How to Save a Planet
Climate change. We know. It can feel too overwhelming. But what if there was a show about climate change that left you feeling... energized? One so filled with possibility that you actually wanted to listen? Join us, journalist Alex Blumberg and a crew of climate nerds, as we bring you smart, inspiring stories about the mess we're in and how we can get ourselves out of it. Check out our Calls to Action archive here for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram. How to Save a Planet is reported and produced by Kendra Pierre-Louis, Rachel Waldholz, Anna Ladd, Daniel Ackerman, and Hannah Chinn. Our intern is Nicole Welch. Our supervising producers are Katelyn Bogucki and Lauren Silverman. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Peter Leonard and Emma Munger.
Episodes
October 6, 2022 • 47 mins
In the coming years, we'll need millions of batteries: batteries to store renewable electricity and power a massive fleet of electric vehicles. But those batteries will require certain metals, and those metals have to be mined. And the mining industry can be a mess, sometimes associated with deforestation, child labor, and deadly floods of toxic waste. Is there a better way? Today we journey to the bottom of the ocean to find out. ...
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September 30, 2022 • 38 mins
Have you ever wondered if you were on the right side of an argument about climate change? Or just want to understand what everyday climate battles are worth fighting? A panel of expert climate judges take on the infamous Reddit thread ‘Am I The A**hole’ to issue judgments on climate-themed dilemmas. Along the way, we debate the ethics of roommate spats, office politics, baby showers and personal finances.
Guests: Rollie Williams
Ca...
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September 23, 2022 • 33 mins
Today we’re sharing an episode of The Carbon Copy, a climate change podcast produced by Canary Media. The topic is extremely timely: heat waves. This summer saw extreme heat blanketing almost every region of the northern hemisphere. And these heat waves aren’t just uncomfortable or inconvenient. They’re deadly. In most years, extreme heat kills more people in the U.S. than any other weather-related disaster. This episode asks: how ...
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September 15, 2022 • 43 mins
It’s How to Save a Planet’s second birthday! To celebrate, we’re sharing stories of climate action taken by our very own listeners. We'll hear from a listener who ran for an unexpected office, a grandmother who helped save her county’s recycling program, a mom who was inspired to launch a whole new business, and a group of students who took on one of the biggest oil companies in the world – and won.
Calls to Action:
Do your clima...
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September 9, 2022 • 28 mins
America loves its lawns. Altogether, grass lawns in the U.S. cover an area the size of Georgia. So, what does that mean for the climate? And can we do better? To find out, we’re joined by lawn expert and social ecologist Dr. Peter Groffman. He shares some surprising findings from his 20 years studying lawns and the people who tend them. Plus, we address one listener's pet peeve: artificial turf. And we share tips on how to make you...
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September 2, 2022 • 39 mins
In recent years more and more people from Central America have tried to emigrate north to Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Many leave home not because they want to, but because they have to: Droughts, brought on by climate change, have forced many to choose between staying home – and risking starvation – or migrating. But a different way of farming could change that calculus. We look at how climate change is driving immigrati...
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August 25, 2022 • 48 mins
Today we’re sharing an episode of Catalyst, a podcast hosted by Shayle Kann and produced by Canary Media. The topic is a controversial one: solar geoengineering — the idea that we can quickly cool the planet by blocking a small amount of sunlight from reaching Earth. Doing so could have uncertain ripple effects throughout the world’s ecosystems, so very few climate scientists advocate solar geoengineering. Still, learning about the...
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August 19, 2022 • 42 mins
Work. School. The grocery store. We all need to get somewhere. But how we get there has huge implications for the climate. In the United States, transportation - mainly from cars - makes up roughly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. It's true, Electric vehicles help reduce emissions. But experts say that to truly give the climate (and humanity) a chance, we need fewer people reliant on cars of any kind. And that means using alt...
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August 12, 2022 • 39 mins
Well, wow. Congress is on the verge of passing the most ambitious climate legislation in U.S. history! Don’t be fooled by its name: the Inflation Reduction Act is a massive investment in clean energy and climate initiatives, aimed at boosting the transition to a low-carbon economy. It also includes some profound compromises. So we called up the smartest climate experts and activists we know to break down this plan – what’s good, wh...
