Scientist Terry Root’s research has helped reveal how climate change puts bird and animal species at risk for extinction. For Root, the climate connection is also personal: she was married to the late Steve Schneider, a Stanford professor and pioneer in communicating the impacts of climate change, who died suddenly in 2010. “It's been a fabulous career, but it has been very painful at times, very painful,” says Root, who was the lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 when it was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore. This piece is published in partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. Guest: Terry Root, Senior Fellow Emerita, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University Related Links: 10 years after he monkey-wrenched a Utah oil and gas lease auction, Tim DeChristopher is ‘feeling demoralized' by ‘the state of the world’ but sees hope in humanity (The Salt Lake Tribune) Stephen Schneider, a leading climate expert, dead at 65 (Stanford News) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Climate change is upending Miami’s real estate markets, turning one of its poorest neighborhoods into some of the most desirable real estate around. It’s a phenomenon known as “climate gentrification,” a term coined by urban studies professor Jesse Keenan. In a 2018 paper, Keenan writes that while gentrification is most often driven by supply – that is, a surplus of devalued property that invites development and transformation – climate gentrification is the opposite. “[It]is really about a shift in preferences and demand function,” says Keenan. “And that's a much broader phenomenon in terms of geography and physical geography or markets in some markets than any kind of localized gentrification in a classic sense.” In other words, as people are attracted to areas of lower vulnerability, developers see an opportunity to make a killing. Valencia Gunder, a community organizer and climate educator in Miami, recognizes the irony. She says that in that city’s earliest days, Haitian, Bahamian and Caribeean immigrants were barred from living in the tony beachfront areas. “Black people had to live in the center of the city, which is different than most America, because usually low income black communities are in lower lying areas…and so everything they did that they thought they were doing to hurt us, actually ended up helping us in the long run.” But there’s only so much Little Haiti to go around. As longtime residents are being priced out of their community, climate change isn’t helping matters. “Once the water comes in, Little Haiti will be beachfront property,” Gunder predicts. “Bottom line, it’s gonna be beachfront property, it’s going to be the new shore. So it's become like the hottest toy on the shelf.” Guests: Valencia Gunder, Founder, Make the Homeless Smile Jesse Keenan, Lecturer, Harvard University Graduate School of Design Guy Williams, President and CEO, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice Portions of this program were recorded at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1995, Ben Santer authored one of the most important sentences in the history of climate science: “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” While one of the first statements to identify humans’ role in driving climate change, the vitriol that followed was personal and malicious, impacting both Santer’s career and family. “If you spend your entire career trying to advance understanding, you can't walk away from that understanding when someone criticizes it or criticizes you,” says Santer, now a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley. With his research contingent upon government funding, Santer is concerned about the future of climate science under an administration that does not prioritize it. This piece is published in partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. Guest:: Ben Santer, Climate Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Related Links: At Hot Center of Debate On Global Warming (New York Times) Yes, humans are causing climate change. And we've known for 40 years. (Popular Science) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can we beat the traffic by taking to the skies? For more than a century, the automobile has ruled our city streets, chaining us to grid-shaped streets choked with lines of traffic. And for many of us, seemingly endless hours of daily commuting. “But what if we can remove those chains?” asks JoeBen Bevirt of Joby Aviation. “What do our lives, what do our cities, how does the world look 20 years from now or 50 years from now? That's what gets me up everyday. “So my mission is to save a billion people an hour a day in their daily commutes.” The ability to sail above the freeways in a flying car, getting to work in minutes instead of hours, has long been the stuff of science fiction. But JoeBen Bevirt is already on his way towards making it a reality. He’s raised more than $100 million to develop a five-seater that he claims will be faster, cheaper and quieter than helicopters. And not just as a plaything for the rich, Bevirt promises. “We really want to be able to launch this at an affordable price point that’s accessible to