A Matter of Degrees

When Hurricanes Maria and Irma hit Puerto Rico in 2017, they destroyed the island’s fragile food system. Farms of all sizes were battered, with around 80 percent of the island's crop value wiped out.But a group of Puerto Rican farmers practicing an old way of farming, called agroecology, saw their operations bounce back much faster than conventional farms. What does their experience tell us about how to build and protect food systems in a rapidly warming world?Producer Dalvin Aboagye brings us a story about a collective known as Guakia in Puerto Rico working to clean up the food system as a part of a larger worldwide movement to adapt farms to local ecosystems. We’ll also talk to an expert about how agroecology works as a climate solution. At scale, agroecology could help us shrink the 24 percent share of global emissions attributed to food, agriculture, and land use. And it's an important line of defense in protecting our ability to feed people as extreme weather makes food systems more vulnerable. Resources: Puerto Rico’s agroecology revolution after Maria Agroecology’s impact on European emissions Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

President Biden’s American Jobs Plan promises big investments in the clean-energy economy, including clean energy workforce and education programs. Economic progress and clean climate action are inextricably linked. But how can we make sure that those dollars go to communities of color who have already been most impacted by climate change and consistently shut out of past federal programs promising transformational change? And to gender minorities who are underrepresented in certain green fields?This week, we hear from folks in government, the nonprofit sector, the renewable energy space and academia about what it will really take to usher in a just transition.Katharine Wilkinson speaks with solar entrepreneur Bob Blake; The Partnership for Southern Equity’s Chandra Farley; New Jersey Deputy Secretary For Higher Education Diana Gonzalez; and Brooking Institute Fellow Christina Kwauk.Resources: More on Bob Blake’s Company, Solar Bear The Partnership for Southern Equity More about Diana Gonzalez and her work in NJ Christina Kwauk’s Green Learning Agenda Christina’s ‘Education Moonshot’ Plan Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

Abuse of soil, the atmosphere, and communities of color have gone hand in hand. Through reclaiming ancestral connection to the soil, Black farmers are healing the entangled harms of colonization, capitalism, and White supremacy and moving agricultural climate solutions forward in the process. In this episode, we feature an audio essay that wrestles with these themes. The essay is titled “Black Gold” by Leah Penniman, an activist, farmer, and founder of Soul Fire Farm. As Leah puts it: “In healing our relationship with soil, we heal the climate, and we heal ourselves.”This is an excerpt from the audiobook version of All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, an anthology of essays, poetry, and art co-edited by Katharine Wilkinson and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.The audiobook version of this essay is read by award-winning audiobook narrator Bahni Turpin. Resources: Order your copy of All We Can Save here RSVP for the All We Can Save paperback book launch Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

Baked into the American Jobs Plan is an ambitious proposal to set a federally-mandated Clean Electricity Standard of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035. It would put the US on track to get emissions under control and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. That is, if it gets through Congress. In this episode, Co-host Leah Stokes speaks with a variety of guests who are part of the broad coalition supporting the proposal. What would this ambitious policy mean for America's energy system and climate movement?The episode features Jamie DeMarco and Quentin Scott from Chesapeake Climate Action Network; Lauren Maunus from The Sunrise Movement; Hip Hop Caucus CEO Rev. Lennox Yearwood; and West Virginia Rivers Coalition Director Angie Rossers. Resources: The #Call4Climate homepage Chesapeake Climate Action Network Homepage  The Data For Progress Poll Results on Voter Support for a CES Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

Fossil fuel companies are tapping into America’s “best and brightest” at top banks, public relations and advertising firms, law firms, and strategy consulting firms.These organizations supply critical services to keep the fossil fuel industry humming: creative work, strategy, legal representation, financing. They’re services that oil and gas companies need to remain powerful.In this episode (our first of the second season!) Dr. Katharine Wilkinson and Dr. Leah Stokes explore the different ways this “prestige problem” influences America’s white-collar workforce. And they’ll explore efforts to push back.Katharine speaks with Camila Bustos, the co-founder of Law Students for Climate Accountability. She also speaks with Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media.Resources: Law Students for Climate Accountability scorecard NY Times: How One Firm Drove Influence Campaigns Nationwide for Big Oil DeSmog: The Climate-Conflicted Directors Leading the World’s Top Banks Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

