According to the NOMINATE Index , the last time the US was this polarized was just before and during the Civil War. So, how did we get here? And what can the philosophy of public reason liberalism teach us about living together—even when we don’t agree on much? Dr. Kevin Vallier is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green University and author of Trust in a Polarized Age and Must Politics Be War? Restoring Trust in the Open Society . On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , Dr....
Apr 16, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Empires rise and fall. And while we understand these cycles conceptually, there’s a bizarre notion that we are somehow immune. That we can continue to evolve toward greater ease and material abundance generation after generation. That our potential for growth is somehow unlimited. But natural resources are finite. So, what happens when we run out? Dr. Jason Bradford is the Cofounder of Farmland LP and Cohost of Crazy Town , a podcast produced by the Post Carbon Institute that explores “climate c...
Apr 13, 2021•1 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 59
Few of us live at sea, so the ocean doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves in the climate conversation. But Kim McCoy contends that phytoplankton deserve just as much consideration as polar bears, and it’s time for us to understand how rising temperatures impact the water, the wind, the waves, and the weather. After all, we all live downstream of climate change. Kim is the oceanographer who updated Willard Bascom’s Waves and Beaches: The Powerful Dynamics of Sea and Coast , adding new insi...
Apr 06, 2021•44 min•Season 2Ep. 58
Regenerative agriculture is sometimes branded as a new idea. But the tradition of maintaining soil carbon and honoring the earth, of leaving the land better than we found it, has been part of indigenous traditions for thousands of years. So, what can we do to re-center the stories of Black and Native American growers and give credit where credit is due? Leah Penniman is the Co-Director and Farm Manager at Soul Fire Farm , an Afro-Indigenous-centered community farm committed to uprooting racism a...
Mar 30, 2021•34 min•Season 2Ep. 57
The Passover story is one of intense grief and loss as well as redemption and freedom. And while the Jews fled Egypt 3,000 years ago, many aspects of the story seem particularly relevant in a world plagued by extreme climate events and COVID-19. So, how might the events of Passover inform the way we think about climate change? Can we customize our Passover observances in a way that considers our responsibility to solve the climate crisis? Sarah Tuneberg is the CEO of Geospiza , a software compan...
Mar 23, 2021•59 min•Season 2Ep. 56
There is a growing movement among Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, cultural, and political identities. And restoring indigenous food practices is central to this work. The new documentary Gather follows several indigenous leaders as they work toward food sovereignty, demonstrating the hope and healing power of traditional food. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , three of the people featured in the film join Ross to discuss how they got involved in Gather and share their wo...
Mar 16, 2021•2 hr 32 min•Season 2Ep. 55
Extreme weather can cause desperate situations. So, what can survival experts teach us about navigating wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and severe winter storms? Can we prepare for these natural events without turning into full-fledged preppers or giving into the assumption of doom? How do we adapt to a changing climate? Les Stroud is a filmmaker, musician, and author best known for Survivorman , the pioneering documentary series that launched Survival Television as a genre. He is also the auth...
Mar 09, 2021•36 min•Season 2Ep. 54
A temperature rise of three or four degrees doesn’t seem like a big deal… Until you go back a few million years and start exploring what the world looked like the last time the Earth was that hot and CO2 levels were even higher than they are now. Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist. His work has appeared in The New York Times , WIRED and The Guardian , among many other national publications. He is also the author of The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and...
Mar 05, 2021•41 min
Paul Kingsnorth is tired of talking about the scope of the climate crisis. In his view, we can’t fix climate change. But we can uncover the spiritual root of the problem and explore how we might live through it. Paul is the founder of The Dark Mountain Project and a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His latest release, the novel Alexandria , serves as the capstone of the acclaimed Buckmaster Trilogy . On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , Paul joins Ross to discuss the ...
Mar 02, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Season 2Ep. 53
In the new community economy, many content creators have moved beyond simply sharing ideas with an audience. For many the goal is to facilitate connection among their followers and foster a sense of belonging. So, how can businesses and organizations in the climate space leverage community to shape the low-carbon future we need? Evan Hynes is a Cofounder at Climatebase , a platform that makes it easy to discover jobs, people, and organizations working to solve the climate crisis. On this bonus e...
