This is part two of our series on biochar. Today we’re going to explore the biochar industry with Kathleen Draper. She is the chair of the International Biochar Initiative, the director of the Ithaka Institute for Carbon Intelligence and she’s the owner of Finger Lakes Biochar. She’s also co-authored three books on the subject. If you would like to support the show please click here. Music by Audio Snack Sound design by Keaton Butler Please share the show with a friend. Support the show

As we all know, climate change is happening. It’s no longer some distant future doomsday that we can prevent, it's here. However, there are a LOT of things we can do to minimize the effects and possibly undo some of the damage. One of those things is called biochar. Is that a pokemon? Is it a cartoon supervillain? Actually, no. Biochar is similar to charcoal but it’s not used as a fuel. It is produced by heating biomass with very little oxygen. By restricting the oxygen you prevent it f...

Adam Edelen is the founder of Edelen Renewables. He’s working to bring jobs and investment to coal country by building massive solar farms on reclaimed strip mines, and he’s working with coal companies and renewable energy developers to do it. We had a great conversation with him and he gave me a tour of his first coal-to-solar project in Martin County, Kentucky. This is an incredibly exciting development for Appalachia and a fantastic way to put reclaimed mines, out of work miners, and aband...

Our guest today is Natascha Glanzer-Fuerst an Austrian zero-waste advocate and feminist who was a crew member with eXXpedition, an organization that leads all-female scientific voyages around the world dedicated to exploring the impact of plastic and toxic pollution in our oceans and working to solve the problem. You might have noticed the odd spelling of eXXpedition. The XX stands for the female double X chromosomes. Hundreds of women from diverse backgrounds and professions have saile...

John Verdieck is the Director of International Climate Policy at The Nature Conservancy. Prior to joining The Nature Conservancy, John worked in the US State Department where he was a lead negotiator on the Paris Climate Accord. In the interview John shares what it was like to be in Paris in 2015 as the agreement was finally coming together after years of hard work, the excitement and implications for Biden’s pledge to rejoin the agreement and the ways that The Nature Conservancy is working t...

Our guest today is Caitlin Bullock, EV Program Coordinator for Austin Energy. The city of Austin owns and operates Austin Energy, which means that dividends go to support city services that benefit Austinites instead of investors. It also means that Austin Energy can prioritize energy efficiency and green energy programs. We talked to Caitlin about Austin Energy’s efforts to promote EV ownership and build Austin’s charger infrastructure. Links Episode web pagePluginAustin.comAustin Energy’s E...

Some major oil companies have recently unveiled plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reinvent themselves in the face of climate change. Exxon has not announced any plan to deal with climate change but this week Bloomberg News reported on a leaked copy of Exxon’s 2018 investment plan and it calls for 17% more greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. We’ll take a look at Exxon’s dramatic plummet over the last few years and their big gamble on business as usual, come hell or high water (literal...

Dominic Frongillo is the co-founder & executive director of Elected Officials to Protect America or EOPA. EOPA is nonpartisan, which is very unusual for a political network. It’s members are state and local elected officials from all over the U.S. who are committed to fighting the climate crisis and protecting America’s communities, public health and environment. When we think of politicians we often think that they are working for their big corporate donors, who are often fossil fuel com...

Margaret Klein Salamon, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who founded The Climate Mobilization, a volunteer-powered organization that is working to initiate a WWII-scale mobilization to rapidly transform our economy to protect humanity and the living world. In that role, she has helped catalyze a burgeoning worldwide movement calling for governments at all levels to declare a climate emergency. Margaret is also the author of Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Cl...

Today we are joined by Nicole Systrom, founder of Sutro Energy Group. Nicole partners with philanthropists, investors and entrepreneurs to accelerate high-impact climate and clean technology solutions. Nicole also serves with multiple organizations that focus on energy, education, philanthropy and innovation. We’ll be talking with Nicole about how she came to be so involved in these areas, the various sectors that can help with environmental sustainability and the need for an inno...

