Sun Up Dan Shugar, CEO, Solaria Tom Dinwoodie, CTO, SunPower In the wake of the collapse of solar panel maker Solyndra, the solar industry has received front-page treatment for the first time. Unfortunately, most of the coverage has been negative and ill-informed. In danger of being lost, industry veterans Dan Shugar and Tom Dinwoodie tell this Climate One audience is the good news – that solar is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States. Dan Shugar, CEO, Solaria, offers a sens...
Nov 18, 2011•1 hr 7 min
The Great Disruption Paul Gilding, Professor, Cambridge University Program for Sustainability Leadership Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute Growth as we’ve known it is over, say Paul Gilding and Richard Heinberg. “The idea that we can keep on growing the economy up against the physical limits of the Earth” – water, oil, and land – “is not physically possible,” says Gilding, author, The Great Disruption. “We’re in a trap really. If we grow the economy, then we’ll hit those lim...
Nov 08, 2011•1 hr 6 min
Energy Innovation: Overhaul or Tweak? Severin Borenstein, Co-director, Energy Institute, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Richard Lester, Director, MIT Industrial Performance Center Dan Reicher, Executive Director, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford America’s innovation engine is the envy of the world, yet it struggles to deploy new technology at the scale commensurate with its economic might. This panel of experts from three of the nation’s leading universities say...
Nov 03, 2011•1 hr 7 min
Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Co. It might sound strange coming from the scion of a family whose name is synonymous with cars, but Bill Ford is worried about a world with too many automobiles. “Even if we clean up our cars, 4 billion clean cars is still 4 billion cars,” he tells this Climate One audience. “Most everybody has been focused on CO2 and fossil fuels and the effect that has on us politically and environmentally. That’s absolutely an appropriate focus,” says William Clay Ford, Jr., Ex...
Oct 28, 2011•1 hr 5 min
US Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) America should wean itself from foreign oil and invest in clean energy technologies and infrastructure. Join us for a broad conversation about what Congress could do to promote electric cars, create jobs and spur development of biofuels from forests and agricultural lands. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 26, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Oct 27, 2011•1 hr 9 min
Beyond Petroleum: Lessons from the Gulf of Mexico Bill Reilly, Co-Chair, National Oil Spill Commission Bob Graham, Co-Chair, National Oil Spill Commission More than a year after oil stopped gushing into the Gulf, the co-chairs of the commission tasked with investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill appear together in this Climate One panel to assess the nation’s response to the disaster. Bill Reilly and Bob Graham commend the Obama administration for overhauling regulation of the offshore oil...
Oct 25, 2011•1 hr 4 min
Beyond Petroleum: Navy Seals Leading the Charge Jackalyne Pfannenstiel, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Energy & Installations Jeremy Carl, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University The U.S. military has ambitious plans to reduce its dangerous dependence on oil and other fossil fuels. Can the buying power of the Pentagon drive innovation in new energy technologies and create markets? This conversation explores how the U.S. Navy and other military branches can align their inte...
Oct 25, 2011•1 hr 6 min
Saltworks and Beyond Peter Calthorpe, Principal Architect, Peter Calthorpe Associates David Lewis, Executive Director, Save the Bay Jack Matthews, Mayor, San Mateo The debate over Saltworks, a proposal to build 12,000 homes on former salt ponds in Redwood City, is a harbinger of coming development fights in the age of climate change. In this October 18 Climate One debate, architect Peter Calthorpe argues that the need for housing in the San Francisco Bay Area is so great that infill development ...
Oct 19, 2011•1 hr 5 min
On Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World Daniel Yergin, Executive Vice President and Chairman, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates; CNBC Global Energy Expert; Author, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World Bullish on technology’s ability to tap previously unreachable oil and gas, energy analyst Daniel Yergin tells this Climate One audience to expect the age of fossil fuels to continue well into this century. Yergin is author of The Quest: Energy, S...
Oct 18, 2011•1 hr 9 min
Red Alert: China Time, China Scale Peter Greenwood, Executive Director of Strategy, China Light and Power Group Stephen Leeb, Co-author, Red Alert Alex Wang, Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law Julian Wong, Attorney, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Former Advisor, U.S. Department of Energy The four China watchers assembled for this Climate One panel debate the motives for, and the implications of, China’s domestic climate action, particularly its abundant clean energy investments...
