Climate podcasts to rock your quarantine

wired headphones on a wooden table accompanied by a plant in a white pot

Hi, my name is Lauren and I’m an extrovert. 

As the Hampton Roads Organizer for CCAN, this works in my favor. I never met a stranger I didn’t like to chat with and I roll through my speed dial list without advanced notice just to talk (my friends like it, I swear). So cold-calling people to ask them to sign a CCAN petition to resist pipelines to or attend a rally to pass the Virginia Clean Economy Act? Gotcha covered. 

This trait makes me an expert on today’s topic.

Podcasts: All day, every day

When I’ve run out of people to talk to, I turn to my library of podcasts; because even during my “quiet” time, I need some sort of conversation running in the background to keep me from feeling antsy or lonely. Although I’m working full-time from home, plus full-time 4 year old duty, my daily opportunities for fitting in a podcast are plenty. I prep for the day with a news brief (rec: The Daily) as I brush my teeth and swap my night pajamas for my day pajamas. A self-care show (rec: Forever35) keeps me positive during email time for me & nap time for Coulson. And a pop culture or investigative series (rec: Armchair Expert or Ear Hustle) staves off sleep during project time on the couch once the house is quiet.  

But today is not about those other podcasts — stop trying to distract me, people. Today is about the meat sweet potatoes of my podcast diet (vegetarians hollaaaa). 

Let’s get down to business

(to defeat the Huns….anyone?)

It’s 6pm. Michael arrives home from work. I give him the parent highlights (yes, Coulson had dinner; no, he didn’t nap; yes, he’s still wearing his pajamas), pass the baton, and I am GONE. The local, deserted college campus is 5 minutes from our house and I have one hour to get my steps, get some air, and listen to…..my climate podcast for the day!!! 

freshly mowed green grass quad of university with fall colors in background and low sun
Abandoned campuses: great places to listen to podcasts!

Now, you might be thinking, “Lauren, you spend all day thinking about climate change which is not the most relaxing topic anyway….you want to spend your free time listening to it, too??” An excellent question, thank you for asking. And the answer is a simple, “yep.” 

I began to work for CCAN precisely because climate change was what I spent my free time learning and thinking about. Organizing for CCAN allows me to focus professionally on an issue that I was previously fitting in where I could. If anything, being a full-time climate activist means I have to step up my game even more to be conversant on the latest news, science, and community stories.

Before COVID-19, I had way more time to devote to this audio learning; my work covers all of Hampton Roads so I spent hours weekly in the car binging through episodes. Now, I squeeze in listening time during my nightly walk and anywhere else I can. However, my shortage of time has not equated to a shortage of options. There are so many great climate podcasts & episodes and it’s time I share my carefully curated list with the world (jk, they’re all great and I download everything). 

There are lots of great lists of climate podcasts out there and you will likely find some overlap between my list & those. But who doesn’t need another list, right? So here are my favorite podcasts that are centered on climate change. 

author Lauren Landis smiling and chopping a cucumber with her headphones; photos in the background on the wall and vegetable peeler in foreground

Climate Podcasts

Climate Cast

Drilled

Mothers of Invention

No Planet B

Terrestrial 

The Environment in Focus

If you want a super personal recommendation from the list above, I have a special place in my heart for Mothers of Invention. This show focuses on women-led climate solutions and is hosted by Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and global climate activist) and Irish comedian, Maeve Higgins. Mary Robinson’s book, Climate Justice, inspired me to be an organizer! 

Next, let’s talk about a less-covered area: individual climate episodes within non-climate specific podcasts. I think this is the most important part of the list. For many people, subscribing & listening routinely to a podcast is a bit of a commitment, never mind catching up on the entire back catalog. If that sounds daunting, the individual climate episodes below are a perfect starting place! Dip your toe in the water with an episode or two and you may find your new favorite show. 

Climate Episodes (podcast name followed by episode name in italics)

Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, How Can We Twerk on Climate Change? with Bill Nye the Science Guy

screenshot of "There Goes the Neighborhood" podcast from the iTunes store, Season 3: Premium Elevation
Podcast about climate gentrification

Life Kit, How To Talk To Kids About Climate Change

Ologies with Alie Ward, Phenology Episode

Powering the Movement, Saving The World’s Fastest Sinking City

Ted Talks Daily, Climate Change Will Displace Millions

Ted Talks Daily, When The Tides Keep Getting Higher

There Goes the Neighborhood, Season 3, Episode 1-3

I assume I don’t need to convince you to listen to anything with Bill Nye the Science Guy so I’ll save my muscle to encourage you towards the There Goes the Neighborhood episodes. They focus on climate-caused gentrification in Miami and were the starting point of my current sea-level rise research project. Did you know that Hampton Roads is outranked only by New Orleans in terms of sea level rise risk? If you didn’t know, these episodes are for you. If you did know, these episodes are still for you, trust. 

