Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

Apr 11 2024 9
Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org Podcast artwork

Are you concerned about the Earth's future? Are you interested in what is being done in Northern California and the world to address environmental issues? Do you want to act? Then tune in every other Sunday to "Sustainability Now!" on KSQD.org to hear interviews with scientists, scholars, activists and officials involved in the pursuit of sustainability. Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, California

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Being in the World with Bees (or, What is it to Be a Bee?) with Professor Eve Bratman

Apr 11 2024 51 mins  
Bees are in danger; what can we do? Tune into a Sustainability Now! rebroadcast from 2021 to hear a conversation with Eve Bratman, an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Bratman is a political ecologist with interdisciplinary training utilizing social science to explore conservation and land use issues relatin

The Green Energy Resource Rush and the American West with Professor Dustin Mulvaney

Mar 31 2024 56 mins  
Solar electricity is the fuel of the future. But can we go solar without damaging the environment? Solar farms in distant places need transmission lines to get their product to the market. Storage batteries, and especially electric vehicles, require lithium and the stuff must be mined somewhere. And all the while, its seems that the solar enterprise is being undermined by the strug

The Climate Change Resilient Vegetable Garden With Kim Stoddart

Mar 17 2024 55 mins  
All of us—well, many of us—are backyard gardeners. And it’s planting season. Backyard gardens are not immune from the impacts of violent and unpredictable weather or the longer-term effects of climate change. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Kim Stoddart, editor of Amateur Gardening and author of The Climate Change Resilient Vegetable Garden—How to Grow Fo

Can we square our need to consume with sustainability? with Dr. Jean Boucher, James Hutton Institute, Scotland

Mar 03 2024 51 mins  
We live in a Consumer Society. Rising consumption is good, since it makes the economy grow. At the same time, we face a Climate Crisis. Rising consumption is bad, since it makes carbon emissions grow. People across the Global North believe we must reduce emissions but they are reluctant to reduce their consumption. What can we do? Some advocate ecological modernization by making ou

The Elephant Seals are Back! with Dr. Theresa Keates

Feb 18 2024 54 mins  
The elephant seals are back! The elephant seals have made their annual trip back to the California Coast! During the winter months, Elephant Seals turn to love...and fighting... and feeding... and laying around in the sun and rain. This is the prime viewing season at Año Nuevo State Park and Point Reyes National Seashore, where you can watch the two-ton male seals fight bloody bat

California Against the Sea With Rosanna Xia of the LA Times

Feb 04 2024 54 mins  
Climate change is transforming what scientists call the land-sea interface, with crumbling cliffs, falling structures, tidal and storm flooding and loud homeowners demanding government action. Should that interface be buttressed and built up to prevent further coastal erosion or is managed retreat a better strategy? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Rosanna Xia (�

The Path to an Energy Efficient, Electric Future, with Amory Lovins

Jan 21 2024 49 mins  
Energy has been with us for a long time and, over the past 100 years, fossil fuels have been cheap and plentiful. Now we are going to have to pay the piper if we want to limit the future impacts of climate change. How could that happen. Tune in to hear Amory Lovins, cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and long time energy policy analyst and advisor to many utilities, regulato

What's in Your Water? Nitrate Pollution on California's Central Coast, with Chelsea Tu of Monterey Waterkeeper

Jan 08 2024 49 mins  
Monterey Waterkeeper is part of a coalition of organizations seeking to reduce nitrate pollution in the region’s groundwater. Nitrate contamination, the result of over-application of fertilizers, can cause the “blue baby syndrome” and various cancers in adults. The State Water Board recently issued rules that allow growers to continue over-application of nitrogen fertilizers

Firepower and Global Security: Past, Present and Future, with Professor Simon Dalby

Dec 24 2023 58 mins  
According to Simon Dalby, Professor emeritus in the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, global politics over the past 70 years has been driven by an overabundance of "firepower," both nuclear and carbon-based. The first was used by Great Power to threaten incineration of the world, by intention or accident, in the na

Will Small Modular Reactors Save the Nuclear Industry? with Prof. Allison Macfarlane, former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Dec 10 2023 53 mins  
Nuclear power is being touted as a way of providing clean energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and paving the way to a zero-emission future. There is talk of a “nuclear renaissance,” with small modular reactors (SMRs) replacing the gigawatt nuclear behemoths of the past, quickly and at much lower cost. But the United States’ experience with nuclear, now going back 70 yea