Millions of Americans see themselves as "conflicted omnivores," worrying about the ethical and environmental implications of their choice to eat animals. Yet their attempts to justify their choices only obscure the truth of the matter. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. John Sabonmatsu, Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.  His recently published book, The Omnivore’s Deception, provides a deeply observed philosophical meditation on the nature of our relationship with animals.  Sabonmatsu argues that killing and eating animals is unethical, regardless of whether they are "free range" or factory farmed. The problem with raising and killing animals for food isn't just that it's "bad for the environment,” but the wrong way to live a human life.

Even before the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb in 1968, we heard warnings that humanity would be doomed to a future of famine, hunger and starvation unless industrial agriculture were unleashed to grow food as efficiently as possible in every nook and cranny of the world’s arable lands to feed the “ten billion.” Those warnings continue today. But is it correct? In “The Enduring Fantasy of ‘Feeding the World’,” a recent article in the journal Spectre, four members of the Agroecology Research-Action Collective challenge those who make this claim.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation about feeding the world with Dr. Adam Calo, Assistant Professor in the Geography, Planning and Environment group at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Dr. Maywa Montenegro, Associate Professor of Agroecology and Critical Technology Studies in the UCSC Environmental Studies Department.

Tom Lehrer, the musical satirist par excellence of the 1950s and 1960s, died this past July at age 97.  Many listeners and their progeny grew up listening to and singing his compelling compositions: easy to remember, easy to sing and easy to finish.  Who could forget “The Vatican Rag” or “The Elements?”

What some might not know is that, from 1972 to 2001, in flight from East Coast winters, Tom also taught math and theater at UC Santa Cruz, as a lecturer in American Studies.  Along the way, he made many friends and inspired countless students. This tribute includes music, interviews with friends and colleagues and biographical information.

If you would like to know all about Tom and his music, you can find resources and links in this folder: https://tinyurl.com/tdh7n8d9

( Photo by Anthony Pidgeon/Redferns )

In October 2020, Governor Newsom issued Executive Order N-82-20 which establishes a state goal of conserving 30% of California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030 – known as 30x30. The 30x30 goal is intended to help accelerate conservation of our lands and coastal waters through voluntary, collaborative action with partners across the state. Five years later, how well has 30X30 met its goals? Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation about 30X30 with Meghan Hertel, Deputy Secretary for Biodiversity and Habitat at the California Natural Resources Agency, who recently drafted and published the 2025 annual progress report on 30x30, in coordination with the Governor’s Office.

What’s up with climate change and climate law?  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it is going to cancel the “endangerment finding” of 2009 that provided the legal basis for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. In July, the Department of Energy released “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” which downplayed the research, the impacts and the importance of climate change.  The Trump Administration has pretty much declared that is it going to eliminate anything that suggests climate change is a threat.  And fossil fuel companies have been unleashed to produce anywhere the is even a hint of fossil carbon.  At the same time, three international courts—the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea—have issued opinions that international climate law requires countries to act now to reduce emissions.  What does the law say?  What is law’s impact?

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Professor Alice Kaswan of the University of San Francisco School of Law. Professor Kaswan’s scholarly work focuses on climate change with a particular emphasis on federalism and on environmental justice. She has written extensively about the role of state and local governments in climate change adaptation and mitigation policy.  In addition, she has addressed the environmental justice dimensions of domestic climate change policy.  Feeling warm?  Tune in!

Photo Copyright: Photographs©2015 Barbara Ries. All rights reserved.

Who knew there was a desert in the San Joaquin Valley inhabited by the “valley dragon,” aka, the “blunt-nosed leopard lizard.”  The lizards have disappeared from 85% of their historical range as a result of  agriculture, rural and urban development and pesticides, and are now threatened in what remains of the San Joaquin Desert.  The Fresno Chaffee Zoo is raising leopard lizards and releasing them back into the wild, equipped with radio telemetry backpacks.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz on Sunday, August 31st for a conversation about the desert and the lizards, with guests Dr. Rory Telemeco, Research Director at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, and Dr. Michael Westphal, from the Bureau of Land Management.

The world is awash in plastic. According to a study published in 2020, total production of plastics since 1950 is now over 10 billion tons, with more than half of that simply discarded.  And the production of plastics will only increase in the future.  There is a lot of oil and natural gas in the world and, if and when we wean ourselves from fossil fuels, oil and chemical companies will be looking for other places to use their stocks.

So far, only about one billion tons of plastic have been recycled—that is, put into the recycling chain.  What exactly has happened to that material is less clear.  Different types of plastic require different post-consumer processing to turn them back into pellets of raw material.  Most factories are set up to use only particular types of plastic and it is still cheaper to buy virgin pellets than recycled ones.  Are compostable plastics the solution?  What is a compostable plastic?  What is it made from?  How is it broken down?  Are there plastics that will simply decompose into constituent molecules by weathering and micro-organisms?  Questions, questions.  Are there answers?