Technicalities

Let’s check in on some technical details before I send you off on a date with your chosen episode. 

First, if you’re new to podcasts and you’re not sure how to find or listen to anything I’ve recommended above, you’re not alone. There are many “how to” articles that are easy to follow so rather than recreate the wheel, I would recommend “How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know” by The Guardian or “The Beginner’s Guide to Podcasts” by The Wired. Alternatively, email me and we’ll set up a time to hop on the phone and walk through it together! 

Second, many podcasts can be listened to on a web browser so a smart phone is not a requirement (this is addressed in the how-to guides above). 

Third & finally, a lot of podcasts are creating transcripts to make sure their content is accessible to all. I make note of my favorite podcasts that are prioritizing this and I would love to hear any of your favorites that are doing the same.

It’s Go Time

You subscribe to CCAN’s emails, sign our petitions, follow us on Facebook, and read our blog (obviously). What can you do next to connect with CCAN and support climate action? The answer is this!! Fill your ears with one of our climate podcast recommendations and connect with climate activism in a new, easy way. Share what you learn over dinner, text an episode to a friend, or find a listener group online. Podcasts can be your constant companion throughout these tumultuous times and what subject integrates more importantly with all aspects of life than climate change? Send me an email or connect with us on social media to share your own podcast favorites or give a review of one of the recommendations above. 

Happy listening! 

The fight for Fair Development in South Baltimore

By Jennifer Kunze, 2015 Healthy Communities Organizing Fellow, jenniferk@chesapeakeclimate.org.
 
When you hear the words “Fair Development,” what comes to mind? Good jobs at living wages? Affordable housing? Resident-driven decision-making? Local control of the local economy? Positive impacts on public health? Green infrastructure without pollution?
Saturday, January 17th, over one hundred people gathered in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Curtis Bay for the United Workers‘ Fair Development Strategic Dialogue. Housing, healthcare, and environmental advocates got to exchange news, share ideas, and learn more about possibilities for making Baltimore a more just, healthy, and sustainable city. Meeting at Benjamin Franklin High School, where students have been fighting for years to prevent the country’s second-largest trash incinerator from being built less than a mile away, gave the Dialogue a sense of urgency: decisions made about this facility in the next six months will impact the homes, health, and environment of Curtis Bay residents and people across Baltimore City.
Energy Answers International proposed to build a ‘waste-to-energy’ facility in the Fairfield section of Curtis Bay nearly five years ago. This trash incinerator, which would draw over 230 trash trucks per day, will emit pollutants such as mercury, NOx, lead, dioxins, and particulate matter, creating tremendous health risks for residents of Curtis Bay and all of Baltimore. When students at Benjamin Franklin High learned of the project a few years ago, they organized and began to fight, forming a group they named “Free Your Voice.”

1
Free Your Voice is working to get Baltimore City public institutions to divest from Energy Answers proposed trash burning incinerator in Curtis Bay. Share this image on your own Facebook page by clicking the sunflower!

Right now, Free Your Voice is working to get public institutions to cancel their contracts with Energy Answers, including Baltimore City Schools, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Walters Art Museum. Free Your Voice asked Dialogue attendees to share or send their “Pledge to Divest” logo, a sunflower, to the BMA and the Walters. To pledge your support, go here.
Free Your Voice holds the Fairfield Incinerator as an example of failed development: a project, planned without the consent or input of the affected communities, that will hurt, rather than help the surrounding neighborhoods. To learn more about Fair Development, I attended a discussion within the “Clean Air is a Human Right” track about alternative sources of energy and alternative uses of the Fairfield site. Residents of Curtis Bay are eager to pursue building a solar farm on the site instead, which could create good jobs for residents of the neighborhood, provide a positive example of brownfield development for other cities, and help Baltimore City reach its goal of 22 megawatts of green energy produced in the city by 2020. Within discussion about the practicalities and feasibility of the project, John Duda of Red Emma’s and the Democracy Collaborative spoke about infusing green development with just economic development. A solar farm designed, built, and maintained by existing out-of-state solar companies would address the pollution and energy injustices of the proposed incinerator, but would do little to address the disinvestment and lack of economic opportunity seen in Curtis Bay and throughout Baltimore. But if it integrated the green energy proposal with education, jobs training, and the development of democratic economic models, the solar farm proposal would be a part of fair development aimed at making South Baltimore a more just, sustainable, and healthy place.
Scheduled for the Saturday before Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, the Fair Development Strategic Dialogue was centered around a famous quote, part of a sermon given by Dr. King on the Sunday before his assassination while in Memphis to support the sanitation workers’ strike:

“A true revolution of values,” he said, “will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. [True compassion] comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

The theme of the Dialogue stemmed from this MLK Quote.
The theme of the Strategic Dialogue stemmed from this great MLK Quote.

