Podcasts

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Hoodwinked in the Hothouse – Indigenous Resistance to Climate False Solutions

By MariaNovember 9, 2021Newest Podcasts

By all records fossil fuel burning has increased in spite of the quarter century long efforts of the United Nations conferences of parties, now in Glasgow with COP 26. That’s in part due to the power of Big Oil corporations – but also because of the promotion of – and subsidies to False Solutions.
One of the speakers on this program calls the Conferences of Parties literally a Festival of False Solutions. That includes: nuclear power, fracking and so-called natural gas, mega-dams and hydropower, hydrogen, bioenergy, waste incineration and land fill gas and more.
Most of these False Solutions have disproportionately affected indigenous and poor communities – but their sacrifices as well as their resistance have remained unknown or been [ . . . ]

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Protecting the Forests of the World – Professor William Moomaw and Stuart Scott

By MariaNovember 2, 2021Newest Podcasts

Prof. Moomaw wrote in 2021: Humanity puts out 11 billion tons of carbon each year – amazingly less than half ends up in the atmosphere. NASA satellite data and research show that a bit more than half of the remaining 6 billion tons of carbon are going into forests, plants, wetlands and soils. The other 40 – 45% is being absorbed by the oceans.
However the extraordinary capacity of forests to absorb carbon is being undermined by world-wide logging and clear-cutting – which ironically turns forests, that could be our best protection from climate disaster – into yet another powerful source of greenhouse gases.
William Moomaw is Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy at Tufts University. Stuart Scott was founder/executive producer [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 20.9MB)

Fire and Forest Ecology – Questions & Answers – Chad Hanson and Monica Bond

By MariaOctober 26, 2021Newest Podcasts

On June 5, 2021, John Horning, Executive Director of the WildEarth Guardians, moderated a webinar on the life affirming functions of fire in forests. Also discussed were the problems caused by thinning and post fire logging promoted by the forest service and even subsidized by congressional mandates.
All this while so many of us are waking up to the urgent need to preserve and protect forests – not just for their beauty and complexity – but also for their power to absorb and sequester carbon dioxide and protect us from climate collapse.
Dr. Monica Bond is a wildlife biologist and biodiversity advocate with The Wild Nature Institute.
Dr. Chad Hanson is cofounder of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute and author [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Fire and Forest Ecology in the American West – Chad Hanson and Monica Bond

By MariaOctober 19, 2021Newest Podcasts

A meeting of the WildEarth Guardians with the John Muir Project and the Wild Nature Institute
On June 5, 2021, the wildlife biologist Dr. Monica Bond and fire ecologist Dr. Chad Hanson were speaking with an international audience at a webinar hosted by the WildEarth Guardians. In a year of catastrophic fires, not just in the US, they discussed what to do – and maybe even more importantly what not to do – for these burned ecosystems to recover.
Monica Bond,Ph.D., is a wildlife biologist and biodiversity advocate with The Wild Nature Institute. They conduct scientific research on endangered wildlife.
Chad Hanson is cofounder of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. His Ph.D. is in ecology with a research focus on fire [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

The Executioners of the Corporate State – Chris Hedges interviews Steven Donziger

By MariaOctober 12, 2021Newest Podcasts

Since 1993 attorney Steven Donziger has battled the oil giant Chevron on behalf of indigenous communities in the Amazon Basin. Their land has been polluted by toxic waste from oil drilling. 16 billion gallons of poisonous waste water that contained copper, mercury, lead and other carcinogens were dumped into rivers, lakes and impoundment ponds.
Steven Donziger, in 2013, helped lead the legal effort that won the largest court judgment in history for human rights and environmental justice, a $9.5 billion verdict against Chevron.
Chevron, following the verdict, sold their assets in Ecuador and left the country. The corporation threatened the plaintiffs with “A lifetime of litigation” if they attempted to collect. According to internal memos Chevron launched a highly funded and sustained [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Smokescreen – Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate – Chad Hanson

By MariaOctober 5, 2021Newest Podcasts

Dr. Chad Hanson is the Director of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute. As Research Ecologist he is part of a growing movement of scientists and researchers who are calling into question many of the practices and policies of logging, not just the so-called fire suppression. Much of current research is presented in his 2021 book Smokescreen – Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate. And the key themes are listed in his talk.
Hanson had a Zoom meeting in September 2021 with the Dogwood Alliance, a forest protection nonprofit based in Asheville, North Carolina – and prior guest on TUC Radio.
Rita Frost of the Dogwood Alliance moderated the meeting. The one hour talk and conversation [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Joanna Macy: A Wiser, Braver World – Transition to a life sustaining culture

By MariaSeptember 27, 2021Newest Podcasts

A revolution in the magnitude and scope of the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago The Great Turning, Awakened Action Symposium. On the Summer Solstice of 2020 Joanna Macy, from her home in Berkeley, spoke at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Buddhist monastery had called for Awakened Action and invited Women Leaders to Speak to Race, Poverty, Climate, and the Covid Pandemic.
Joanna Macy is an eco-philosopher and a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. Now in her very early nineties she has for decades helped transform despair and apathy into constructive change. As teacher, writer of eight books and antinuclear activist she has created frameworks for personal and social change. Joanna Macy [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Welfare Ranching and Point Reyes National Seashore