Dr. Annette Olson started her career as a field biologist studying the social behavior of the long-nosed mongoose on a remote island in West Africa. But a civil war in Sierra Leone brought an end to her mongoose studies and started her off on a 30-year career working for federal agencies and nonprofits in Washington, D.C. Now she is building Climate Steps, her own nonprofit organization with a mission to supply people with impactful personal, social, and political actions to fight climate cha...

Our guest today is Jay Siegel, co-host of Sustainability Defined, a podcast that takes on the rather intimidating goal of defining sustainability, one topic and one bad joke at a time. Each episode of Sustainability Defined explores an area of sustainability in great depth and then finishes up with an interview with an expert in that space. It’s such a good resource that it has made its way into the course curriculum at Duke, Penn State and other fine universities. When Jay isn’t podcas...

Our guest today is Diego Saez Gil, founder and CEO of Pachama, a carbon offset and technology company that is harnessing satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to measure and monitor carbon capture in forests. Reducing the cost of measuring the amount of carbon stored in forests means that more of the money spent on carbon offsets can go to landowners. Improving the accuracy of those measurements means that people and companies who purchase carbon offsets are more confident that their ...

Our guest today is Shuli Goodman, founder and executive director of LF Energy, a new Linux Foundation project that supports open source innovation in the energy and electricity sectors. Shuli had the opportunity to work on an IT project with independent utilities in California where she learned how woefully inadequate their software systems were for the upcoming changes that would be required to green the grid. "We are in unbelievable trouble, because these guys do not have the technology or ...

Our guests today are Ty and Brock Benefiel, brothers and hosts of The Climate Pod podcast. Ty is co-founder and CEO of Hero Power, a company that allows electricity customers in Illinois to choose renewable energy over fossil fuel energy when they pay their utility bill. They plan to expand into 13 states. Brock is a journalist, podcaster, and Director of Marketing at Hero Power. Some states allow utility customers to choose who supplies their power. This means that the local utility is respo...

Our guest today is Karly Matthews from the American Conservation Coalition, a nonprofit organization which educates and empowers conservatives to re-engage in environmental conversations by promoting a mix of free-market, pro-business, and limited-government environmentalism. Links Episode webpage: Young conservative climate activists | Karly Matthews, American Conservation CoalitionLearn more about the American Conservation CoalitionFollow Karly Matthews on TwitterIf you would like to suppor...

Our guest today is RL Miller, a determined and outspoken political activist who founded Climate Hawks Vote, an organization that endorses and supports democratic candidates who are serious about developing effective climate policies. She has been a leading advocate for a presidential climate debate and getting Democratic candidates to pledge that they won’t take fossil fuel money, and she was just elected to the Democratic National Committee. RL is angry that DNC chair Tom Perez refused...

Our guest today is Tim Gordon, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter and the Australian institute of Marine Science. He studies climate change impacts on marine ecosystems, especially the Great Barrier reef. Coral reefs are surprisingly noisy but climate change may be starting to silence them. We’ll be talking with Tim about his research, which aims to understand more about the impacts of climate change on the natural soundscapes of marine ecosystems. Links Episode webpage:Climate ch...

Matt Russell joins us again for our second episode in a two part series about climate denial. This week we're focusing on Planet of the Humans, the new movie from Michael Moore, Jeff Gibbs and Ozzy Zehner. The filmmakers aren’t climate change deniers but they are very critical of renewable energy and a lot of the arguments that they bring up in the film are incorrect talking points and myths that climate change deniers used 10 years ago. Deniers are ecstatic to have an influential liberal doc...

Dear Climate Denier This is the premiere of a new segment for the show called Dear Climate Denier. Our guest today is Matt Russell, an environmental consultant and a good friend of mine and he’ll join us each week to discuss one or two standard climate denial topics so you’ll be ready the next time you hear those talking points come up. And, most importantly we’ll talk about the best approach for talking to your nearest and dearest climate deniers. How can you stand your ground on climate cha...