Episodes
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Hey, Heat of the Moment Listeners! We want to recommend another show for you.
Living Planet is a podcast and radio program from Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW). Hosted by Charli Shield and Sam Baker, each week Living Planet reports on environmental stories from around the world. This episode of Living Planet looks at the specific portion of the global energy sector that is derived from crops like corn or wheat – exploring how they came to be, their promises and drawbacks, and why it is we're still using them. Traveling from Germany to the U.S. to Kenya, the Living Planet team asks if we still need to be using these fuels, or if there are more sustainable alternatives. In a world of high energy prices and high food prices, does it make sense to be growing crops for fuel that could otherwise be food?
More Living Planet episodes are available at: pod.link/livingplanet
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Hey, Heat of the Moment listeners! We have another special bonus episode for you, this time from our friends at Harvard Business School’s Climate Rising podcast.
In this episode, professor Michael Toffel speaks with Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, to discuss how companies participate in global climate talks and policy development, such as the United Nations climate change conference in Egypt. They also talk about what to expect as countries move from crafting climate agreements to implementation and what companies’ role is in that work.
For transcripts and other resources, visit climaterising.org.
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Missing episodes?
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On this season’s last episode of Heat of the Moment, we head back to South Africa, where reporter Elna Schutz hears firsthand from a former coal worker who relocated across the country to take a job in the solar industry.
Then, host John Sutter is joined by Katharine Wilkinson, climate activist and co-founder of the All We Can Save Project, to discuss how gender and climate justice intersect. This conversation was taped live as a Twitter Spaces, and you can listen to the full conversation here.
For more on Wilkinson’s work and to listen to her podcast, click here.
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Hey there, Heat of the Moment listeners! We wanted to share an episode from our friends at Nothing is Foreign, a weekly podcast from CBC Podcasts that knows there’s no such thing as foreign—it just depends on your point of view.
Nothing is Foreign is world news for people craving stories from elsewhere, and for people who want the view from on the ground, not from above. Immersive, immediate, real—host Tamara Khandaker invites listeners to take a trip each week to hear about the world from a different perspective. This episode explores how activists in Europe have been using a variety of more disruptive and brazen tactics to call attention to the climate crisis. They've thrown soup and mashed potatoes at paintings by renowned artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet, and glued themselves to a dinosaur display at Berlin's Natural History Museum. They have also blocked traffic in London, leading to major commuter delays. These more disruptive tactics have drawn anger, leading some to ask whether these disruptions help or hurt the fight against climate change.
More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/jzZDdUUn
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On this episode, we head to Ghana, a place which is fast losing one of the world’s most vital weapons against the climate crisis, trees. According to Global Forest Watch, from 2002 to 2021, Ghana lost 20% of its forest cover. Among those responsible, illegal miners.
In the first part of the episode, reporter Elodie Toto travels to the West African country to better understand why illegal mining persists and what can be done to better protect forests.
Later, host John Sutter speaks with Pamela Coke-Hamilton the executive director of the International Trade Centre about the link between bolstering better paying jobs in the Global South and confronting the climate crisis.
Programming alert! For our final episode this season we are hosting a special live Twitter Spaces conversation with Katharine Wilkinson, one of the world's foremost activists on climate and a leader of the The All We Can Save Project,
The free live Twitter Spaces event takes place Wednesday, March 8th at 3pm. Join the conversation here.
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This week on Heat of the Moment, we head south to America’s Gulf Coast, an area with a long history of fossil fuel extraction and a number of health problems that come with it.
We first hear from Columbia University's Melissa Lott about how climate justice dovetails with goals of just transition. Next, James Hiatt discusses his evolution away from the petrochemical industry. In the second part of the episode, host John Sutter speaks with Roishetta Ozane about her personal experiences seeking environmental justice for African Americans and other communities negatively impacted by Louisiana's petrochemical industry.
For more on James Hiatt and his work click here.
For more on Roishetta Ozane and her work at Healthy Gulf click here.
Follow to Dr. Melissa Lott's podcast The Big Switch click here
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Today we explore the unintended consequences of going green. In the first part of the episode we head to Bolivia where Amy Booth reports on the country's nascent lithium mining and electric car industries and the country's goals of expanding affordability and accessibility to electric vehicles. Amy talks to both locals and those involved with this transformation to see how the overall green plans for Bolivia are being balanced with the needs of individual communities.