By MariaSeptember 21, 2021Newest Podcasts

George Wuerthner’s historic exposé of the destruction of the American West by cattle grazing (Archive) – And the shocking decision by the National Park Service in September 2021 to continue and even expand beef and dairy cattle grazing in the popular Seashore – just north of San Francisco on the unceded land of the Coast Miwok.
Cattle grazing should have ended there in the late 1980s. The area had become a National Park by an act of Congress in 1962 and the existing ranches were bought out at market rate with taxpayer funds. The ranchers were given 25 years to find new land and vacate. Instead they expanded the herds, and used political clout in Senate and Congress to [ . . . ]

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Will Modern Civilization be the Death of Us? – Professor William Rees

By MariaSeptember 14, 2021Newest Podcasts

Does our modern techno-industrial society destroy the biophysical basis of our existence? Bill Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, and Professor Emeritus of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
He asks the question why humanity has not responded, in over 50 years, to warnings about rising greenhouse gases and heat, over exploitation of oceans, forests, soils and water; and species extinction.
Prof. Bill Rees also challenges the over-optimistic ”problem solvers” on the claim, in their version of the Green New Deal, that if we replace oil with solar we can continue living much as we do today – in an economy based on growth and consumption.
Bill Rees had been invited by the Institute on Religion in an Age [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Overshoot, the Energy Conundrum and Climate Change – Prof. Bill Rees

By MariaSeptember 7, 2021Newest Podcasts

Prof. Rees first defined “Ecological Footprint” and “Overshoot” My colleague Alex Smith, host of Radio Ecoshock, put out a provocative statement on his weekly radio program. He announced: Who can question the Green New Deal and holy solar power? Guest Megan Seibert and super-scientist Bill Rees just published a scathing report. They say it’s time to shrink or die.” end quote. I was intrigued by the provocation and downloaded the 19 page paper – and an inspiring talk by Professor Bill Rees and will present excerpts of both on this program.
William Rees is a bio-ecologist, ecological economist, former Director and Professor Emeritus of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Rees is perhaps best [ . . . ]

Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Yanis Varoufakis: Capitalism has become Techno-Feudalism

By MariaAugust 31, 2021Newest Podcasts

The former Greek Finance Minister in conversation with Dr Marc Lamont Hill on Al Jazeera, February, 2021 Techno-Feudalism is a term that’s in the news these days. It may mean control of the data by the few FAANG companies – that’s Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix; and Alphabet – formerly known as Google. Techno-Feudalism also applies to the dominance of finance and banking over state institutions – driving huge wealth inequalities.
Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. He is cofounder of the Democracy in Europe Movement DiEM25. That’s a pan-European political movement founded in 2016 by a group of Europeans, including philosophers and activists. They see [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Firestorm, How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future from Radio Ecoshock

By MariaAugust 24, 2021Newest Podcasts

Alex Smith interviewed Ed Struzik on the recent out of control firestorms and how wetlands can limit their spread This extraordinary conversation between Alex Smith and Ed Struzik was broadcast on August 18, 2021, on the weekly one-hour radio show Ecoshock.
Struzik is a science journalist and Fellow at Queens University, Canada. In his book FIRESTORM he visits scorched earth from Alaska to Maine, and introduces the scientists, firefighters, and resource managers making the case for a radically different approach to managing wildfire in the 21st century. Wildfires can no longer be treated as avoidable events because the risk and dangers are becoming too great and costly.
Alex Smith also asks about Struzik’s October 2021 book SWAMPLANDS and the struggle [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

Nuclear Weapons in Space and Ground Stations for War in Space

By MariaAugust 17, 2021Newest Podcasts

Radio based on films produced by Will Griffin for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space In May and June 2021 Will Griffin released two short films on the recent expansion of nuclear power into Space and on the secrecy surrounding the upgrade of a US radar installation on Norwegian soil.
These two short films are posted on the the website of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. That’s an international organization founded in 1992 with an unbroken record of education and activism on a rarely covered topic, the Weaponization of Space.
For the first film, published on May 6, 2021, Will Griffin writes in his summary: The Pentagon and multinational corporations are privatizing [ . . . ]

Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

The First Nuclear Chain Reaction – Enrico Fermi and Henry Moore (TWO of TWO) – ARCHIVE

By MariaAugust 10, 2021Newest Podcasts

Historian Iain Boal tells the story of The Beginning of the Mass Production of Nuclear Bombs The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi set off the first nuclear chain reaction in an underground tennis-court at the University of Chicago in 1942. Exactly 25 years after that experiment, with Fermi already dead of radiation induced leukemia, a statue by Henry Moore was unveiled on December 2, 1967, at that location, to commemorate the first self sustained nuclear chain reaction.
Boal describes the fascinating clash of ideas, from the early anti nuclear resistance by SDS students in the US and the British CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), to the visual impression of Moore’s statue that seems to depict a skull plus storm trooper helmet [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)

The First Nuclear Chain Reaction – Enrico Fermi and Henry Moore (ONE of TWO) – ARCHIVE

By MariaAugust 3, 2021Newest Podcasts

Historian Iain Boal tells the story of The Beginning of the Nuclear Age (ONE of TWO) The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi set off the first nuclear chain reaction in an underground tennis-court at the University of Chicago in December 1942. His experiment led directly to the building of the plutonium bomb that destroyed the city of Nagasaki.
There are competing claims as to the beginning of the nuclear age. Was it the day of Trinity, was it Hiroshima, or was it Fermi with his willingness to risk a nuclear explosion in the middle of a crowded city.
But more important than the date is the need to comprehend the fundamental change that the beginning of the nuclear age has brought about. [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 39.8MB)