Commonwealth Club of California Podcast

The wildfires ravaging Los Angeles have caused incredible destruction — loss of life, thousands of homes and businesses gone or damaged and hundreds of thousands of people displaced. While the scale and speed of these fires may feel unprecedented, the dry, fire-prone foothills around LA burn often. Yet increasingly we see wildfires spurred by climate factors including warmer temperatures and weather whiplash — cycles of heavy precipitation followed by extreme drought. This week we hear what climate science says about current and future wildfire risk and about ways to support an equitable recovery from such destructive urban disasters.Guests:Moira Morel, Cinematographer; Altadena residentHugh Safford, Research faculty, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, UC DavisAndrew Rumbach, Senior Fellow, Urban Institute Nick Mott, Multimedia journalist; Author of “This Is Wildfire”On February 25, internationally recognized environmental and civil rights activist Catherine Coleman Flowers will join Climate One for a live conversation about the future of environmental justice. Join us at noon in San Francisco for a can’t-miss show. Tickets are on sale now through our website.Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today for just $5/month.For show notes and related links, visit our website.Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did the billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai become one of Hong Kong’s leading activists for democracy—and China’s most famous political prisoner today?Jimmy Lai escaped mainland China when he was 12 years old, at the height of a famine that killed tens of millions. In Hong Kong, he hustled; no work was beneath him, and he often slept on a table in a clothing factory where he did odd jobs. At 21, he was running a factory. By his mid-twenties, he owned one and was supplying sweaters and shirts to some of the biggest brands in the United States, from Polo to The Limited. His ideas about retail led him to create Giordano in 1981, and with it “fast fashion.” A restless entrepreneur, as Giordano prepared to go public, he was thinking about a dining concept that would disrupt Hong Kong’s fast-food industry.But then came the Tiananmen Square democracy protest and the massacre of 1989.His reaction to the violence was to enter the media business to push China toward more freedoms. He started a magazine, Next, to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong. Then, just two years before the city was to return to Chinese control, he founded the Apple Daily newspaper. Its mix of bold graphics, gossip, local news, and opposition to the Chinese Communist Party was an immediate hit. For more than two decades, Lai used Apple and Next as part of a personal push for democracy—in weekly columns, at rallies and marches, and, memorably, sitting in front of a tent during the 2014 Occupy Central movement.Lai also took his activism abroad, traveling frequently to Washington, where he was well known in Congress and in political circles. China reacted with fury in 2019 when he met with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. A draconian new security law came into effect in Hong Kong in mid-2020, effectively making free speech a crime and censorship a fact. Lai was its most important target. Apple Daily was raided on August 10, 2020. He was arrested and held without bail before being convicted of trumped-up charges ranging from lighting a candle (“incitement to riot”) to violating a clause in his company’s lease (“fraud”). At the end of 2023, a lengthy trial began alleging “collusion with foreign forces” and printing seditious materials.China’s most famous political prisoner has been in jail for more than 1,100 days and could spend the rest of his life there.Join us to hear from Mark Clifford, author of The Troublemaker, and learn all about the billionaire behind bars.This program is generously supported by the Ken and Jaclyn Broad Family Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

California faces an urgent housing crisis: Median home prices are double the national average and while in 2016 it was projected that the state needed to build 3.5 million new homes by 2025 to meet demand, just one quarter of those have even been permitted. Is building new cities from scratch the solution—or is it just a Silicon Valley pipe dream?Join us for an eye-opening fireside chat with Gabe Metcalf, head of planning at California Forever, exploring why he sees greenfield development, rather than infill alone, as our best shot at addressing the housing crisis. Drawing upon years in his previous role as CEO of SPUR and now leading urban planning for California Forever’s controversial East Solano Plan—a proposed, VC-backed new city in Solano County—Metcalf will discuss why he believes that cities are humankind’s greatest invention and why building walkable, compact communities must become a normal form of development.Is it time to rethink our approach to building mass housing or will hurdles mean new cities never break ground? An essential discussion for residents, urban planners, environmental advocates and anyone invested in the Bay Area’s housing future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If we include personal cars, along with appliances like water heaters, stoves and furnaces, more than 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from individuals at the home level. The good news: no matter where you live, there are steps you can take to make your home cleaner, healthier and more comfortable. And thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, there’s now a raft of federal incentives to help homeowners electrify their lives. Electrification has even become a theme on long running home improvement programs like “This Old House.” But with all the new technology and the federal tax credits, where to start? Guests: Ross Trethewey, Home Technology Expert, “This Old House”Ari Matusiak, Co-founder, President and CEO, Rewiring AmericaEdith Buhs, Electrification Coach, Rewiring America; Decarbonization Advisor, Abode Energy ManagementSupport Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today for just $5/month.For show notes and related links, visit our website.Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we live with fire? Join us for a talk about stewardship, resilience and hope.Fire is an essential part of California's ecology. Humans have been using it to shape the California landscape for thousands of years. But today many Californians' relationship to fire is one of fear. Obi Kaufmann, author of the best-selling California Field Atlas, now asks: How do we live with fire? What makes fire essential to a healthy and biodiverse Golden State, and how do we benefit from its teachings? With the same solution-minded ethic as his much-admired The State of Water: Understanding California's Most Precious Resource, Kaufmann presents fire as a force of regeneration rather than apocalypse. He considers the long history of ecological burns, the varied ways fire behaves across the state, and the lessons we can learn from California's largest fires of recent decades.Organizer Andrew Dudley A People & Nature Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How interdependent were the Northern industrial economy and Southern slave labor in pre-Civil War America?Historian and Brown University history professor Seth Rockman says the traditional way of thinking about the United States in the early 19th century—that of a nation with an industrializing North and agricultural South—overlooks the economic ties that held together the nation before the Civil War. He says it misses slavery’s long reach into small New England communities, and it fails to recognize the role of Northern manufacturing in shaping the terrain of human