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a chemistry and economics lesson from Dr. Susannah Scott, Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and occupant of the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Chair in Sustainable Catalytic Processing at the University of California Santa Barbara. Here I quote from a UCSB website: "Her research interests include the design of heterogeneous catalysts with well-defined active sites for the efficient conversion of conventional and new feedstocks, as well as environmental catalysts to promote air and water quality."

As the recent deadly floods in Central Texas remind us, Nature bats last.  There seem to be a growing number of severe weather-related disasters that kill many people and lay waste to towns and communities.  But what happens after the floods, as communities make plans to repair the damages?  Why does rebuilding often become the trigger of intense and extended political and social struggle, sometimes lasting many years?  Dr. Ken Conca, Emeritus Professor of Environment, Development and Health at American University in Washington, DC, decided to follow the planning process in a flood-prone town in which he lived. He has just published After the Floods--The Search for Resilience in Ellicott City (Oxford University Press) a study that offers a blow-by-blow account of these struggles and elucidates his explanation for why the arise and persist, long after the water has vanished.

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Conca about his book and his broader conclusions about community planning for inclement weather and climate change, especially “after the floods.”

The United States has indicated that it will begin to explore commercial mining of mineral nodules on the international seabed, in violation of the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea and the International Seabed Authority. These nodules contain a variety of minerals used in cell phones, electric cars and other high-tech devices and could reduce U.S. reliance on questionable sources of rare earth and other metals. Opponents counter that the ecological damage imposed by such mining would far outweigh any benefits.

But there is another argument for letting sleeping nodules lie: deep-sea mining is a multi-billion-dollar solution to problems that do not exist.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a discussion with Professors D.G. Webster of Dartmouth College and Susan Park, from the University of Sydney.  They, along with several colleagues, recently published “The false promise of deep-sea mining,” a critique of the proposal focused on terrestrial mineral availability, limited social benefits and supply chain economics.

Do you remember the Northern Spotted Owl, icon of the old-growth Redwood Wars of the 1990s?  Well, the Northern Spotted Owl is, once again, under threat.  This time, however, the threat comes from another species of owl, the Barred Owl, a larger and more aggressive bird native to the United States, whose range has been expanding westward as a result of development and climate change.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife has devised a plan to protect the Northern Spotted Owl: shoot Barred Owls.  Scientists, conservationists and the public are torn: should humans intervene to prevent animal extinctions by competitors and invasive species if they threaten the survival of endemic ones, or should we let nature take its course?  And since humans have intervened in nature for thousands of years, everyday and everywhere, what is the right thing to do?  How can we decide?

Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a rerun of a conversation with Hugh Warwick, spokesperson for the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, who has been looking into this dilemma around the world. He has just published Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation.  Warwick is a frequent speaker on wildlife conservation in public talks and on British radio and TV. He also runs courses on hedgehog conservation.

Warwick with hedgehog photo © Zoe Broughton

Carbon is a boon and a bane.  It is at the core of all life on Earth, past and present.  In the atmosphere, carbon is what keeps the Earth’s temperature at tolerable levels.  Yet, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising, raising global temperatures and disrupting climate and weather.  California’s cap and trade system is one approach to controlling carbon emissions.  But what is it? How does it work?  And are there other ways to achieve the same objectives?  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation about cap and trade and how the resources it generates could be put to better use, with Dr. Barbara Haya, director of UC Berkeley’s Carbon Trading Project, and Stephen Lezak, a Visiting Fellow at BCTP.

Everyone is angry with California’s private utilities.  Rates keep rising, the utilities lack accountability and they are running roughshod over small-scale renewable energy.  Why make your customers so mad? Is that anger justified? And what are the utilities planning for the future?  Join SN! host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Loretta Lynch. Lynch was President of the California Public Utilities Commission from 2000 through 2002 and continued as a CPUC Commissioner until January 2005.  Since then, she has been a strident advocate for the protection of ratepayers and against corruption in the utility industry, a role in which she continues today.

Gray wolves were once ubiquitous across California but the state’s last surviving individual was killed in 1924.  In 2011, the first documented wolf since 1924 was observed crossing into California from Oregon.  Today, there are at least 7 gray wolf packs in California with some 50 individuals.  That’s not so many but 3 counties are worried about wolf attacks on livestock and people and are asking for permission from the state to allow more aggressive hazing, including shooting wolves with beanbags and rubber bullets.  Is this really necessary?  To learn more about gray wolves in California, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Amaroq Weiss, Senior Wolf Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity

Food insecurity and food apartheid are a common challenge in many low-income and minority neighborhoods across the United States.  Big supermarket companies avoid those areas because stores are unprofitable and small stores find that they make the most money on junk foods, sodas and liquor.  Saba Grocers is an Oakland-based organization, founded in 2019, that works with those small stores to enable them to sell fresh produce sourced from minority farmers across the region.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Lina Ghanem, director and co-founder of the Saba Grocers Initiative in Oakland.

