Climate 2030

In this special episode of Climate 2020 for The Years Project, we interview Mike Mann about his new book, THE NEW CLIMATE WAR. Mann is one of the world’s premier climate scientists. In this interview, he describes how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change. He also offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet. Mann argues that all is not lost. But the long-running climate wars have shifted, and...

President Trump has vowed to remove the United States from the historic Paris climate agreement, which every nation on Earth has now signed onto. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has said one of his first acts as president, should he win, will be to keep America in that accord. In this special episode of Climate 2020, the director of WWF's U.S. climate program and We Are Still In movement co-founder Elan Strait talks about the growing power of the sub-national movement in America -...

In this Climate One episode, our co-host Jeff Nesbit joins podcast host Greg Dalton, Vanessa Hauc of Telemundo, and Nathaniel Stinnett of the Environmental Voter Project to explore the continuing relevance of climate to the November election.

When Gina McCarthy left her post as Obama’s EPA Administrator, she was ready to leave the sometimes grueling world of Washington politics behind. She went into academia. In 2018, she founded the Harvard Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE). But after observing Trump’s chaotic first term from the sidelines, she realized she wasn’t content to sit this one out. Today, Gina is President of the Natural Resources Defense Council. There, she leads a multi-pronged...

Sociologist and Environmental Justice Activist Dr. Robert Bullard came of age during the Civil Rights Movement. Back then, the conversation around how racism and environmentalism intersected hadn’t gained much traction. But Dr. Bullard began to make those connections through his research. He began to notice in cities across the country — from his hometown of Houston to Alabama to Louisiana — the ways in which black neighborhoods were made to bear the brunt of industrial pollution. Dr....

At the start of 2020, Americans were becoming increasingly alarmed about climate change. But then: A pandemic, record unemployment and now mass demonstrations over police violence and racism. The last time America faced such a turbulent political moment — during the Great Recession — public concern about climate change fell sharply. Now political winds are shifting again. Is climate still a political priority? The latest poll from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication gives us...

The Environmental Protection Agency hopes to finalize its new ‘Secret Science’ rule that would make it harder for lifesaving climate science to inform policy. If approved, it could be detrimental to studies that contain confidential data — including seminal public health findings related to air pollution. This is an especially critical area of research for black Americans who are dying in disproportionate numbers from Coronavirus, partially because of their exposure to harmful particles in...

Jaime Kaiser 4:22 PM (39 minutes ago) to me Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Climate's Stolen Decade Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse made his debut in Congress in 2007. Back then, hopes for congressional action on climate change were high, and multiple proposals for viable carbon legislation were on the table. But within the last decade, enthusiasm for bipartisan climate solutions has come to a crawl. Corporate dollars have often set the agenda. In March,...

Unemployment is getting worse. Congress is under increasing pressure to pass more spending bills to rescue the economy. So far Congress has focused on immediate relief, but congressional leaders have signaled that future proposals could focus on infrastructure and jobs. We talk to someone who’s trying to make sure that climate is a big part of those conversations. Mindy Lubber leads CERES, a non-profit which organizes corporations to take action on climate change. Last week, CERES rallied...

Naomi Klein has had a long career as a journalist. Time and time again, she's seen capitalists take advantage of crises. She saw it when she was a reporter in Iraq, and noticed it again while reporting on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now, she's seeing the agents of capitalism rush in to profit off of the Coronavirus pandemic. Our hosts spoke with Naomi about how global "shocks" to the economy are giving the fossil fuel industry big policy wins, and what that means for the battle to...

Hurricane season starts in a few weeks, but officials across the country have their hands full managing COVID-19. Experts suggest we may be on the verge of another wave of infections as states end their stay-at-home orders. So what happens if a hurricane or other major natural hazard hits the US during the pandemic? We hear from worried local officials as they try to prepare for threats on two fronts. And with climate change exacerbating natural hazards and infectious diseases, what...

The pandemic continues to wreak havoc on public health and people’s livelihoods. But remember folks, there’s a Presidential election on the other side of all of this. New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman discusses whether Joe Biden will step up on climate if he makes it to the White House, and why mother nature doesn’t care about President Trump's ambitions for the stock market. He also talks about COVID-19's impact on oil prices and how America can wean itself off of foreign oil by...

Youth climate organizers were deep in the process of planning a series of mass mobilizations for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Then, a global pandemic hit. So they had to completely rethink their approach. They needed to translate an event that included striking in the streets and other in-person actions into something totally digital. In just a few short weeks, would they be able to pull off this kind of Earth Day? And will this new online movement turn out climate voters in the...

Hospitals overcrowded. Frontline workers at risk. And everyone else stuck at home. The coronavirus outbreak has laid bare a nation woefully ill-equipped to meet this challenge. If we couldn’t find a way to work together in this moment of crisis — what hope do we have of uniting against the climate crisis? We sat down with Author David Wallace-Wells who describes the layers of government dysfunction that brought us to this one point and what’s waiting for us in the months ahead.

Bernie Sanders has officially ended his bid for the presidency and endorsed Joe Biden. Most of his other former Democratic challengers have now thrown their support behind him too. But will Biden be able to earn the support of progressive voters and unify the party — and could climate be the lynchpin issue that wins their favor? We spoke to someone who knows a thing or two about this: Former Presidential Candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer. He tells us what he’s learned about prioritizing...

The congressional stimulus package will send trillions of dollars to families and businesses amid the pandemic — but you won’t find many concessions to climate groups. That’s because prominent Republicans fought tooth and nail to make sure green measures didn’t make the cut. How will Democrats handle Republican resistance to climate policy in future federal spending? Is there any way to get conservatives on board? Former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis talks about what convinced him to...

Last week, Congress passed a $2 trillion stimulus package amid the economic fallout of COVID-19. It didn’t include many of the green measures that environmental groups had been pushing for. Climate-friendly dems were accused of “politicizing” the relief package by trying to shoehorn climate into the bill. But history says this is nothing new. During the 2009 recession, part of Obama’s stimulus was a $90 billion clean energy bill for things like electric grid upgrades and solar...

Coronavirus brought the 2020 election to a screeching halt. Climate was once a top issue in the Democratic primary, but it’s been overtaken by a virus and a looming economic apocalypse. Primaries are delayed. Traditional campaigning has stopped. Biden is hiding out, preparing for the general election. Bernie Sanders is hanging on. And the way we think about all kinds of issues has totally flipped. So how will climate, cleantech and the environment fit into this new political world? We’ll...

As the economy shuts down, people around the world have noticed an unintended side effect: cleaner air. As it turns out, all that pollution has been making us sicker and potentially more vulnerable to outbreaks like coronavirus. In this episode, we talk to Dr. Ari Bernstein about the links between climate change, health and the COVID-19 pandemic. Then we turn to how the US government has been exacerbating these problems by supporting fossil fuels. And finally, the American public turns...

A wild news cycle has our hosts bantering about the primary results, the presidential debate and of course -- the COVID19 pandemic. Then, a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert. The climate crisis is already here, but there's still time to steer the planet away from its worst consequences.