Earthbeat Radio

Earthbeat Radio has been delivering weekly one-hour broadcasts for over seven years on the top environmental crises of our time.

We are now carried on over 50 radio stations in the U.S. and Canada, reaching over 2 million potential listeners. But, like many organizations around the country, we are short on cash and need your help to stay on the air.

We started a fundraiser in August 2010 and, thanks to many donors, achieved 30% of our goal, raising over $3,000!

We have been asked by some supporters to extend our request for funds for a few more days to allow for one final push past our August 31, 2010 deadline. So you still have time to help us raise our goal of $10,000!

Please make a  tax-deductible donation of any size today and show your support for the kind of reporting that helps us address the climate change crisis and other critical environmental and social justice issues. Your tax-deductible secure donation will be processed by the Institute for Policy Studies, a non-profit 501 C-3 organization. Thank you for helping keep independent media alive!

Earthbeat Host and IPS Fellow Daphne Wysham conducted a special one-hour interview with Dr. James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, as an Earth Day 40th anniversary special.

In this broadcast of that interview, Dr. Hansen discusses the role of nuclear power in the climate crisis, the need for alternatives to cap and trade as a solution to climate change, and the possibilities that Earth will become like Venus due to fossil fuel consumption.

A video of the interview is available. Our theme music is Baladi by Tony Anka, Bellydance Superstars vol. 2

Host Daphne Wysham interviews Dr. Helen Caldicott about the influences exerted by the nuclear power industry. Then Brad Plumer of New Republic moderates a debate at the National Press Club between Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Dr Patrick Moore, co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition about the safety, cost and feasibility of nuclear power as a solution to the climate crisis.

Our theme music is Baladi by Tony Anka, Bellydance Superstars vol. 2.
Image used courtesy of Michael S. Anderson via Flickr

Earthbeat speaks with Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, who describes Exxon Corporation’s funding of the genetic engineering of algae, and the potential dangers of this new technology.  Jim Vallette of the Healthy Building Network explains how imported toxic drywall poses health risks for Gulf Coast residents as they rebuild their homes after Hurricane Katrina. And Christian activist Brother Paul MacAuley takes on big Oil and timber to help save the rain forest in Peru.

 

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An April US Supreme Court Case reviewed the Center for Food Safety’s groundbreaking legal challenge banning the sale and planting of Monsanto’s genetically altered alfalfa. The case mirrors a fierce battle over genetically altered eggplants that is underway in India.

Earthbeat host Daphne Wysham speaks to the Center’s founder, Andrew Kimbrell and international director Debbie Barker.

A report shows how the second richest man in New York is quietly funding climate deniers. We speak to Kert Davies of Greenpeace USA about how David Koch is pouring millions into climate denial campaigns.

Then, ‘Creation Care’ – we speak to Reverend Mitch Hescox, the head of the Evangelical Environmental Network.

 

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Can architects save the world? The architects with Architecture 2030 think they might just be able to design their way to major greenhouse gas emission cuts in this country—while preventing the next mortgage meltdown and putting America back to work—all in a matter of years. And in our second segment,  Cecil Corbin-Marks of We Act for Environmental Justice explains how public transit riders have a critical role to play in helping the United States cut its greenhouse gas emissions dramatically while putting people back to work.

Congress throws in the towel on cap and trade provisions in the climate and energy bill, while EPA enforcement attorneys Laurie Williams and William Zabel come forward with the explosive claims that the proposed federal carbon offsets contain “unfixable flaws and waste, fraud and abuse as dangerous as those that nearly brought down the financial system.’ We explore in-depth the problems and prospects for comprehensive energy legislation with Marcia Cleveland, legislative representative for Friends National Committee on Legislation and Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity.

And three months into the Gulf Coast BP Deepwater Horizon oil blowout disaster,  people are seeing the face of unchecked corporate power and  are beginning to ask what sort of lasting reforms can make a difference to make sure the BP disaster never happens again. Antonia Juhasz, director of Global Exchange’s Chevron Program and author of “The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry–and What We Must Do to Stop It ” joins us from Mobile, Alabama for a review of what can be done.

The April 5th, 2000 Massey Energy coal mine explosion in Upper Big Branch, West Virginia, was the deadliest mining disaster in 40 years. Whistleblower Jack Spadaro speaks out against Massey Energy and US government officials who fired him for criticizing Massey’s failure to implement safeguards that could have prevented the discharge of toxic coal slurry–a spill at least 25 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Spadero alleges that the same man who pushed him out under formerPresident George W. Bush in 2000 for investigating Massey wrongdoing is now playing a key role in the investigation of the Massey coal mine explosion in 2010.

Then, joining us after a recent trip to the Gulf of Mexico is David Helvarg, the author of ” Saved By the Sea: A Love Story with Fish” and founder and president of the marine conservation group Blue Frontier. Helvarg speaks about the effects of the BP oil spill on aquatic life and a promising stewardship initiative implemented by the Obama Administration to protect the oceans, coastlines, and Great Lakes.

Rob Hopkins, the co-founder of Transition Towns in the UK, speaks to host Daphne Wysham on the opportunities of peak oil. Transition Town Totnes (TTT), the original Transition Town, has served as a model for the 321 Transition Towns worldwide striving to sustain themselves in a world beyond oil.

BP says it’s attached a new cap on its oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Plumes of oil have covered thousands of square miles of ocean waters and shoreline, leaving Gulf Coast communities reeling from the impact.

BP has squared off against the press, threatening photographers and other journalists with felonies if they come within 65 feet of their cleanup operations. Nevertheless, pictures of the despoiled ocean, oil-coated birds, turtles and marine mammals are making it into the public domain. Joining Earthbeat Host Daphne Wysham in the studio to discuss the the BP oil disaster are the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, the president and CEO of the HipHop Caucus. Joining the conversation after returning from a recent trip to the Gulf is Allison Fisher, Energy Organizer with the group Public Citizen.

Then, how the US Government tested nuclear weapons on the people living in the Marshall Islands. Bob Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, testified recently before Congress on how the government is now considering cutting off support for the roughly 62,000 affected islanders.

Then, Thinking Outside the Bomb, how native Americans continue to be affected by nuclear weapons testing in the American West.

Image is a nuclear bomb test in the Pacific.

Tales of hope and inspiration from the US Social Forum in Detroit.

In this edition, Host Daphne Wysham speaks with Reede Stockton of Global Exchange, who, together with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, has worked with the city of Mt. Shasta in challenging corporations trying to alter the weather for profit.

We hear from a young activist who is disseminating climate change survival strategies via youth-run media. We also hear from a seasoned energy activist, Al Weinrub, about a David and Goliath victory for clean energy in California.

And the Vietnamese fisherfolk that are being left behind as they try to pick up their lives in the aftermath of the BP oil blowout disaster in the Gulf.