Feb 26, 2021•29 min
When artist Annalee Levin learned about carbon capture on the Reversing Climate Change podcast, the idea captured her imagination. Knowing that the technology exists to capture and store CO2 in concrete, for example, Annalee set out to find a way to make art out of materials containing captured carbon. Today, Annalee is the textile, hand embroidery, and sculpture artist behind Captured Carbon Studio , a space for exploring captured carbon as an art medium and avenue for educating the public abou...
Feb 23, 2021•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 52
12 years ago, Nori cofounder and CEO Paul Gambill was a College Republican. And while he wasn’t a climate denier, he didn’t think that humanity’s 1% contribution to global CO2 emissions was a big deal. And then he read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy and began to understand the outsized impact of our actions. Not only did the science fiction novels change Paul’s perspective on climate change, they inspired him to dedicate his life’s work to making it better. American novelist Kim Stanley Rob...
Feb 16, 2021•2 hr 37 min•Season 2Ep. 51
There is a new pattern emerging in humanity’s long, complicated relationship with nature. Namely, we’re at a point where the problems we’ve caused by intervening in our environment require interventions of their own. But in a world where we can’t fully anticipate the impact of our actions, should we be optimistic about using new technology to solve crises created by the old? Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction . Her ...
Feb 09, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 50
Making art about climate is useful in that it reaches a part of the brain that science does not. And climate fiction as a genre gives us a way to get the climate conversation started. Better yet, cli-fi that focuses on solutions might actually help us find a way forward. Tory Stephens is the New England Network Weaver at Fix , the Grist Solutions Lab. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , Tory joins Ross and cohost Jess Miles to discuss the launch of his team’s new climate fiction contes...
Feb 05, 2021•21 min
In modern society, we’re conditioned to believe that acquiring more stuff makes our lives better. But what if getting back to basics leads to a richer life? What if consuming less and connecting with nature more opens us up to what really matters? Markus Torgeby is the author of Under the Open Skies: Finding Peace and Health in Nature . On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Markus joins Ross to explain how he came to live alone in the forest of Northern Sweden and describe how stripping l...
Feb 02, 2021•47 min•Season 2Ep. 49
Did you know that Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citi are among the biggest funders of fossil fuel projects in the world? Would you rather leverage your money to fight climate change? What if you could move your money to an entity that builds its lending portfolio around things like clean energy, regenerative agriculture, and direct air capture? Ravi Mikkelsen is the Cofounder of ATMOS Financial , a digital banking solution dedicated to funding a rapid transition to the clean economy. O...
Feb 01, 2021•49 min
The climate conversation is riddled with ideological battles. There are those who think climate change is the most pressing issue of our time pitted against those who don’t think it’s a big deal (if it’s even real). There are fights over ecological versus industrial forms of carbon removal. And there are those who believe that climate change can be reversed, while others have little hope that humanity will stick the landing. So, how do we move past these absolutist views and inspire action to so...
Jan 26, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 48
What does it mean to be a witnessing professional in the climate crisis? What responsibility do scientists, doctors, journalists, lawyers, military officers and public health officials have to speak out and share their message of truth with the world? How does the religious concept of bearing witness translate to this secular context? And what can you and I do to become constructive witnesses for climate change? Dr. Evan Kuehn is an Assistant Professor of Informational Literacy at North Park Uni...
Jan 19, 2021•57 min•Season 2Ep. 47
How do you restore an entire ecosystem at scale? Eroded desertified landscapes: can they be healed? Journalist, filmmaker, and environmental educator John D. Liu is the Ecosystem Ambassador for the Commonland Foundation and Founder of the Ecosystem Restoration Camps Movement . He is best-known for his documentaries on the restoration of the Loess Plateau, like Hope in a Changing Climate and Green Gold . On this episode of Reversing Climate Change , John joins Ross to explain how human activity c...
Jan 12, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 46
Much of agriculture depends upon synthetic fertilizer. But the production of that fertilizer is responsible for 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why innovators in the emerging field of synthetic biology are attempting to disrupt the status quo in agriculture and engineer new ways for growers to achieve the same yields with less fertilizer—and less environmental impact. Mike Miille is the CEO of Joyn Bio , a biotech company that is using synthetic biology to try to make agriculture more sus...