Then host John Sutter speaks with Melissa Lott, the Director of Research at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. She talks about how the emergence of electric vehicles and getting to net zero carbon emissions is really all about giving us more choices as we transition to greener ways of doing things.
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In part four of our season, we hear how the idea of just transition goes beyond jobs, it’s about protecting communities that are on the front lines of the climate crisis, as well.
This episode begins in Bolivia where reporter Amy Booth shares a new agreement is encouraging local farmers to not clear cut forests which is helping to protect vital water resources as well as help lock in carbon emissions.
Then we hear from indigenous youth activists “Erika” Xananine Calvillo Ramirez, a student in Mexico City who in her spare time she pushes for change through her youth collective and works to get a seat at the table during national climate talks.
Finally, John Knox, UN’s first ever special rapporteur on human rights and the environment explains why it's vital to include indigenous and local voices when planning for a just transition away from fossil fuels.
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Much of the global south is on the front lines of climate change, and countries are calling on the global north to help fund the fight. At the 2021 United Nations climate change summit (or COP26), countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the European Union launched the Just Energy Transition Partnership by pledging South Africa $8.5 billion to help it move away from fossil fuels in a just and equitable way. Although this is certainly a step in the right direction, the scale of funding required to move the global community to a greener economy is immense. And developing countries typically lack the resources to make this change alone.
This week, Heat of the Moment revisits COP27—held last year in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt—where Foreign Policy and the Climate Investment Funds convened a panel on just this question. Foreign Policy’s editor in chief, Ravi Agrawal, was joined by Climate Investment Funds CEO Mafalda Duarte; former British COP26 envoy John Murton; U.S. Treasury Department Climate Counselor John Morton; and Rodrigo Ventura, an advisor at the National Council on Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism in the Dominican Republic.
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A Just Transition has the potential to create millions of new jobs globally if we implement the Paris Agreement in a way that takes the social and economic well-being of whole communities into account.
On this episode of Heat of the Moment, we hear from Moustapha Kamal Gueye, the global coordinator for Green Jobs at the International Labor Office on how the term Just Transition went from a niche idea in the American labor rights movement, to a global call for economic, social, and environmental transformation.
Then reporter Elna Schutz heads to coal community Emalahleni, South Africa to hear how the local and national government is working to make sure all voices are heard as they make this transition.
And finally, the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Sandeep Pai joins us to discuss how the fourth largest carbon emitting country in the world, India, plans on decarbonizing.
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The idea of a "just transition" often is associated with coal miners and other fossil fuel workers whose jobs are going away. But it’s a topic that’s so much bigger than that. As we’ll hear throughout this season, this concept encapsulates broader ideals of righting past wrongs - wrongs like racism or sexism, colonialism or classism.
In the first part of the episode, host John D. Sutter speaks with Benjamin Sovacool, a researcher and Energy Policy professor at Boston University and the University of Sussex. Sovacool says that a "just transition" is about looking at the livelihoods and wellbeing of whole communities. The United Nations estimates that 80 mllion jobs are at risk of being lost because of global warming by 2030, most notably in the Global South.
In the second part of the episode, reporter Elna Schutz visits a community in South Africa where a coal-fired power plant was recently decommissioned using a Just Transition framework. While funding and plans have been put in place to help the community recover after losing its main economic engine, many locals remain concerned about their present situation.
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Coming Jan. 18 - Season three of Heat of the Moment: A Just Transition, a podcast from Foreign Policy and the Climate Investment Funds that documents communities around the world as they transition away from carbon-intensive activities to create greener economies. This season features first-person stories and on-the-ground reporting from South America, North America, and Africa. Additionally, host John D. Sutter speaks to those working on the front lines of the global effort to implement just transition plans. He interviews everyone from scientists to activists to local leaders working to go green, while ensuring that no one is left behind. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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Youth-led movements across the globe are getting bigger, louder, and more effective. Now, young people are even taking fossil fuel companies to court. In the Netherlands, they’ve just successfully argued and won concessions from Shell, one of the world’s biggest multinational corporations. On today's episode we hear from youth activist Jesse van Schaik on how youth movements are fighting back.
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This year at COP26 in Glasgow, developing countries were clear: wealthier countries need to do more to help finance the world’s movement away from fossil fuels. And their argument is gaining traction: debt is holding countries back from adapting to climate change.
