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Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Ronnie Lipschutz
Are you concerned about the Earth's future? Are you interested in what is being done in Northern California and the world to address environmental issues? Do you want to act? Then tune in every other Sunday to "Sustainability Now!" on KSQD.org to hear interviews with scientists, scholars, activists and officials involved in the pursuit of sustainability. Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, California
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- 1 weeks ago51 min
The Spark Community Utility: A City-Led Path to Clean, Resilient, Affordable Energy, with Bob Krause
Electricity prices in California are on the rise and they are forecast to go much, much higher in the future. Climate change is wreaking havoc across the world even as we are pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than ever before. And electric utilities want more and more control over the energy they buy or produce and sell to you. Finally, the Trump Administration is doing its best to undermine the renewable energy that could address both issues.What if there were a cost-effective way to address all three issues and giving communities more control over their economies and their future? Well, there is: community energy! Renewable energy systems designed to be locally owned and operated, with electricity locally distributed and consumed, and cheaper and more resilient than anything that private utilities could provide. But the State of California and its investor-owned utilities have done everything they can to make it impossible to build community systems that they don’t control. Is there a way around these obstacles?Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Bob Krause, energy policy strategist and principal of NeoLogic Systems in Berkeley, California. For the past five years, Bob has been working to develop and disseminate something he calls “Spark Community Utilities,” which develop and deploy local electrical utilities that can operate, legally, in parallel to and independent of the private utilities. We are going to talk about the local energy conundrum in California, how it got to be this way, and how Spark could spark a revolution in how and where you get your electricity.
- 3 weeks ago53 min
Here Comes El Niño! with Dr. Daniel Swain, UCANR and NCAR
Summer is over and the rainy season looms ahead. We are being promised a wild, wet and wooly winter, with a “Super” El Niño. Temperatures in the tropical Pacific are going up leaving marine mammals to starve and die. There have been few hurricanes in the Atlantic this year while, with two months left in the Pacific hurricane season, we are getting toward the end of the alphabet. Can atmospheric rivers, flooding and historic tides be far behind.Hear a rerun of an interview about California weather and climate with Dr. Daniel Swain, a scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources division and research fellow at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Swain “engages extensively with journalists and other media partners, serving as a climate and weather science liaison to print, television, radio, and web-based outlets to facilitate accessible and accurate discourse surrounding extreme weather, climate change, and associated natural hazards.”Watch Swain's El Niño "Weather and Climate Office Hour" (May 13). Read his "Weather West" blog.
- Sep 28, 202652 min
Fire and Ice on the Roof of the World, with Jonathan Mingle, Independent journalist and science writer
We’ve all heard about the terrible Himalayan flash flood that traveled nearly 100 km down the Lende Kholā and Trishuli̇̄ Kholā rivers on the Nepal-Chinese border, devastating towns and villages along the way, killing at least 1,250 people and leaving more than 5,000 missing in the two countries. The causes remain under investigation, but climate change appears to have played a major role in the disaster. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Jonathan Mingle, an independent journalist and author whose reporting and writing is focused on the science and politics of climate change, energy, health, and technology. In 2015, he published Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World, in which he reported about the shrinking glaciers across the Himalayas and California, the role of black carbon in that shrinkage and the impacts on the people and nature who live there. More recently, he published an essay, Mountains are Coming Undone," in The New York Times (August 29, 2026).For a detailed analysis of the disaster, see: "Rapid warming in the Himalaya exacerbates geohazard cascades beyond adaptation limits," (WWA scientific report No. 92) World Weather Attribution. DOI: 10.25560/136420.
- Sep 14, 202650 min
Rancho Coyote Viejo--A Pilot Land Access Project for Farmers, with Josefina Lara Chavez, Executive Director of RegenerationLA
Local food systems are of great importance to the Monterey Bay Region and, indeed, to California, and there is a growing number of small farms across the state supplying these systems. Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Josefina Lara Chavez, Executive Director of RegenerationLA, the Latine Alliance in Agroecology and the Food System, which has just launched Rancho Coyote Viejo in south San Benito County. The Rancho is a 25-acre pilot land access farm for beginning farmers practicing regenerative and organic agriculture, along with a demonstration farm to support RegenerationLA’s educational and technical assistance activities. The farm is an experimental collaboration with Paicines Ranch, south of Hollister, California, which owns the property. Regeneration LA seeks to strengthens networks of Latine farmers, food workers, and agricultural professionals through education and capacity building to create a robust food and farming system.