Oct 18, 2011•1 hr 11 min
Drop In, Scale Up? Ed Dineen, CEO, LS9 Alan Shaw, CEO, Codexis Jonathan Wolfson, CEO, Solazyme Next-generation biofuels are on the verge of a breakthrough but aren’t ready to displace conventional fuels, three Bay Area biofuel company CEOs say in this Climate One talk. The CEOs insist that their fuels must compete on price with conventional gasoline or diesel, with or without government support, or a price on carbon, which means they have to scale up, fast. For biofuels to scale, all agree, they...
Oct 07, 2011•1 hr 5 min
Truckin' John Boesel, CEO, CALSTART Mike Tunnell, Director, Environmental Affairs, American Trucking Associations Alan Niedzwiecki, CEO, Quantum Technologies In August, the Obama administration announced the first-ever fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks and buses. The three experts convened at this Climate One panel say that the trucking industry is ready to meet the new rules, which require semi-trucks to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2018. “What’s ...
Oct 07, 2011•1 hr 3 min
Jeremy Rifkin President, Foundation on Economic Trends; Author, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy and Changing the World The world is doomed to repeat four-year cycles of booms followed by crashes if we don’t get off oil, Jeremy Rifkin warns in this Climate One talk. The solution, what he calls the Third Industrial Revolution, is the “Energy Internet,” a nervous system linking millions of small renewable energy producers. For Rifkin, author of the new The ...
Oct 04, 2011•1 hr 11 min
Big Green Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club Felicia Marcus, Western Director, Natural Resources Defense Council Karen Topakian, Board Chair, Greenpeace USA It would not seem a fruitful time to be on the frontlines in the fight to protect the environment in the United States, with the EPA under daily attack and climate legislation stalled. But the three environmental leaders participating in this Climate One panel note that many fronts exist outside of Washington, with at least one f...
Sep 29, 2011•1 hr 8 min
Carbon & Courts II: Cap and Trade: Fixable or Fatally Flawed? Edie Chang, Office of Climate Change, California Air Resources Board Brent Newell, General Counsel, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment Bill Gallegos, Executive Director, Communities for a Better Environment Kristin Eberhard, Legal Director, Western Energy and Climate Projects, Natural Resources Defense Council It might be the only reference to Star Wars you’ll ever hear at Climate One. Reaching for an analogy to drive hom...
Sep 20, 2011•1 hr 7 min
Carbon & Courts I: Atmospheric Trust Phil Gregory, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy Pete McCloskey, Former Congressman David Takacs, Associate Professor, UC Hastings College of the Law With climate legislation dead in Congress, and the international climate talks years from resolution, some proponents of climate action are turning to the courts in the hope that judges will compel governments to act. This Climate One panel brings together three attorneys who are pursuing climate action through ...
Sep 20, 2011•1 hr 6 min
Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior California reservoirs are at healthy levels this year, but the state’s water system remains in crisis. Projected changes in the Sierra snowpack and precipitation patterns, along with a growing population, present challenges for hydrating the state’s citizens and economy. How will the federal government help the state secure future water supplies by aiding ambitious projects such as the restoration of the California Bay Delta and the San Joaquin River? How w...
Sep 19, 2011•1 hr 6 min
“Humanity needs nature to thrive.” For Peter Seligmann, who delivers that line, and Jib Ellison, who shares the stage with him at this Climate One panel, the abundant services provided by nature too often go unrecognized. So what are those services?, asks Climate One’s Greg Dalton. In basic terms, replies Seligmann, CEO, Conservation International, ecosystem services are what we get from the natural world. He assigns those services to one of four categories: provisions – food, freshwater, and me...
Sep 15, 2011•1 hr 7 min
In this Climate One conversation, two of the most influential environmentalists of the past 30 years share the same stage for just the second time in their long careers in public life. Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and author of Eaarth, and Paul Hawken, entrepreneur and author of Blessed Unrest, talk about the ailing economy, the economy we must build to succeed it, and the forces that stand in the way. Climate One’s Greg Dalton opens by asking Hawken and McKibben how the United States en...
Sep 15, 2011•1 hr 12 min
Canada’s Oil Sands: Energy Security, or Energy Disaster? Cassie Doyle, Consul General, Canada; Former Canadian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Jason Mark, Earth Island Institute Carl Pope, Chairman, The Sierra Club Alex Pourbaix, President of Energy and Oil Pipelines, TransCanada The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. In this Climate One debate, a panel of experts argues for and against the controversial pipeline. For...
Sep 01, 2011•1 hr 6 min
Power Down The Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, President, The Regeneration Project Chris King, Chief Regulatory Officer, eMeter Gregory Walton, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Stanford University Energy underpins our civilization. It’s hardly surprising that convincing people to use less of something so tied to their comfort and survival is challenging. Smart policy has given California a head start, but it’s not enough. We need to dig deeper to reap energy savings, say these three experts conve...