We're back with another live edition of the show! So much is happening in the Biden era. We didn't want to wait until our second season to unpack all the activity.This week, we feature a conversation with Julian Brave NoiseCat that we recorded at the Crosscut Festival. Julian is a writer, activist, and policy expert with a deep understanding of Washington climate politics. Julian was actually a guest correspondent in season one — go episode 7 from our first season: “Changing Woman: One Navajo’s Fight for a Just Transition."The protagonist of amazing episode, Wahleah Johns, is now working in the Biden Administration as a senior official at the Department of Energy!Julian is the Vice President of Policy & Strategy at the think tank Data For Progress and a Fellow at the Type Media Center. He’s also a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, Vox, Vice and many other outlets.In this episode, we look at all the action happening in Washington on climate change: big-name hires, big-ticket policies, and the potential high-impact outcomes.

As we work on season 2, we're sharing a live episode of the show that we just recorded at the Bloomberg Green Summit.The conversation is all about where things stand in the lead-up to global climate talks in the fall. We were fortunate to get Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland, to talk about this topic with us. Mary served as the President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. She’s now the chair of the Elders.Mary has dedicated much of her career to solving the climate crisis. She’s the author of two moving memoirs, “Everybody Matters” which was from 2012 and “Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience and the Fight for a Sustainable Future,” was published in September 2018. She is also co-host of a podcast on the climate crisis, called “Mothers of Invention.” In this episode, we go deep with Mary on what we can expect from this year's international climate negotiations.

In 2013, a series of attack ads blitzed television sets across Arizona. They warned of a dire threat to senior citizens. Who was the villain? Solar energy.These ads came from front groups funded by Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility. It was part of a years-long fight against rooftop solar that turned ugly.“I mean, for Star Wars fans, APS became the Darth Vader of electric utilities in America. I mean, I think you would be hard-pressed to find a utility that behaved as badly as APS did in the last decade,” explains former regulator Kris Mayes.But APS isn’t alone. It’s a prime example of how monopoly utilities abuse their power to influence regulatory decisions and slow clean-energy progress.What happens if your electric utility starts doing things you don’t agree with? What if they start attacking solar and proposing to build more and more fossil gas plants? What if they actively resist clean energy progress? Well, you don’t get a choice. You have to buy electricity, and you have to buy it from them. As a customer you’re funding that. In this episode, we’ll detail how it happened in Arizona -- and how public pressure forced APS’ to come clean.Featured in this episode: Ryan Randazzo, Kris Mayes, David Pomerantz. Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.

We're pleased to introduce an episode of "How to Save a Planet," produced by our friends at Gimlet and Spotify. The show is co-hosted by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg. "How to Save a Planet" has a lot of similarities to our own, so we think our listeners will like the stories they tell. In this week's episode: a story about the Black Lives Matter Movement and how the fight for black lives connects with the struggle for climate justice.Find more of their episodes here. And stay tuned for our final episode of the season, coming soon. 

This week, we have a special episode featuring activist and researcher Nikayla Jefferson.Most of us are in the first stage of climate grief: denial.But what does it feel like to enter the stage of grief? And how is that grief different for black people?Even if you’ve seen the impacts of climate change up close, even if you’ve felt the tropical winds whip your cheeks, stood in floodwater knee deep in your own home, watched a fire come down the ridge line, said “wow, I can’t remember a summer this hot” -- you are likely stuck in some state of denial. In this episode, Nikayla shares her journey breaking through denial and into grief. She also talks with As a black person, grieving for the planet can look different, feel heavier and more immediate. Featured in this episode: Nikayla Jefferson, Jacqueline Patterson, and Princella Talley.Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio. For more episodes and transcripts, visit our website.