Jan 05, 2021•41 min•Season 2Ep. 45
We have destroyed or severely disrupted many of the perennial ecosystems that were here in favor of annual crops. Crops that require the use of herbicide and mulch year after year until, eventually, the soil is depleted and we move on. So, how can we use the design principles of permaculture to restore the ecology of the planet, provide ourselves with all the food, fuels and fibers we need, and make money while we’re at it? And at scale no less! Agroforestry farmer and permaculturist Mark Shepar...
Dec 22, 2020•57 min•Season 2Ep. 44
There are only 1.5M Atlantic salmon left in the world. And despite putting an end to commercial fishing, their numbers continue to dwindle. As a keystone species, the implications of their loss go far beyond not being able to order salmon for dinner. So, why are Atlantic salmon disappearing at such an alarming rate? What does their loss mean for other species? And how does it impact the rivers where they live? Mark Kurlansky is a New York Times bestselling and James A. Beard award-winning author...
Dec 15, 2020•46 min•Season 2Ep. 43
We have explored, at length, the basket of biophysical stressors climate change could produce. And we’ve looked at how floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, ocean acidification, coral degradation (and the list goes on and on) might impact our food security and lead to the displacement of a lot of people. But what does the climate crisis mean for national security? How does the intelligence community think about climate change? Dr. Rod Schoonover is a member of The Center for Climate & Securit...
Dec 08, 2020•58 min•Season 2Ep. 42
The vast majority of environmental nonfiction follows a predictable pattern: The writer goes out in nature and then tells us why it’s important to preserve the thing they experienced. But what if we could reach more people and maybe even change their point of view with a more experimental, more whimsical approach? Jess Miles is a recent graduate of Chatham University and author of the MFA thesis ‘Midnight Sun,’ a collection of essays about her time on the Arctic island of Svalbard. On this episo...
Dec 04, 2020•48 min
For years now, we have debated the potential moral hazard of carbon removal, the fear being that we will abandon emissions reductions for the quick fix of carbon capture. But the science is clear: we simply can’t achieve our climate goals with mitigation alone. So, how do we design policy that works toward net zero using a binding emissions reduction pathway AND a strategy for scaling up carbon removal? Christoph Beuttler is the CDR Manager at Climeworks , the global leader in direct air capture...
Dec 01, 2020•51 min•Season 2Ep. 41
Carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. In fact, methane emissions are responsible for 16% of the warming we experience today. And because methane is more potent than CO2, we can make a big impact in a short period of time by addressing the concentrated, continuous methane seeps that exist around the world. Olya Irzak is the Founder and CEO of Frost Methane , a company working to combat climate change through the deployment of remote methane destruction ...
Nov 24, 2020•42 min•Season 2Ep. 40
The feature documentary 2040 poses this question: What would the world look like in 2040 if we embraced the best climate solutions already available to us? One such solution involves restoring ocean ecosystems through marine permaculture, a strategy that leverages kelp forests to drawdown CO2. Dr. Brian von Herzen serves as the Executive Director of the Climate Foundation , the organization using marine permaculture to regenerate life in seas and soils with the goal of reversing climate change i...
Nov 20, 2020•28 min
Solving the climate crisis is challenging because it requires both dramatic behavioral change and a great deal of capital. And yet, when faced with a global health crisis, governments were willing to enact multitrillion-dollar aid packages and people radically shifted their behavior in a matter of weeks. So, what if we mobilized against climate change similarly to the way we responded to the coronavirus? Sir David King is the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government of the United Kingdo...
Nov 17, 2020•28 min•Season 2Ep. 39
The scale of the climate crisis requires that companies change the way they operate. Yes, it would be easier to simply purchase carbon offsets and continue to do business as usual. But if we are going to succeed in reversing climate change, companies must take the next step and transform their processes from cradle to gate (or even grave if they can!) So, how does a business get started on the path to sustainability? Erin Meezan is the Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Interface...
Nov 10, 2020•52 min•Season 2Ep. 38
People resist reading about climate change because it seems less immediate than other pressing issues. Add to that the fact that the climate crisis doesn’t lend itself to narrative. So, then, how do you tell an ‘untellable story’ in a way that draws readers in and effectively reorients the way they see the world? Henry Finder and David Remnick are the coeditors of The Fragile Earth: Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change . On this episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast, Henry and...
Nov 03, 2020•36 min•Season 2Ep. 37