Leading off this episode of Heat of the Moment, we hear from Mamadou Honadia, one of the lead climate negotiators for Burkina Faso, who shares how his country's response to the climate crisis has been stymied by debt. We then hear from Julie Robinson, Program Director from the Nature Conservancy, on an innovative new debt restructuring program called a Blue Bonds program which will help Belize protect its oceans and reduce CO2 emissions.
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The United States military is one of the largest consumers of fossil fuels in the world. What is less known is that when it comes to the climate crisis, the U.S. military is also a place for innovation and strategic thinking.
And that’s thanks in no small part to our guest today -- Sherri Goodman, who is considered to be the godmother of Climate Security. Goodman is currently a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and Senior Strategist at the Center for Climate and Security. Previously she served as the first ever U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security. She discusses why the U.S. military is helping to solve the climate crisis.
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We are in the midst of one of the greatest moments of human migration in recent history. Wars and unrest in the Middle East, political tensions in Latin America, and ethnic clashes in places like Myanmar have caused millions of people to flee their homes looking for safety and security for themselves and their families. But there’s also another set of migrants: those who are fleeing because they’ve determined their homes are no longer safe from the massive forces of climate change.
Today’s story involves someone who never expected to see herself as a climate migrant. In fact, as director of a climate-solution organization, Jamie Beck Alexander would often spend countless hours trying to help others in far-off places deal with the effects of climate change. But then a few years back, she realized her own living situation in California was no longer going to work.
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On this episode we meet former oil worker Allen Hubbard. Hubbard spent most of his professional career as a geologist working on oil rigs in Louisiana trying to calculate the best spots to drill. Since leaving the industry Hubbard began learning more about the climate crisis from people like Al Gore and decided he needed to do a complete 180. Now in his 80s, Hubbard has made it his duty to speak out and try to motivate people to curb their consumption of fossil fuels.
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Moving away from coal is a top priority in the fight against climate change. But how should local economies, who depend on coal, ensure that workers and their communities are protected? We turn to the Energy Capital of the U.S. -- Gillette, Wyoming -- to see how that coal community is beginning to think about moving its economy away from fossil fuels.
On today’s episode we hear first from Shannon Anderson, Staff Attorney at the Powder River Basin Resource Council. She's lived in Powder River Basin coal country for most of her life and has seen it go from boomtown to bust. We then hear from Tasneem Essop, the Executive Director of the Climate Action Network. She shares her experience promoting a just transition away from fossil fuels.
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On today's episode of Heat of the Moment, we take a look at one of the most innovative ways we can cut greenhouses from our global food production: kelp. Our guest, Bren Smith, a regenerative ocean farmer in Connecticut, is leading the way on rethinking how we might farm our oceans by developing polyculture practices for farming shellfish, seaweeds, and kelps.
This is a big week for the climate. Leaders from all over the world are meeting in Glasgow at the Conference of the Parties, also known as COP26. It’s an important time to stay up to date on the latest news coming out of the COP. And one of the best ways to do that is with a Foreign Policy subscription. Head over to foreignpolicy.com to sign up and use the code “HOTM” (for Heat of the Moment) to get a 10% discount.
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Converting to electric vehicles is an important part of the quest to eliminate carbon pollution and stabilize the atmosphere. It’s estimated that globally the transportation sector contributes about or about one fifth of all global emissions; three quarters of that comes from road travel. And it’s not just CO2 emissions that are on people’s minds when they think about converting, it’s also clean air and less sound pollution, and greater economic potential.
On today’s episode we hear first from Todd Watkins, the Director of Transportation for Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. He discusses how the Montgomery County Public School system is changing their fleet of fourteen-hundred buses to electric, over the next fourteen years.
Our featured guest Sasiranga de Silva is an engineer and lecturer at the University of Moratuwa. De Silva has developed a conversion kit that converts two-stroke tuk tuks to electric, improving the health and wellbeing of his community and creating cost savings for local drivers.
Interested in learning more in the runup to COP26, the United Nations climate conference? We’re offering free access to an FP Analytics briefing called “Firm Zero-Emission Power.” Normally that’s only available to FP Insider subscribers, but you can read the report for free by submitting your email. Go to https://foreignpolicy.com/cop26 to learn more.
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