applications. Carbon capture technologies are expected to create 300,000 new jobs during the next several decades.We also discuss the overwhelming eco-anxiety afflicting her generation, starting with an introduction to the symptoms of this paralyzing psychological state. People tend to react to climate change by enthusiastically engaging in climate-friendly behaviors and judging severely others who do not participate or by closing their eyes to the problem, literally turning away from the fear that climate change creates. This may be the basis for some of the current political divisions in the U.S. and around the world. Society must find a way to bring people together around actions that can make a material difference in the fight against global warming. Dodds and the Foundation for Climate Restoration are confident that direct air carbon capture can a key component to a brighter future.The founder of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, Peter Fiekowsky, has appeared on Sustainability In Your Ear to discuss direct air carbon capture and ocean-based sequestration strategies.

As more people look to move out of cities, a new, environmentally-friendly communities may be their next home. Earth911 talks with Scott Austin, a cofounder of the Olivette Riverside Community and Farm, a 346-acre planned "agrihood" along the French Broad River near Asheville, N.C. His team built "a community in which our interactions with water, nature, food, community and lifelong learning are seamless and foster sustainable living." It introduces a unique lifestyle that includes a farm funded through a Community Supported Agriculture program built into the cost of living.Scott shares the Olivette lifestyle, and his plans for farm-to-table living that values "gardens over golf courses." In addition to being able to pick up fresh berries and produce from the farm, clusters of homes share large gardens and everyone can borrow shared bicycles to get around. An affluent community, Olivette may provide an early model for reimagining towns that integrate agriculture, wilderness and lifelong learning that can be applied in many settings. Austin point similar projects, such as Serenbe, whose founder Steve Nygren we interviewed in December 2019. There are many lessons to take from the experience of these early efforts at reinventing living for sustainability.To learn more, visit the Olivette Riverside Community and Farm at https://www.olivettenc.com/.

Earth911 talks with Hannah Bacon, a 27-year-old woman who decided to start a seven-month journey across the U.S. to raise awareness about climate change. She will walk from California to Virginia, and we caught up to her in New Mexico after two months on the road. Hannah was inspired by David Wallace-Wells’ book, "The Uninhabited Earth," while flying cross-country. She realized her non-essential travel was harming the planet, so she decided to walk home. Hannah’s “Miles for Movement” walk started on November 1, 2020, and will continue through the Summer.All donations to the walk’s GoFundMe page will go to the Sunrise Movement, a youth-focused political action movement whose goal is to mobilize climate activists across the US. It operates more than 400 local programs across the country. Hannah talks with Earth911’s Mitch Ratcliffe about the importance of promoting a healthy climate for future generations and how people can contribute to the fight against climate change on a day-to-day basis through simple changes.Follow Hannah’s progress and her stories on the Miles for Movement Instagram page and her blog. Please consider donating to and sharing her GoFundMe page.https://www.instagram.com/milesforclimate/https://milesforclimate.org/https://www.gofundme.com/f/miles-for-climate

Join another Earth911 conversation about the critical divides in U.S. politics and climate policy with Kevin Wilhelm of Sustainable Business Consulting and Danielle Butcher, Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President of the young-conservative organization, the American Conservation Coalition. We discuss the differences in the right- and left-leaning climate policy debate, the role of generational change in the future of U.S. climate regulations, and the potential for establishing a new center for political discourse. Host Mitch Ratcliffe talks with Wilhelm and Butcher about the role of economic stimulus, educational funding, and the federal government's ability to shape economic priorities through incentives and carbon pricing. Hear how there actually mutually agreeable positions emerging in the climate debate.Kevin Wilhelm is the author of How to Talk to the "Other Side": Common Ground in the Time of Coronavirus, Recession, and Climate Change and an adunct professor at Harvard University. Danielle Butcher is a leader of the American Conservation Coalition, a non-profit "dedicated to mobilizing young people around environmental action through common-sense, market-based, and limited-government ideals" based on localism, capitalist ideas, and innovation. This is the third in our Conversation series featuring Wilhelm, Ratcliffe, and guests from across the political, urban-rural, generational, and social justice spectrum.

Earth911 talks with Dr. William Ripple, Distinguished Professor of Ecology at Oregon State University and director of the Alliance of World Scientists, who is the lead author of a call for action in response to the catastrophic climate damage the world experience during 2020 in Scientific American. Pointing to record global temperatures, a historically long hurricane season that caused more than $46 billion in damages in the United States, and wildfires that burned more than 4 million acres in California, they declared that “The climate emergency has arrived and is accelerating more rapidly than most scientists anticipated.”Dr. Ripple explains how 2020, which tied 2016 for hottest year on record, saw events that suggest climate change is accelerating. Science-based warnings may have been too conservative, and that the new normal will likely look like a series of catastrophes, with widespread damage happening every year in many regions of the planet, if humanity does not immediately stop the growth in CO2 emissions. He suggests six key areas of action, including a shift to plant-based diets and reducing food waste, a focus on eliminating short-term pollutants such as hydrofluorocarbons used as refrigerants, as well as universal education for girls and women to lower birth rates and encourage wider awareness of climate impacts. We also discuss the pressing need to address climate migration in global and national planning.To learn more about how you can change your lifestyle to reduce carbon emissions in travel, home energy use, and when you recycle.