Jul 25, 2011•58 min
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council The fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is so readily embraced by progressives can conceal that his message is an inherently conservative one. Listen to Kennedy talk for an hour and you’ll hear the words “free market” invoked more often than in any Milton Friedman tome. “Show me a polluter, and I’ll show you a subsidy,” Kennedy is fond of saying, as he does here. The market is flawed, he says, by polluters who “make themselves...
Jun 20, 2011•1 hr 9 min
Crops, Cattle and Carbon Cynthia Cory, Director of Environmental Affairs, California Farm Bureau Federation Paul Martin, Director of Environmental Services, Western United Dairymen Jeanne Merrill, California Climate Action Network Karen Ross, Secretary, California Department of Food and Agriculture Making California’s farms more energy efficient, and ensuring that farmers can adapt to a warmer planet, will be a decades-long challenge, agrees this panel of experts gathered by Climate One. That a ...
Jun 15, 2011•1 hr 6 min
Salmon Odyssey Phil Isenberg, Chair, Delta Vision Task Force James Norton, Filmmaker, Salmon: Running the Gauntlet Jonathan Rosenfield, Ph.D., Conservation Biologist, The Bay Institute In the post-World War II boom, previous generations prioritized cheap electricity and economic development over salmon. On the West Coast, huge dams blocked rivers and sprawl fragmented habitat. If wild salmon are to survive, in California and elsewhere, we must acknowledge that well-intentioned human ingenuity ha...
Jun 06, 2011•1 hr 6 min
Sustainable Urbanism Stuart Cohen, Executive Director, TransForm Mike Ghielmetti, President, Signature Development Group Ezra Rapport, Executive Director, Association of Bay Area Governments Infill development is hard. Even in California, one of the few states to have given local officials guidance on how to plan for growth, building smart, sustainable projects close to transit is a challenge, says this panel of experts.“People say, ‘We can’t do enough infill.’ There are too many obstacles to do...
May 31, 2011•1 hr 4 min
Peter Calthorpe, Founder, Calthorpe Associates; Author, Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change It’s a love story gone horribly wrong. Big cars, ever-bigger homes, distant suburbs – all of it kept afloat by cheap oil. If this American arrangement ever made sense, it certainly doesn’t now, Peter Calthorpe says. Tragically, we’re perpetuating this failed system in much of the country, ignoring a cheaper, greener alternative: urbanism. “It’s better than free,” says Calthorpe, founder of Calthorpe Ass...
May 31, 2011•1 hr 3 min
Wal-Mart: Force of Nature or Greenwashing? Edward Humes, Author, Force of Nature Greg Dalton, Vice President of Special Projects, The Commonwealth Club; Founder, Climate One - Moderator Wal-Mart is not a sustainable company, says author Edward Humes. But the mega-retailer is making money by investing in sustainability. The story of how Wal-Mart made the pivot toward green is well told by Humes, author of Force of Nature: The Unlikely Story of Wal-Mart’s Green Revolution. The unlikely hero is Jib...
May 18, 2011•1 hr 6 min
Charge It? Rob Bearman, Director, Global Alliances, Utilities and Energy, Better Place Mike DiNucci, VP of Strategic Accounts, Coulomb Technologies Jay Friedland, Legislative Director, Plug In America Jonathan Read, CEO, ECOtality Consumers are ready for electric vehicles. Entrepreneurs and policymakers just need to hustle to work out the kinks in the nationwide networks that will charge the cars, says this panel of experts assembled at Climate One. Automakers see a chance to free their customer...
May 16, 2011•1 hr 10 min
Pole Position Forrest Beanum, Vice President of Government Relations, Coda Automotive Oliver Kuttner, CEO, Edison2 Bill Reinert, National Manager, Toyota Michael Robinson, VP for Environment, Energy and Safety Policy, General Motors Dan Sperling, Member, California Air Resources Board; Professor, UC Davis Fifteen years have passed since a major automaker has attempted to market an electric vehicle. Within five years, rare will be the auto showroom that lacks one. But before EVs dominate the mark...
May 16, 2011•1 hr 10 min
Tim Flannery Professor of Science, Maquarie University; Chair, Copenhagen Climate Council; Author, Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet Greg Dalton, Vice President of Special Projects, The Commonwealth Club; Founder, Climate One - Moderator Tim Flannery doesn’t do pessimism. Flannery explains the source of his optimism, a major theme of his new book, Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet, in this Climate One conversation at the Hoover Theatre, in San Jose. It stems from what h...
May 09, 2011•1 hr 3 min