bondage in the South.Rockman, in his new book Plantation Goods, looks at the shirts, hats, hoes, shovels, shoes, axes, and whips made in the North for use in the South. By following the stories of material objects, such as shoes made by Massachusetts farm women that found their way to the feet of a Mississippi slave, Rockman says it was a national economy organized by slavery—a slavery that outsourced the production of its supplies to the North, and a North that outsourced its slavery to the South.Examining producers and consumers linked in economic and moral relationships across great geographic and political distances, Rockman explores how people in the 19th century thought about complicity with slavery while showing how slavery structured life nationwide and established a modern world of entrepreneurship and exploitation.Organizer: George Hammond A Humanities Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lessons learned from former community-oriented department heads, a civil rights attorney and a former controller who has ideas about making the city more flexible and responsive.About the SpeakersMargaret Brodkin is one of the nation’s leading children’s advocates. She was the executive director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth for 26 years, leading systems change work in juvenile justice and social welfare, budget advocacy, and parent and youth organizing. In 2004, she was appointed by Mayor Newsom as the director of the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families (DCYF), where she developed innovative models for coordination, partnerships, service delivery, policy and civic engagement. Sheryl Davis is a passionate advocate for equity, and educational opportunity. Davis is the creator of Everybody Reads, a summer learning, family literacy and reading development initiative centering BIPOC youth. Throughout her career and many roles, she has continued to design programs and curriculum centered around social justice, racial equity, student wellness and achievement. Davis is an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco and senior advisor at the Institute for Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School. Ed Harrington was controller for the City and County of San Francisco from 1991 to 2008 and the general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission from 2008 to 2012. During that time he was also chair of the Water Utility Climate Alliance, president of the Government Finance Officers Association and a member of the Financial Accounting Foundation Board. Since his retirement Harrington has worked extensively with governmental and nonprofit organizations. He is on the boards of SPUR and the Children’s Funding Project and is an adviser to California’s Funding the Next Generation. Saidah Leatutufu-Burch, Ed.D. (“Dr. Sai”) is a Black and Indigenous Samoan organizer, cultural orator, and a dedicated disruptor of anti-Black racism and systems rooted in white supremacist ideology. A daughter of San Francisco, Dr. Sai values racial equity, justice, and the power of the people. Most recently, Dr. Sai served as the director of the Dream Keeper Initiative at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission—a $60 million-annual effort aimed at advancing prosperity, equity and community well-being across San Francisco’s diverse Black communities. Passionate, outspoken and insightful, Areva Martin is an award-winning civil rights attorney, national bestselling author and one of the country's leading influencers shaping public discourse on issues of race, politics and the law. She is the founder and managing partner of Martin & Martin, LLP, one of Los Angeles’ premier Black, female-owned law firms. She is one of the nation’s leading attorneys on reparations and restorative justice. Areva is an on-air legal commentator and host of the daily news and opinion streaming and radio talk show "Areva Martin in Real Time" on KBLA. Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California is a nonprofit public forum; we welcome donations made during registration to support the production of our online programming.This program contains EXPLICIT language.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year we highlight the work of a scientist who excels in communicating their work to the world. Climate One is delighted to present the 2024 Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication to political scientist and energy expert Leah Stokes.Her rare ability to communicate complex information to both academic audiences and the general public has established her as one of the most influential voices in climate action and clean energy policy. “What I've started to think about is not how can I make my impact as small as possible, like a carbon footprint, trying to shrink, but actually how can I make my impact as big as possible by joining with others in campaigns to try to change policies and laws so that we're not just trying to make marginal, incremental improvements on a fossil fuel-based energy system, but actually change the system towards clean electricity,” she says.Guests:Leah Stokes, Anton Vonk Associate Professor at UC Santa Barbara; Senior Policy Advisor, Rewiring America; Co-host of the podcast “A Matter of Degrees”Rebecca Solnit, Author, journalist, and activistSupport Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today for just $5/month.For show notes and related links, visit our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When most people hear the phrase renewable energy, they imagine fields full of solar panels or giant spinning wind turbines. But another source may be heating up: geothermal. Twenty years ago, it was thought that geothermal could provide at most 10% of any given area’s electricity, and only in very limited regions. There were also environmental concerns about depleting groundwater. But new technological advances may have unlocked the potential for scalable geothermal energy just about anywhere. And in a bit of irony, those technological advances came from the oil and gas industry. This episode originally aired February 23, 2024, and features content from contributing producer David Condos.Guests: Amanda Kolker, Laboratory Program Manager for Geoscience and Geothermal Technologies, NRELJamie Beard, Founder of Project InnerSpaceLauren McLean, Mayor of BoiseSupport Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today for just $5/month.For show notes and related links, visit our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Plastics are everywhere. And while we’ve known for a long time that plastics and our environment aren’t a good mix, it's becoming apparent that they’re massive climate polluters too. The production of plastics alone produces about 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. After what is often a single use, the resulting waste continues releasing the greenhouse gasses ethylene and methane as it breaks apart. Yet, as petrochemical companies pay lip service ending fuel production, they are pouring resources into plastics production. How do we wrap up our reliance on plastics? This episode originally aired on May 10, 2024, following the fourth negotiating session of the Global Plastics Treaty. This update includes a new interview with David Azoulay on the latest treaty negotiations.Guests: Diane Wilson, Founder and Director, San Antonio Bay WaterkeeperJane Patton, U.S. Fossil Economy Campaign Manager, Center for International Environmental Law Susannah Scott, Professor of Chemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara David Azoulay, Director of Environmental Health, Center for International Environmental LawSupport Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today!For show notes and related links, visit our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices