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UCSC’s Agroecology Farm is known around the world for innovation, training and inspiration. But before there was a Farm, there was a Garden: the Alan Chadwick Garden, launched in 1967 on a steep, rocky clay hill side. It is still there today, although very few people know of its existence. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz in a conversation with Orin Martin, who has managed the Chadwick Garden since 1977 and where he is widely admired for his skills as a master orchardist, horticulturalist, and teacher. Tune in to hear about Orin’s role at the Chadwick Garden, as well as its origins and history since the 1970s. You’ll be well-prepared to visit it when UCSC reopens.
You can read Orin's oral history for the UCSC library here. A website dedicated to Alan Chadwick is here. And oral histories of organic and sustainable farming on California's Central Coast are available here.
Previous broadcasts of Sustainability Now! are archived at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.
Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.
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Episode #36, Sunday, January 10th: Hear Jeffrey Downing, Professor of Art at San Francisco State University and Artist-in-Residence at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art talk about how his work connects culture and nature. Downing was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago for his environmental sculpture in Richardson Bay, designed to mark today’s king tides, which will be swamped by rising sea levels in the future.
According to a website describing his work: “Jeff Downing’s sculpture is informed by the humor and pop sensibility of the California artist Robert Arneson; by the stripped-down economy of Alberto Giacometti’s figures; and by the spontaneity and energy characteristic of the work of Pablo Picasso. Downing’s work with dog imagery depends on chance discovery of form but seeks to invoke feelings concerning the human condition and our varied relationship with the natural world. In Jeff Downing’s world view, studying the dog – with all of its expressiveness, intelligence and sensitivity - leads us to a better understanding of the connection between culture and nature.”
You can hear previous broadcasts of Sustainability Now! at KSQD.org and on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts and Spotify. Check out Marisha Farnsworth, an Oakland-based environmental artist, who appeared on the show on July 27, 2020.
(* with apologies to Connie Willis, author of the eponymous book). -
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Radio Show, #29, October 4, 2020. Host Ronnie Lipschutz and guest Dina Gilio-Whitaker talk about indigenous environmental justice, environmental philosophy and the restoration of balance between humans and nature. Gilio-Whitaker is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes in the Pacific Northwest, a lecturer in American Indian Studies at California State University, San Marcos and Policy Director and Researcher at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She is author of As long as grass grows: The indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to Standing Rock (Beacon Press, 2019) and co-author, with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, of "All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans (Beacon Press, 2016). Professor Whitaker has just received a journalism award from the Native American Journalist Association for an editorial she published in High Country News, on indigenizing the Green New Deal.
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Host Ronnie Lipschutz speaks with Andrea Mackenzie, General Manager of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. For more than 25 years, Ms. Mackenzie has worked in the fields of land use planning, conservation planning, public policy, and finance for open space and agricultural land preservation agencies at county, regional, state, and national levels. The Open Space Authority works to protect and steward the region’s natural capital, open spaces, water resources, natural areas, and working lands to support healthy lands, resilient communities, and strong economies.
Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation.
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Sustainability Now! October 6, 2019, History of UC Santa Cruz, with Professor Emeritus Jim Clifford, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, talking about the University and its history, and his book, In the Ecotone.
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Sustainability Now! August 23, 2020. Host Ronnie Lipschutz and his guest Kim Stanley Robinson engage in a wide-ranging conversation about sustainability, politics, 2020 and after, and how we might prepare for the future. Robinson is a science fiction author, California futurist and environmental optimist of the will. His recent work, such as New York 2140 (2017) has addressed environmental and climate issues. His forthcoming book, The Ministry for the Future, which imagines a new, global organization that advocates for the world’s future generations and protects all living creatures, present and future.
(Photo by Stephan Martiniere, https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/kim-stanley-robinson-coming-to-phoenix-art-museum-sept-20-9702004)
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Sustainability Now!, April 5, 2020, Urchins in the Storm, with KSQD engineer Emily Donham, a 5th-year PhD candidate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UCSC. Emily’s research focuses on how sea urchins, which graze on kelp forests, may be vulnerable to ocean acidication and global warming. Emily is the producer of “Santa Cruz Naturalist,” which airs on Tuesdays at 7:54 AM, Wednesdays at 3:55 PM and Saturdays at 11:54 AM. at Her favorite crustacean is the horseshoe crab.
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Sustainability Now! #25, August 9, 2020. Climate Change, Public Health & Birth Impacts, with Dr. Rupa Basu, Chief of the Air and Climate Epidemiology Section at California Office on Environmental Health Hazards in the California Environmental Protection Agency and a lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She is coauthor of a recently-published review article in JAMA Open Network about the effects of air pollution and climate change on birth outcomes and conducts research on the health effects of climate change. Dr. Basu received her PhD in Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins University and a Masters of Public Health from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
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Planetary heating and climate change are in the news more and more, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just issued a very pessimistic report on humanity’s and the world’s prospects. In a revisit of a show from 2020, Host Ronnie Lipschutz and Guest Dr. Rupa Basu talk about about climate change and public health. Dr. Basu is Chief of the Air and Climate Epidemiology Section at California Office on Environmental Health Hazards and a lecturer in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. She is coauthor of a review article in JAMA Open Network about the effects of air pollution and climate change on birth outcomes. She is featured in an article on the health effects of high temperatures in The San Francisco Chronicle, on Sunday, August 29, 2021.
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California is dry, dry, dry and that probably means we are in for a wild wildfire season. Since the beginning of January, there have been more than 10,000 wildfires across the state. So, what are we to do? Hear from Dr. Sasha Berleman, Wildland Fire Scientist. She is director of Fire Forward at Audubon Canyon Ranch in Stinson Beach. She is a CA State Certified Burn Boss, a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX) coach and leader, and a wildland firefighter with Fire Effects Monitoring, Squad Boss, Crew Boss, Firing Boss, and Incident Commander qualifications. Find out what we can do to reduce the threat and risks of wildfires.
Watch these videos online:
Why These Californians Are Starting Fires On Purpose
Community-Based Burning: Caring for our Land Together
Andrew Selsky, “Amid clamor to increase prescribed burns, obstacles await,” AP News, June 22, 2021.
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Sustainability Now! December 1, 2019, What Do You Do About a Problem Like PG&E?, with Professor Dustin Mulvaney, Environmental Studies at San Jose State University. His research focuses on the social and environmental dimensions of food and energy systems, innovation, emerging technologies and environmental change. He is author of Solar Power: Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice and the forthcoming Sustainable Energy Strategies: Socio-Ecological Dimensions of Decarbonization.
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Here Comes the Sun! on Sustainability Now! Sunday, January 9th, 5-6 PM on KSQD
January 2022 is Solar Energy Month on Sustainability Now! On Sunday, January 23rd, we will be welcoming Dr. Ahmad Faruqui, an energy economist who has been deeply involved in solar electricity issues in California. We will be talking about the pending decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to impose “grid participation charges” on households with rooftop solar.
To get listeners prepared for Dr. Faruqui, we have assembled a show that draws on past episodes focused on solar. We’ll be hearing from: Dr. Dustin Mulvaney, a SJSU professor and solar energy expert, to talk about PG&E; Fred Keeley, who has been deeply involved in electricity law and regulation for more than 20 years, to talk about the future of electric utilities in California; Allie Detrio, Chief strategist at Reimagine Power in San Francisco, who will run us through how solar law and regulation functions in California, and Bob Stayton, who will talk about his Solar Dividends proposal, to give every Californian a month basic income from the sale of solar electricity.
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Join Sustainability Now! hosts Brooke Wright and Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Ecology Action's Matt Miller about bicycles, Bike Month, e-bike rebates and local transportation policies and practices, more generally. Matt is a Senior Program Specialist at Ecology Action in Santa Cruz, where he focuses on urban transportation working collaboratively with local government, businesses, and NGOs, to help build physical and social infrastructure to move away from car centric planning and behavior. If you don't already bike but are thinking about getting out of your car, be sure to tune in!
Sustainability Now! is underwritten by the Sustainable Systems Research Foundation. and Environmental Innovations.
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Once again, California is dry, dry, dry and that probably means we are in for a wild wildfire season. Since the beginning of 2021, there have been 10,000 wildfires across the state, and those that know are predicting the worst for this year's fire season. So, what are we to do? Hear from Dr. Sasha Berleman, Wildland Fire Scientist. She is director of Fire Forward at Audubon Canyon Ranch in Stinson Beach. She is a CA State Certified Burn Boss, a Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (TREX) coach and leader, and a wildland firefighter with Fire Effects Monitoring, Squad Boss, Crew Boss, Firing Boss, and Incident Commander qualifications. In this show from June 2021, find out about the risk of wildfires and what we can do to reduce the threat.
This show was originally broadcast on June 21, 2021.
Watch these videos online:
Why These Californians Are Starting Fires On Purpose
Community-Based Burning: Caring for our Land Together
Andrew Selsky, "Amid clamor to increase prescribed burns, obstacles await," AP News, June 22, 2021.
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Until very recently, salmon and other fish attempting to spawn in Northern California’s Klamath River found a number of dams in their way. Over the past several years, in the largest project of its kind to date, those dams have been removed. Now, the watershed is being restored to let the salmon swim upriver and allow other plants and animals to return. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Brook Thompson, a member of the Yurok tribe, restoration engineer, PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz, and author of I Love Salmon and Lampreys, an illustrated book for children. Her doctoral work is focused connecting water rights and Native American knowledge through engineering, public policy, and social action.
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On January 16th, 2025, a fire broke out at the Vistra plant in Moss Landing, California burning for two days and scattering heavy metals and other toxic materials across the plant’s surroundings, including Elkhorn Slough. What happened there and why did the batteries burn? What are the impacts of the fire and on the future of renewable energy?
Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for three conversations about the batteries and the fire, with Ric O’Connell, executive director of GridLab, who will explain what the batteries are doing there, Dr. Ivano Aiello, Professor of Geological Oceanography at San Jose State’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, who will discuss the results of his research into contamination of Elkhorn Slough, and Dr. Megan Thiele Strong, Professor of Environmental Sociology at San Jose State, who will talk about the health and social effects of the fire on people living around the site.
Here are some resources:
Fire Protection Association, UK "Why do lithium-ion batteries catch fire?"
Never Again Moss Landing
Hunterbrook, "After Vistra Fire, Residents Report Illness, Scientists Confirm Contaminated Soil," Jan. 27, 2025.
Never Again Moss Landing (NAML), "Community Organization Conducts Surface Sampling for Heavy Metals Following Moss Landing Battery Storage Facility Fire," feb. 6, 2025.
Hunterbrook, "New Data Indicates Elevated Heavy Metal after Vistra Fire," Feb. 11, 2025.
Julian Spector, "Why we don't need to worry about the latest grid battery fire," Canary Media.com, Jan. 27, 2025.
(Moss Fire photo @picklerich831 via REUTERS)
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Food insecurity and food apartheid are a common challenge in many low-income and minority neighborhoods across the United States. Big supermarket companies avoid those areas because stores are unprofitable and small stores find that they make the most money on junk foods, sodas and liquor. Saba Grocers is an Oakland-based organization, founded in 2019, that works with those small stores to enable them to sell fresh produce sourced from minority farmers across the region. Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Lina Ghanem, director and co-founder of the Saba Grocers Initiative in Oakland.
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Mark Dowie describes himself as “Cowhand, guitarist, investigative historian, poet” and journalist. He’s probably best known as cofounder, editor and staff writer forMother Jones, but during his more than 50-year career, over his he’s also written for many other magazines, newspapers and publications, written eight books and received no less than 19 journalism awards.
In 1995, Dowie publishedLosing ground: American environmentalism at the close of the twentieth century. Thirty years later—and 70-odd years since the beginning of that movement, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dowie about the U.S. environmental movement, then and now.
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Over the past few years, we’ve heard a lot about artificial intelligence and the algorithms that support public policy, decision making and resource allocations. By processing reams of presumably neutral data, the algorithms are supposed to produce unbiased results. But we’ve also heard concerns about the algorithms themselves: what unrecognized assumptions go into their construction and how they can produce different outcomes depending on programmer choices about the data that goes into them.
Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Professor David Rehkopf of the Department of Epidemiology & Population Health at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Derek Ouyang, Executive Director of City Systems and Senior Research Manager in Stanford University's Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab. We’ll be taking about what algorithms are, how they are used to promote environmental justice and guide public funding for disadvantaged communities, and why they can produce different results depending on what goes into them and what comes out.
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What is regenerative agriculture? Who is practicing regenerative agriculture? And what are its prospects? In two weeks, join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Stephanie Anderson, author of From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture, which explores how women are leading the movement to transform the U.S. agricultural system and inspiring hope in the face of environmental and social challenges.
- Visa fler