everyone,” he says. “That is similar cost to taking a taxi on a cost per passenger mile. And then our ambition is to get it to the cost of personal car.” Other startups around the world are also developing drones or flying cars. Urban air mobility – or UAM -- is coming. For now, there are still many challenges to getting those flying cars off the ground, from infrastructure to regulatory issues, from air traffic to zoning. Not to mention mechanics and design – what will the flying car of the future look like? Auto industry consultant Charlie Vogelheim says what comes to mind for most consumers is a cross between the Jetson’s family-sized space capsule and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. “The thing that people keep thinking about when they think about flying cars is, ‘where is that car that I can drive and then the wings come out?’” Guests: JoeBen Bevirt, Founder and CEO, Joby Aviation Uma Subramanian, CEO, Aero Technologies Jennifer Richter, Partner, Akin Gump CharlieVogelheim, Principal, Vogelheim Ventures Related Links: Air-Taxi Startup has a Working Prototype (Bloomberg) How Airbus is working to take urban mobility airborne (Pitchbook) Bringing Urban Mobility into the Third Dimension (Urban Future) This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on August 20th, 2019, and was made possible by the ClimateWorks Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From stadiums packed with fans, to food, beer, and waste – pro sports can have a big carbon footprint. But could the core values of athletics — integrity, teamwork, and commitment — be the same values we need to tackle the climate challenge? ”Doing sports the right way is more important now than ever,” says Jim Thompson, Founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance. “We spent a lot of time as adults trying to get kids to do certain things. What if we spend our time trying to encourage them to become the kind of people who want to do the right thing?” Thompson, whose PCA trains youth sports coaches around the country, is a newly converted climate evangelist. “Our country, the whole world is gonna need leaders – people who do the right thing when it matters,” he says. “That's my definition of character, when you do the right thing when it matters, and what happens in the next 10 years matters a lot.” So do pro athletes have a special role in getting their fans and teams to talk about climate? “I think somebody needs to prompt the questions out of them, because I don't think most people aren’t going to just come out and just start talking about climate change,” says Dusty Baker, a special advisor with the San Francisco Giants who had a 19-year career as a hard-hitting outfielder and a 20-year career as a big-league manager. Baker, who is also an avid bird hunter and solar power entrepreneur, admires the star athletes who do speak out on climate or other social issues, but he understands why others may be reluctant to do so. “You spend all your life trying to get to this goal” he explains,”and you realize it's a very limited period of time and also there's somebody always trying to take your job.” Ultimately, the best agents for climate action in the sports arena might be the businesses and the customers – that is, teams and their fans. “Through sport and food we have a huge opportunity to influence the world in a positive way,” says Roger McClendon, Executive Director with the Green Sports Alliance, an association of teams and venues employing sports as a vehicle to promote healthy sustainable communities throughout the world. McClendon previously served as the first chief sustainability officer with Yum! Brands, whose holdings include Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC restaurants, where he challenged the company to run cleaner. “[Pro teams] are businesses but they have the responsibility to serve their consumers and their consumers are fans,” he says. “When the fans or the customers start saying this is important to them, then usually businesses start to listen. Guests: Dusty Baker, Special Advisor, San Francisco Giants Roger McClendon, Executive Director, Green Sports Alliance Jim Thompson, Founder, Positive Coaching Alliance. Related links: Positive Coaching Alliance Baker Energy Team Green Sports Alliance NBA Green How climate change is affecting outdoor skating (NHL.com) San Francisco Giants reclaim the Green Glove Award (MLB.com) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A carbon offset is a credit – a way to offset a unit of pollution created in one place by, say, planting a tree, or otherwise sequestering carbon, somewhere else. But in the race to bring carbon emissions to zero, are offsets a legitimate tool, or a delusion that allows heavy emitters a way out of taking real action? “I just need to recruit everybody to make sure the forests remain forests and the farmlands have as many trees as possible,” says Pauline Kalunda, Executive Director of Ecotrust Uganda, a non-governmental conservation organization in Uganda. She uses money from carbon offsets purchased in wealthy countries to help build environmental resilience at the community level. Buying offsets can help fund carbon-reduction projects in developing economies with