Sea Change Radio Sustainability Innovators

What if the roads we drove on, instead of being made of carbon-intensive petroleum sludge, were actually solar panels? And what if whenever electric vehicles drove on these solar roads, they were automatically re-charged?

Even the most astute followers of the news may have missed that the Trump Administration is touting a series of self-proclaimed focal areas. With compelling revelations of lying, collusion, and treason coming out almost daily, it's understandable if absurd, toothless initiatives like "Energy Week," or "Workforce Development Week" flew under your radar.

"I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation." Perhaps Walt Whitman had this week's guests on Sea Change Radio in mind when he wrote those words, as we talk to two entrepreneurs who, in very different ways, are using nature's bounty for innovative purposes.

Ted Nordhaus is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland-based think tank which focuses on energy issues. We discuss Nordhaus's recent piece in Foreign Policy magazine, assess the damage that climate change denialism in the US has wrought on the planet, and examine the methods used by both pro-environment and anti-environment activists.

It has been a bit difficult to keep up with the news since January. Every few hours it seems like there is a new revelation in the global political wreckage that is the Trump administration.

In 2013 California boasted a recycling rate of 85%. In 2017 that number is now 79% – that is the first time it has dipped below 80% since 2008. Why is the most populous state in the union moving in the wrong direction on this important indicator?

Galileo said we should, “Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.” This week on Sea Change Radio, we take a look at two ways that people are trying to apply that wisdom to climate change. First, we speak to Davida Herzl, the CEO and co-founder of Aclima, a San Francisco-based company that refers to itself as a “FitBit for the planet.”

Was all the work to try to keep the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines from being built done in vain now that Donald Trump occupies the White House? Not if you ask this week’s guest on Sea Change Radio, Kandi Mossett, a leading organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. Mossett takes us behind the scenes of Native Americans’ fight to preserve their sacred lands.