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August 5, 2022 • 26 mins
WSJ’s Fashion Director Rory Satran explains how Shein-- now valued at $100 billion-- rose to dominate the fast-fashion industry via social media, and why it's now facing intense criticism from sustainable shoppers.
To learn more about the climate impacts of fast fashion and ways to mitigate them, be sure to check out our episode Fast Fashion’s Dirty Little Secret (Hint: It’s Oil).
Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of th...
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July 29, 2022 • 46 mins
A listener called in with a dilemma: What's the most climate-friendly thing she can do with her family farm? Her family owns 126 acres of land in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, which she’s going to inherit one day. And she wondered…should I put up solar panels? Try climate-smart ag? Plant trees? So we flew out to investigate, and found people doing some amazing work – from a regenerative bee ranch to reforesting 400 acres of farm...
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July 21, 2022 • 41 mins
This week we’re sharing an episode from another Gimlet podcast called Science Vs. When a little girl, Ella Kissi-Debrah, suddenly got sick and landed in the hospital, doctors were stumped. In this episode, her mom, Rosamund, takes on the fight to find out what exactly happened to Ella. And the answer has BIG implications — for us all. We’ll hear from Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah and Professor Stephen Holgate.
Check out GreenRoots to...
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July 14, 2022 • 53 mins
Look inside your retirement savings and you may find some surprises: oil and gas companies, pipeline operators, utilities with coal-fired power plants. It can feel like no matter what you’re doing to combat climate change in your daily life, your money is working against you. So how do you invest without wrecking the planet? Is there such a thing as green investing? And why isn’t this easier to figure out? This week we ask: What do...
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More than a million soccer fans will travel to Qatar this fall for one of the biggest sporting events on Earth: The FIFA World Cup. The event sounds like it will be a climate nightmare, thanks to all the flights, air conditioned outdoor fields, docked cruise ships and brand new stadiums. But despite all this – the organizers claim this month-long event will be carbon neutral. How can they say that? Thanks to carbon offset credits. ...
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July 1, 2022 • 47 mins
Storage!
...Exciting, right? Ok, we’ll prove it to you. Each day, more and more of our electricity comes from intermittent renewables like wind and solar. To balance out our electric grid in the future, we’ll need new ways of storing extra energy, so we can still turn on our lights when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. This week, with help from Dr. Leah Stokes and Shayle Kann, we explore the wild world of energy st...
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June 24, 2022 • 32 mins
It’s a question we get all the time: “What can I do to address the climate crisis?” This week, our one and only original co-host, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, pays us a visit and offers her advice on how to find your place in the climate movement. We’re sharing her TED Talk, “How to find joy in climate action,” given this spring at TED2022 in Vancouver. Plus, Alex and Ayana catch up, and we hear all about what Ayana has been up to ...
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June 16, 2022 • 37 mins
This week we’re sharing an episode from a new podcast called Hot Farm. It’s from our friends at the Food & Environment Reporting Network. The podcast is about what farmers are doing – or could be doing – to take on climate change. In this episode, we’ll hear about the crops farmers actually grow. And we’ll explore the question, Can that change? Because as the world gets hotter and the weather more extreme, we’ll have to reimagine w...
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June 9, 2022 • 35 mins
In our episode Fast Fashion’s Dirty Little Secret (Hint: It’s Oil), we made the call to action: buy less clothing, and keep your clothing for longer. Some of you may have heard that and thought – “yeah, sure.” It sounds great, but it’s really hard to do, given the ecosystem of desire creation that is social media. How can you buy less when your feed is encouraging you to buy more, more, more? To find out, we talk to beauty influenc...
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June 3, 2022 • 28 mins
Nate Johnson didn’t plan to switch careers. But since he did he’s gone from just writing about the energy transition, to actually making it happen. In this episode, find out what it’s like to become an electrician — and the challenges that could be holding back the decarbonization of our grid. And hear from one company, Solar Holler, that came up with a surprising solution to the issues they were facing.
Guests:
Nate Johnson, Trai...
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May 27, 2022 • 36 mins
Electronics — smartphones, computers, televisions — exact a hefty toll on the planet. One way to lighten their load? Use them for longer. And yet, for decades now, manufacturers have made replacing our gadgets easier than repairing them. But Kyle Wiens, co-founder of the repair website iFixit, has been working to reverse that. He talks to us about why repair matters, why our devices are so hard to repair, and the policies that coul...
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