Earthbeat Radio

 

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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.

The People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth was a three-day conference that took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia and focused on giving a voice to indigenous people, environmental justice activists and others locked out of the United Nations’ previous Copenhagen Climate Conference.

Host Daphne Wysham’s reporting from Bolivia includes a conversation with Beverly Keene, the international coordinator of Jubilee South, a network of organizations that work on debt and development.

Plus, a discussion of how the world’s governments are giving cash and carbon credits for ending illegal activity – gas flaring – under the UN ‘clean development mechanism.’ Wysham speaks to Nnimmo Bassey, Nigeria’s executive director of Environmental Right Action / Friends of the Earth about these open air flames burning off natural gas and his impressions of the Bolivia conference.

Clayton Thomas Muller is a longstanding champion for environmental justice. He’s a member of the Cree Nation in Canada and he heads the Indigenous Environmental Network’s project on Tar Sands project. We hear from Clayton at one of the town hall-style meetings he’s been holding across Canada about his experience at the UN climate meeting in Copenhagen.

Our theme music is Baladi by Tony Anka, Bellydance Superstars vol. 2.

Image of dancers getting ready to go on stage at Univalle, Tiquipaya – by Daphne Wysham all rights reserved.

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 the 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.

An upcoming US Supreme Court Case reviews the Center for Food Safety’s groundbreaking legal victory 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 new 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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The Washington, DC Busboys and Poets event featuring Andrew Kimbrell and India activist Vandana Shiva will be Saturday, April 6th from 4 to 6 pm at Busboys and Poets on 5th Street. Reservations are necessary
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Image used courtesy of Happy Sleepy via Flickr.

Fracking for natural gas can cause flames to shoot out of water faucets and pollute groundwater with unknown chemicals – and yet the EPA has little authority to regulate this process used by the natural gas industry in 38 states. Host Daphne Wysham speaks to Abrahm Lustgarten about the 60 stories he’s written about fracking for the non-profit investigative journalism group – ProPublica.

Larry Brilliant is the director of Google.org, the charitable arm of the massive Internet search company. He makes the case for an optimistic view of our fight against climate change in one of the very popular TED talks.

This year is the UN Year of Biodiversity, joining us to discuss the effects that climate change will have on biodiversity is John Fitzgerald, policy director of the Society for Conservation Biology, a professional society of not just biologists but of many different professionals from all over the world who study and practice conservation.

Host Mike Tidwell reviews the highlights of seven years of hosting Earthbeat. Including a conversation with famed film critic Roger Ebert on the significance of Al Gore’s movie, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ – a conversation with a merchant sailor who stood on the deck of the first commercial ship ever to sail through the Northwest Passage – and frequent guest Joe Romm on how warmer waters will lead to more frequent and intense hurricanes. Mike Tidwell will continue his work on climate at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

It’s ten thousand times worse that carbon dioxide, and it’s sitting in your refrigerator. HFCs were designed to be an ‘environmentally friendly’ alternative to the ozone-hole creating CFCs in our air conditioners and fridges.

For this rebroadcast of Earthbeat, host Mike Tidwell discusses how the White House held closed-door meetings that may result in HFCs becoming a bargaining chip on the worldwide carbon market with David Sassoon, the editor of the website Solve Climate; and Kert Davies of Greenpeace joins the conversation to discuss a safe alternative to HFCs — that are banned by the EPA.

A DC lobbying group forged anti-climate letters – pretending to be grassroots African-American and Hispanic non-profits groups in Virginia. Tim Freilich is a board member of Creciendo Junto, one of the groups whose identity was stolen. Joining the conversation to speak about and other coal company subterfuge is Jeff Biggers, the author of the book The United States of Appalachia.

TV weathermen could be a force for educating the public about the connections between our weather and climate change, but instead they’re often high-profile climate deniers. Joe Romm, editor of the website Climate Progress, discusses the lack of progress on the nightly news.

Image used with permission from listener Eric Crowley via Flickr. Thank you Eric!

Music for this edition of Earthbeat is the song ‘Sweeping’ from The Devil Makes Three.

Our theme music is Baladi by Tony Anka, Bellydance Superstars vol. 2.

If you’d like to hear this edition of Earthbeat – please send us an e-mail

The debut of the new animated film The Story of Cap and Trade. Host Daphne Wysham, who recently penned an op-ed for The Huffington Post on cap and trade, speaks to narrator Annie Leonard and and the founder of Free Range Studios, Jonah Sachs, the animator. The Story of Cap and Trade is featured in The New York Times and creating a stir in the blogosphere.

Then Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi joins us to discuss how the investment bank Goldman Sachs stands to make a killing in the carbon market. And, how activists are planning to demonstrate at the upcoming Copenhagen climate meeting. We speak to Kim Wasserman, the coordinator of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Nadine Bloch of the Mobilization for Climate Justice, and David Solnit, who helped to organize the Seattle demonstrations and is the co-author of the book The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle.

If you’d like to hear this edition of Earthbeat – please send us an e-mail

Indonesia recently rounded up and deported international journalists and activists who were in-country to witness the massive, intentionally set, fires that are destroying the country’s tropical rainforest.

Thanks in most part to those fires, Indonesia is the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter standing right up with China and the U.S. Joining host Mike Tidwell to discuss the devastation to the area – and its consequences for our climate are Greenpeace forest activists Rolf Skar in San Francisco and Chiara Campione in Italy.

Then we hear about a rock that naturally traps carbon dioxide right out of the air. It’s kinda like the ‘anti-coal;’ we speak to researcher Sam Krevor of Stanford University’s Energy Resources Engineering Department.

Host Mike Tidwell then speaks directly to President Obama on how leadership could drive the United States into a clean energy future, if only he took the reins and lead the nation. Read that commentary here.

Music by Jacco Muller – Viento del Desierto. Our theme music is Baladi by Tony Anka, Bellydance Superstars vol. 2.

Image copyright John Novis for Greenpeace, all rights reserved.

If you’d like to hear this edition of Earthbeat – please send us an e-mail

The EPA tried to silence two of its own staffers when they criticizing the White House’s cap and trade program. Host Daphne Wysham speaks to Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel about their YouTube video that shows how cap and trade is fatally flawed.

We review of the recent UN climate meeting in Barcelona with Ilana Solomon of Action Aid and Janet Redman of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. Then, details of President Obama’s climate agreement with China with Julian L. Wong of the Center for American Progress.

Image used courtesy of Sam Feinstein via Flickr.

If you’d like to hear this edition of Earthbeat – please send us an e-mail