Making home energy use improvements can be challenging without information about how the furnace, appliances, refrigerators, and other electronics around the house consume power. The Sense Energy Monitor brings all that data, and information about your utility, solar, and comparable home energy use to your smartphone to help you reduce your carbon footprint and electric bill. Earth911 talks to Sense CEO Mike Phillips about the latest Sense monitor upgrades and his 2021 home energy trends predictions.Phillips explains the latest upgrade to the Sense and Sense Solar devices, a power quality monitor that tracks dips and spikes in electric current and software that identifies failing electric systems, loose wires, and malfunction appliances based on their power use. We also discuss the Zigbee internet-connected smart home standard that promises to connect smart lightbulbs, thermostats, switches and other devices to a single dashboard on a phone or PC. Phillips expects the transition to electric power generated from solar, wind and other renewables from fossil fuel-fired power will accelerate with the arrival of the Biden administration. He points out the home heating and power produces up to 40% of our personal greenhouse gas emissions, according to Rewiring America and created the Sense system as a foundation for optimizing energy use.To learn more about Sense and its growing set of software that use the physical energy monitor to alert homeowners to opportunities to reduce use and save on energy, visit https://sense.com.

Cyanobacteria algal blooms are a growing problem worldwide. As humans use more fertilizer and the climate warms, freshwater lakes are more likely to be overwhelmed by these essential but deadly bacteria. Earth911 talks with Eyal Harel, CEO of Berlin-based BlueGreen Water Technologies Ltd about the causes and adverse impacts of blue-green algal blooms. Cyanobacteria produce oxygen during the day, but at night consume so much oxygen that fish and other lake life die off until the bacteria controls almost all available resources.Blue-green algal blooms are an example of the fragility of the balance within natural systems. Without cyanobacteria, an early source of atmospheric oxygen, life would not exist on Earth. When it takes over a lake, however, it can cause brain, liver, intestinal and skin inflammation, as well as emit airborne toxins related to rising incidence of Alzheimer's Disease and other illnesses. Harel explains how farm runoff and warming climates have contributed to algal blooms globally, even the Arctic. BlueGreen Water Technologies makes a treatment, LakeGuard, that can suppress algal blooms without toxic byproducts. With more than 60 million lakes in the world facing an increased risk of cyanobacteria infestation, you'll want to spend a half-hour to learn about the problem, remediation and ways of preventing blooms by changing farming and lawn care practices to reduce phosphorus levels in freshwater lakes. To learn more about BlueGreen Water Technologies, visit https://bgtechs.com.

Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University, Wellington New Zealand, joins Earth911 to discuss the prospects for coastal flooding due to climate change. He shares troubling but important insights into how much seas have already risen since the 1800s -- about one foot -- and the potential for up to two feet more flooding in the coming century. He also reports the UNIPCC will acknowledge that the critical 1.5C warming threshold is locked in unless the world takes radical action to reduce emissions immediately. Humanity has already committed future generations to potentially disastrous climate impacts, he says.Renwick explains how much water is stored in Antarctica and the projections for economic and housing losses along the U.S. East coast, which is particularly prone to flooding because of the configuration of ocean currents. He also discusses the growing accuracy of climate models and how accelerated warming seen in recent years appears poised to continue speeding ice loss at the poles. But, Renwick argues, the international climate dialogue has shifted from resistance to acknowledgment of climate impacts and growing national and local action, which gives him hope. "Things are moving in the right direction," he told Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe. "But we've got a lot of work to do."The upcoming COP26 meeting of global leaders, which was postponed to Fall of 2021 due to the pandemic, will feature many nations increased commitments to reduce emissions. In the meantime, he urges individual citizens to speak out and choose sustainably produced products, as well as support effective local remediation projects, such as tree-planting programs. Each of us can make a difference. Start your journey with this conversation with Professor James Renwick.

Catherine Brahic, the environment editor at The Economist, joins Earth911's Mitch Ratcliffe to discuss her November 16, 2020, editorial, "The world could turn a corner on climate change." She explains the United Nations' upcoming COP26 meeting, when world leaders will renew and update their climate change commitments, was postponed to Fall 2021. Brahic shares her assessments of climate progress to date and the pivotal roles of China and the United States in 2021, when scientists and policymakers say aggressive action is essential to preventing a 1.5℃ increase in average atmospheric temperature. Yet, Brahic is optimistic because of the return of the U.S. to the Paris Climate Accord under Joe Biden and recent corporate investments in green bonds and greenhouse gas reductions. You can read Catherine Brahic's editorial, "The world could turn a corner on climate change," at https://econ.st/3qC6RBd.

Earth911 talks with Paul Bloom, vice president of Sustainable Materials at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), about the food and plant-based maker’s sustainability goals and changes to how they make food and plant-based products. He shares with Earth911’s Mitch Ratcliffe how ADM has invested to create sustainable alternatives to synthetic and petroleum-based materials.Bloom leads the company’s efforts to develop new renewable, plant-based sustainable solutions for food production and ingredients used in personal care, paint, and a variety of industrial products. ADM is also pursuing partnerships to produce alternatives to the chemical products corporate customers rely on to make everything from glue to biofuels. His team developed a molecule from fructose to replace the plastic used in water bottles and a polymer made from acrylic acid to make diapers more sustainable.ADM has announced sustainability goals to reduce its waste, emissions, energy and water usage by 50% compared by 2035, which they shared in its recent annual sustainability report. To follow ADM’s projects and strives to a more sustainable market, follow them visit https://www.adm.com/.