limited funding – but they don’t help reduce dirty air back home. “We ultimately need to get to a point where it is really, really expensive to pollute so that people pollute a lot less,” maintains Kahlil Baker, Executive Director of Taking Root, a Canada-based group which also works with the offset market to promote economic development among smallholder farmers in Nicaragua. Voluntary offsets are great for eco-conscious consumers who want to ease their climate guilt. Do they run the risk of letting individuals think they’re off the hook for their carbon sins? “I’m a lot less worried about offsets from individuals than I am about Chevron offsetting,” says Zoe Cina-Sklar, a climate justice campaigner with the advocacy group Amazon Watch. She worries about corporations and other large polluters using offsets to avoid accountability under state climate policies. Barbara Haya, a research fellow at UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Public Policy, who studies California’s offsets program, echoes this worry. “We’re allowing businesses in California like Chevron and Phillips and other large emitters to continue to emit,” she claims, “because they're buying these credits that many of which don't actually represent real emissions reductions.” But Rajinder Sahota, who leads the Cap and Trade program for the California Air Resources Board, disagrees with the takeaways of Haya’s research. “The offsets don't play a specific line item in reducing emissions towards our target,” she counters, “they are a compliance currency under the cap and trade program.” Ultimately, carbon offsets work best, as Derik Broekhoff from the Stockholm Environmental Institute puts it, as the icing on the cake and not the cake itself. “The advice for voluntary offset has always been reduce your own emissions first,” he suggests, “and then turn to offsets as a kind of additional even charitable contribution that you can make towards both helping the climate and making the world a better place.” Guests (in order of appearance): Pauline Kalunda, Executive Director, Ecotrust Uganda Kahlil Baker, Executive Director, Taking Root Pennie Opal Plant, Co-Founder, Idle No More Bay Area Zoe Cina-Sklar, Climate Justice Campaigner, Amazon Watch Barbara Haya, Research Fellow, Center for Environmental Public Policy Rajinder Sahota, Assistant Division Chief, Industrial Strategies Division, California Air Resources Board Derik Broekhoff, Senior Scientist, Stockholm Environmental Institute Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Would you vote for the candidate who says he’ll declare climate change a national emergency on Day One of his presidency? Businessman and activist Tom Steyer says his willingness to use emergency powers to deal with the climate crisis sets him apart from the crowded field of Democratic candidates. “You have to start on day one, urgently – it's an emergency, treat it like an emergency,” Steyer urges. “I would give the Congress a 100 days … to pass something like the Green New Deal, but they've had 28 years to pass something like the Green New Deal, and actually we don't have the luxury of waiting any longer.” Steyer also cites his record fighting the corporate takeover of the US government as another mark of distinction. “I am the person who spent 10 years as an outsider organizing coalitions of American citizens to take on corporate interests and to register voters engage voters and turn them out at the polls,” he notes, while also affirming that his grassroots organizing will continue independently of his campaign and the election. But as the Democratic Party moves to the left, with a more diverse candidate pool than ever, is now the right time for another wealthy white man to insist he’s the best person for the job? “I think there's a very simple challenge for everybody who wants to be the Democratic nominee,” says Steyer,” and that’s to have something to say that people want to hear ... I think that if I'm saying something that touches people and they believe that I'm a credible messenger, then they'll respond.” Guest: Tom Steyer, Activist, Businessman, 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidate This program was recorded at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on August 19, 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s new in renewable energy? In April, 23 percent of America’s electricity came from renewables, surpassing coal for the first time. Ten states, and Puerto Rico and Washington DC, have policies in place to run on 100 percent clean power in coming decades. Achieving that presents a host of challenges, from updating an aging electricity grid to financing energy innovation to figuring out how to transport and store the renewable power. Fortunately, says author Russell Gold, we have the talent to take those challenges on. “There's a lot of creativity in the space right now,” says Gold. “There's creativity on reducing demand, there's creativity in how we aggregate solar… and frankly, given what's going on with the climate, we sort of need to be trying them all -- simultaneously.” And if we succeed, we stand to gain a lot more than just cleaner air, a stable planet and lower electricity bills. Guests: Russell Gold, Reporter, the