Here is another podcast of interest: Staff of Life is a locally-owned grocery store competing for consumer dollars in a market dominated by corporate giants.  And so we ask:

 How does a local grocery store survive in a marketplace of corporate giants? 

The Food Chain Radio Show - Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Gary Bascou, Co-Founder of Staff of Life Natural Foods for a conversation about how a locally-owned grocery store can survive 56 years to be among the last to stand in a market dominated by corporate grocery giants. 

 Topics include the culture that gave rise to “natural” and “organic” food markets; how those foods gave rise to Staff of Life Natural Foods Market; and how Staff of Life survives 56 years of competition with corporate food giants. 

Show Recording:  Staff of Life: Local Grocer V. Corporate Giants 

Radio:  www.santacruzvoice.com 

Host:  www.metrofarm.com  

Sponsor:  TimeShare Media 

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Many listeners are probably familiar with the tags found in hotel bathrooms that read: “Save Our Planet,” followed by instructions about reusing and replacing towels, and concluding “Thank you for helping us converse the Earth’s vital resources.”  Reusing towels might help conserve the hotel’s financial resources but does that make any difference for the Planet?  Such “lifestyle environmentalism” is widespread, providing a sense of doing something in a world in which collective action is so difficult.  In two weeks, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Michael Maniates, for a conversation about his forthcoming book, The Living-Green Myth: The Promise and Limits of Lifestyle Environmentalism, which will be published in August.  Maniates dismisses the notion that individual actions can make a significant impact on the state of the planet.  But if not that, what are we to do?

Tariffs are in the air and on the news. Tariffs are up and down.  Tariffs are in and out. Who knows where they might go and what they might do. But what do tariffs mean for sustainability and the environment?  Will they help or hurt?  Do they matter either way?  Tune into Sustainability Now! to hear Christine Barrington and Ronnie Lipschutz discuss tariffs and what they might mean for the environment and the planet. Lipschutz is neither an economist or an expert on the design or history of tariffs but has had many opportunities to study and write about taxes and the environment.  He’s promised to keep economic jargon to the minimum and intelligibility to the maximum.

Big agriculture is Big!  And it appears to be getting Bigger, as the leading companies in four critical sectors—equipment, seeds, fertilizers and chemicals—consolidate in order to dominate their markets and the farmers who buy their products.  Join Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Jennifer Clapp, who has just published Titans of Industrial Agriculture—How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters.  Clapp is Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

UCSC’s Agroecology Farm is known around the world for innovation, training and inspiration.  But before there was a Farm, there was a Garden: the Alan Chadwick Garden, launched in 1967 on a steep, rocky clay hill side. It is still there today, although very few people know of its existence.  Join host Ronnie Lipschutz in a conversation with Orin Martin, who has managed the Chadwick Garden since 1977 and where he is widely admired for his skills as a master orchardist, horticulturalist, and teacher.  Tune in to hear about Orin’s role at the Chadwick Garden, as well as its origins and history since the 1970s.  You’ll be well-prepared to visit it when UCSC reopens.

You can read Orin's oral history for the UCSC library here.  A website dedicated to Alan Chadwick is here.  And oral histories of organic and sustainable farming on California's Central Coast are available here.

Previous broadcasts of Sustainability Now! are archived at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.

Episode #36, Sunday, January 10th: Hear Jeffrey Downing, Professor of Art at San Francisco State University and Artist-in-Residence at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art talk about how his work connects culture and nature. Downing was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago for his environmental sculpture in Richardson Bay, designed to mark today’s king tides, which will be swamped by rising sea levels in the future.

According to a website describing his work: “Jeff Downing’s sculpture is informed by the humor and pop sensibility of the California artist Robert Arneson; by the stripped-down economy of Alberto Giacometti’s figures; and by the spontaneity and energy characteristic of the work of Pablo Picasso. Downing’s work with dog imagery depends on chance discovery of form but seeks to invoke feelings concerning the human condition and our varied relationship with the natural world. In Jeff Downing’s world view, studying the dog – with all of its expressiveness, intelligence and sensitivity - leads us to a better understanding of the connection between culture and nature.”

You can hear previous broadcasts of Sustainability Now! at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.  Check out Marisha Farnsworth, an Oakland-based environmental artist, who appeared on the show on July 27, 2020.

Radio Show, #29, October 4, 2020. Host Ronnie Lipschutz and guest Dina Gilio-Whitaker talk about indigenous environmental justice, environmental philosophy and the restoration of balance between humans and nature. Gilio-Whitaker is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes in the Pacific Northwest, a lecturer in American Indian Studies at California State University, San Marcos and Policy Director and Researcher at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She is author of As long as grass grows: The indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock (Beacon Press, 2019) and co-author, with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, of "All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans (Beacon Press, 2016). Professor Whitaker has just received a journalism award from the Native American Journalist Association for an editorial she published in High Country News, on indigenizing the Green New Deal.