- Aug 31, 202654 min
Speculations on Conjunctural Futures: What Might We Expect, What Must We Do? With Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future
There are lots of dystopian futures floating around in the air and on the air. Imagining the future is never really about the future; it’s more like commentary about the present. “Conjunctural futures” extrapolate from the present: they are not-so-distant, generational futures that could or might be. What might those conjunctural futures look like? Can we imagine a positive one? And what must we do to get there? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson, author, visionary and “conjunctural futurist,” for a conversation about his work, his philosophy and his speculations on the conjunctural future. Robinson is best known for his 2020 book, The Ministry for the Future. Robinson has written more than 20 books, many of them science fiction and others not. He has received many honors both for his writing and his struggle on behalf of nature. His most recent book is The High Sierra: A Love Story.
- Aug 17, 202654 min
Plutonium Pit Production--The Risks and Costs of US Plans to Build New Nuclear Weapons, with Dr. Dylan K. Spaulding of the Union of Concerned Scientists
Nuclear weapons have been with us for 80 years. There are fewer today than was the case at the height of the Cold War, but there are more countries with nukes than ever before. Some heads of state have been, of late, threatening to use them. If you’ve seen Kathryn Bigelow’s recent film, “House of Dynamite,” you’ll know that human psychology is the linchpin on which the entire system of nuclear deterrence rests: would the President (or Premier or whatever) exchange their capitals for others? Trade Washington, DC for Moscow or Beijing?There is reason to be concerned about this question: The United States is planning a $1.7 trillion overhaul of its entire nuclear arsenal, designing new warheads and investing in new bombers, missiles, and submarines to carry them, all in the name of “modernization.” It’s not that the current generations of platforms and warheads won’t work; it’s more that Admirals, Generals and Presidents don’t trust devices put into operation when they were very young and that there is a lot of money and prestige in having the latest generation of gadgets and lording that over the competing services. Oh, and new weapons are “manlier” than the old ones.Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Dylan K. Spaulding a senior scientist in the Global Security Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists. His work focuses on technical issues related to nuclear stockpile stewardship and policies that can reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. He recently authored a UCS report entitled “Plutonium Pit Production--The Risks and Costs of US Plans to Build New Nuclear Weapons.” Its focus is on the stuff that makes warheads go “boom” but along the way, Spaulding covers a lot of other ground and the report is a good primer on nuclear weapons.
- Aug 3, 202654 min
Trump’s War on California’s Environment, with Jason Rylander and Hollin Kretzmann from the Center for Biological Diversity
The Trump Administration has declared war on California and is hell-bent on eliminating any and all of the state’s environmental protections. As part of its “drill baby, drill” strategy, it is moving to open the California Coast to oil drilling and to increase exploration and extraction on BLM lands across the state. And not wanting to stay out of the action, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the makers of the herbicide Roundup do not have to warn users of cancer risks associated with its use. But wait, there’s more! The bad news just keeps on coming! Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for conversations on these issues with Jason Rylander and Hollin Kretzmann from the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity.
- Jul 20, 202655 min
The Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network With Dylan Skybrook, Network Manager
The Santa Cruz Mountains cover more than 1,000 square miles of the Central California Coast, running from just south of San Francisco all the way down to the Salinas Valley. The region has been actively stewarded for thousands of years by indigenous people and is a place of significant cultural, biological, and environmental diversity which supports many native plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation about the mountains and the network with Dylan Skybrook, Manager of the Santa Cruz Mountains Stewardship Network, a collaboration of twenty-six organizations engaged in land stewardship in the Santa Cruz Mountains, whose mission is to help cultivate a resilient, vibrant region where human and natural systems can thrive for generations to come.
About Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org
Are you concerned about the Earth's future? Are you interested in what is being done in Northern California and the world to address environmental issues? Do you want to act? Then tune in every other Sunday to "Sustainability Now!" on KSQD.org to hear interviews with scientists, scholars, activists and officials involved in the pursuit of sustainability. Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, California
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