Wall Street Journal; Author, Superpower: One Man's Quest to Transform American Energy (Simon & Schuster, 2019) Jigar Shah, Founder, SunEdison; Co-Host, The Energy Gang podcast Lynn Doan, Team Leader, Power and Gas-Americas, Bloomberg News This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on August 5, 2019.For full show notes, visit our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The California dream, with its promise of never-ending sunshine, fertile soil and rivers running with gold, has been beckoning people west for over two hundred years. But making that dream come true for an ever-increasing population has taken its toll on the landscape. Is the California dream coming to an end? When its current water system was built in the 1960s and ‘70s, California’s population was about half of the forty million who live there today. And every one of its citizens needs water to drink, bathe and cook. Add to that the demands of agriculture, livestock and the natural ecosystem, and the pool of available water gets smaller and smaller. “When the resource is finite then you have to make choices,” says author Mark Arax. “And so in the San Joaquin Valley they're gonna have to choose which land deserves that water. It's alfalfa, it's Holsteins.” In his new book, The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, Arax pulls back the curtain on the backroom deal-making between billionaire investors and regulators that has, in some cases, stolen the water right out from under our feet. Faith Kearns, a scientist with the California Institute for Water Resources, says it’s been going on for years. Even she has trouble keeping up. “I think there is a lot of stuff that goes on really behind the scenes and that is completely inaccessible to most of us, even those of us who work on this topic professionally,” says Kearns. California now experiences regular weather whiplash, amplified by climate change, careening between record drought and extreme rainfall. Diana Marcum won a Pulitzer Prize for her series of articles on California’s central valley farmers during the drought. Years of parched weather have taught her to appreciate the green times we do get. “I think that’s one thing I took away from the drought,” Marcum recalls. “During it I kept thinking, I wish I would've paid more attention. I wish I could picture the snow. I wish I could picture the grass. So right now I'm trying to look so hard that it almost hurts” Guests: Mark Arax, Author, “The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California” (Knopf, 2019) Diana Marcum, Reporter, Los Angeles Times Faith Kearns, Scientist, California Institute for Water Resources This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on July 17th, 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to solving climate change, where do we start? The organization Project Drawdown has published a list of top solutions for climate change – impactful actions already in existence that not only reduce carbon emissions, but also improve lives, create jobs and generate community resilience. “If you’re thinking about how to solve climate change here's where you start,” says Jonathan Foley, Project Drawdown’s executive director. “Electricity is about a quarter of the problem. Food, agriculture and forest are also a quarter of the problem...then you’ve got buildings, industry and transportation. Those are the five things we’ve got to change.” One item that might surprise many is dealing with global overpopulation. And that starts with improving education and reproductive freedom for the world’s girls and women. “If women have the opportunity to be able to have a voice and be agents in their community and their country globally, we have the opportunity to have the kind of innovation that we need to be able to combat this,” says Lois Quam of Pathfinder International. “That human right to decide whether and when and how many and with whom we want to have a child, the ability to exercise that right is…one of the top strategies to combat climate change.” It’s quite a to-do list – and it’s only the beginning. How to sort through the many daunting tasks ahead of us? Don’t be discouraged, says Foley. It almost doesn’t matter where we start, as long as we’re doing something. Corporations, policy makers, communities and individuals all have a part to play in achieving climate drawdown. This point was driven home to the audience and panelists alike by an additional guest, 13-year old Kea Morshed. His YouTube channel, Movies with Mic1, demonstrates the many ways we can all challenge ourselves to take action on climate change. “At the end of the day, it's gonna be behavior change by all of us that’s necessary,” Foley tells Climate One. “It’s gonna be policy change, business operations change and changes in capital, money. “So don’t pick one lever, pull them all, you know - everybody bloody one you can find!” Guests: Kate Brandt, Sustainability Officer, Google Jonathan Foley, Executive Director, Project Drawdown Lois Quam, U.S. Chief Executive Officer, Pathfinder International This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on July 11, 2019.For complete show notes, visit our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices