A Matter of Degrees

This week, we have a special episode about the long and winding energy transition in an often overlooked place: the Navajo Nation—the largest Indian reservation in the United States.Journalist and climate policy expert Julian Brave NoiseCat is our guide.Ten percent of Navajos lack access to electricity. Some spend up to $700 per month on fuels to travel to places with electricity, or charge electronics in their cars and trucks.But the Navajo Nation isn’t exactly an energy-poor place. In fact, until recently, the reservation was home to two of the largest coal strip mines in the world. In recent decades as many as five coal-burning power plants surrounded Navajo lands. For many Navajo, power lines connecting coal to major cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles, have come to symbolize this vastly unequal system.We’ll look at the deep history of energy extraction and colonialism that led to the current clean-energy transition for the Navajo people.Featured in this episode: Wahleah Johns and Andrew Curley.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’ve made a carbon mess. How do we clean it up?Imagine the atmosphere as an overflowing bathtub. The water keeps gushing from the tap. Clearly, we need to turn it off. We have to bring emissions of heat-trapping gases down to zero, stat. But even after we do that, we still have a mess on our hands. So, we need to open the drain, let some water out. In this episode, we’ll explore the different ways we can manage carbon emissions with natural and technological solutions. What are their benefits and drawbacks? And how do we think about them in our broader solutions toolkit?Featured in this episode: Lisa Song, Judith Schwartz, Jane Zelikova, and Etosha Cave.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.

It’s official. Joe Biden will be the next president. And he ran on a platform that put climate at the top of the agenda.There’s still a lot of tension. What will happen to the balance of power in Congress? Can we make progress on climate, even with Democrats losing down-ballot races?Even with so much uncertainty, there's actually a lot of good news. In this episode, Leah and Katharine dig into what this moment means for the future of the planet.We were joined by two heavy-hitters this week: Heather McTeer Toney and Sam Ricketts.Heather is the Senior Director at Moms Clean Air Force. She’s a former EPA regional administrator. And she was the first African-American, first woman, and youngest person ever elected mayor of Greenville, Mississippi. She knows the ins and outs of what a Biden Administration could do to pursue a “just” climate agenda.Sam Ricketts is a senior fellow for Energy & Environment at the Center for American Progress. And he was climate director for Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign. He co-founded Evergreen, an organization at the forefront of developing detailed, progressive climate policies.Resources mentioned on the show about the Georgia runoff: Fair Fight The New Georgia Project 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

In July, the FBI charged Larry Householder, Ohio’s Republican Speaker of the House, with a conspiracy to pass a $1.5 billion bailout in return for $61 million in dark money. The racketeering was allegedly orchestrated by Householder and the utility FirstEnergy to kill Ohio’s renewable energy law and prop up aging coal and nuclear power plants.What’s happening in Ohio is part of a broader story playing out under the Trump Administration. Fossil-fuel companies like FirstEnergy have used their ties to the Trump regime to push massive bailouts for dirty energy. And the pandemic was the perfect opportunity for the industry to grab more money.In this episode, we’ll detail how these companies are raking in billions of government dollars in the wake of the $2 trillion covid stimulus package -- while millions of Americans struggle financially from the pandemic. Featured in this episode: Neil Waggoner, Antonia Juhasz, Alexis Goldstein, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and Tamara Toles O’Laughlin.Don't forget to read the climate change voter's guide before casting your ballot.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

When talking about climate change, we often get deep into the weeds quickly and throw a lot of numbers around. And these numbers can feel really disconnected from our lives: Two degrees, 415 parts per million, 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide.In this episode, we've got one number we really want to focus on: 2035. It’s a date that carries a lot of hope and opportunity. If we can make progress by 2035, then we can actually make a lot of changes to our energy system and really our entire economy. And guess what? We have nearly all the tools to achieve that aim. In this episode, we’ll detail the reality of climate solutions -- they’re right here, right now.Katharine and Leah will explain: why 2035? Where did this date come from? It’s a radical departure from what the clean energy community had been talking about. Up until last year, most people were planning for the electricity system to be cleaned up by 2050. And suddenly, that number has been pulled 15 years forward.Featured in this episode: Tim Echols, Donnel Baird, Sonia Aggarwal, Jesse Jenkins, Bracken Hendricks and Sam Ricketts.Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser You can also contact us on our website.A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio.

Climate change is no longer a far-off scenario. It’s happening now. It’s getting more intense every year. And young people are seeing a scary future play out right in front of them.In recent years, the youth climate movement has gained unprecedented strength. Borrowing from the civil rights movement and early environmental activists, young leaders are forcing politicians to grapple with climate change in new ways. Are we truly at a breakthrough moment? Or a breaking moment?In this episode, we’ll hear stories from Erin Bridges, Isha Clarke, Varshini Prakash, and Mary Anne Hitt.Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser You can also contact us on our website.A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio.

The biggest climate stories blame “all of us,” or cast solutions as “impossible.” These narratives leave people feeling hopeless and confused about what we actually can do.In our first episode: individual actions versus structural change. What’s the right way to think about the role they each have in addressing the climate crisis? We’ll explore the nuances and misperceptions. Leah and Katharine dig into their own personal histories and revelations. Plus, we’ll hear from Bill McKibben about why plastic straws and lightbulbs do very little about the problem. And we’ll hear from Dr. Shahzeen Attari about how individual behavior can have an impact on the climate crisis.Follow our co-hosts and production team: Leah Stokes Katharine Wilkinson Stephen Lacey Jaime Kaiser You can also contact us on our website.A Matter of Degrees is a production of Post Script Audio.

People don’t often hear the real story about climate change: it’s happening now; fossil fuel companies with money on the line have lied about it; and it doesn’t have to be this way. This show is for the people who know climate change is a problem, but are still trying to figure out how we tackle it.