Between Curtis Bay and my home in West Baltimore is Middle Branch Park, a narrow stretch of deserted green space along the southern shore of the Patapsco River. Quiet and deserted, surrounded by marshes but with a view of the city skyline, this is one of my favorite parks in Baltimore, and so on my way home after the Dialogue, I stopped to take a walk. From one end of the path, the medical waste incinerator already built in Curtis Bay could be seen; from the other, the smokestack of Baltimore’s existing Wheelabrator trash incinerator rose next to M&T Bank Stadium.
Just as the Jericho Road must be transformed to end the dangers posed to its travelers, our economy must be transformed to end the dangers posed to the people living, working, and breathing in it. An energy edifice which forces health-endangering and climate-changing industries on areas like South Baltimore needs restructuring. To contribute to that change, share the Pledge to Divest with the Walters and the BMA on Facebook, and tune in to Free Your Voice and United Workers for more.
 

Community Organizing to Stop Cove Point

It was an amazing moment. I was a block away from the march when I could hear “Stop Cove Point!” echoing off the hot pavement in Downtown DC. I ran over to join the 1000+ activists from the Eastern Seaboard as we marched from the National Mall to the headquarters of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.
As I approached the front of the march, I started recognizing the group of Calvert County residents I’ve been working closest with over the last few months fighting Dominion Resources’ proposed fracked gas facility at Cove Point. One by one, they started to come into focus within the sea of people. Some were holding signs, marching with their children, and carrying creative artwork (which included a huge LNG tanker and giant postcards to FERC).

Activists from the Eastern Seaboard march to FERC headquarters with banners and a prop LNG tanker, "S.S. Dominion Titanic."  (Photo: M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO)
Activists march with banners and a prop LNG tanker, “S.S. Dominion Titanic.” (Photo: M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO)

Some were even holding banners marching next to movement leaders like Tim DeChristopher and Sandra Steingraber. A few months ago, this was probably the last thing these Southern Maryland marchers thought they would be doing on a sweltering day in July.
These people are part of the hundreds of concerned citizens from Southern Maryland that live within a few miles of Dominion Resources’ proposed Cove Point gas export facility. Most of them were first learning about the plant just last fall, whether it was at a town hall, or a discussion with their neighbor while they walked the dog. They formed a group, Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community (CCHC), which has been courageously fighting off the goliath-like Dominion from relentless propaganda on TV, radio, and print, pushing to stop the plant from tarnishing their idyllic bayside community.
 
CCHC members rally to stop the proposed Cove Point gas export facility. (Photo: Tracey Eno)
CCHC members rally to stop the proposed Cove Point gas export facility. (Photo: Tracey Eno)

The members of CCHC have been integral in making this rally, and this movement, grow so quickly. CCHC has been a big part of the campaign every step of the way. They’ve collected hundreds of public comments, going door-to-door and calling neighbors throughout the community, pointing out the glaring safety and environmental flaws on FERC’s draft environmental assessment of Cove Point. They’ve published dozens of letters in the local paper, held house meetings, Gasland screenings and have lobbied elected officials. They’ve packed public hearings, outnumbering the proponents of the plant and giving passionate testimony. At the rally, we filled an entire bus with Southern Marylanders, and a CCHC member kicked off the rally as an incredible speaker, sharing her story with the large crowd and the media.
Every day, I am inspired by the sheer amount of work and effort the CCHC members have given to this fight; spending endless hours late into the night researching detailed applications and documents, writing countless letters to elected officials and newspapers, attending weekly public meetings, sitting in on panels and sharing their story on national activist conference calls. They can’t stop, and won’t stop, until the job is done and they stop Cove Point from being built.
Southern Maryland residents filled the bus ready to march against Cove Point (Photo: Tracey Eno)
Southern Maryland residents filled the bus ready to march against Cove Point (Photo: Tracey Eno)

It’s been an amazing journey, and, while I know it’s definitely not over, it’s the members of CCHC that give me hope. Not only have we built a formidable grassroots opposition to the proposed project, but have also built a community and network of lifelong friends that can now provide a support structure for each other in the face of such an uphill struggle. I don’t think Dominion had any idea of who they were messing with when they submitted their application to FERC.
While I was marching alongside my friends from Southern Maryland yesterday, I came to the conclusion that without a doubt we will stop Cove Point, and we’ll look back and see that all of the hard work was worth it. At the very least, it will make for a great victory party.