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Podcast

Richard Zacks, ISLAND OF VICE & Stan Cox, LOSING OUR COOL

 

Richard Zacks

 

Stan Cox

Richard Zacks discusses ISLAND OF VICE: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York and Stan Cox talks about his book, LOSING OUR COOL: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World. Then Drew Adamek reviews Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. Continue reading

Podcast

Simon Kuper, AJAX, THE DUTCH, THE WAR & Mark Hertsgaard, HOT: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth (encore)

 

Simon Kuper

 

Mark Hertsgaard

Simon Kuper talks about AJAX, THE DUTCH, THE WAR. It’s about resistance and collaboration through the lens of soccer in the Netherlands. And Hurricane Sandy moves us to air a portion of our 2011 interview with Mark Hertsgaard about his book, HOT: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth. It’s about adapting to climate change. (Note: this episode of WV originally aired on stations the week of November 7, 2012.) Continue reading

Podcast

Barbara Kingsolver, FLIGHT BEHAVIOR & James Howard Kunstler TOO MUCH MAGIC

James Howard Kunstler
Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver talks about her new novel, FLIGHT BEHAVIOR. It’s about what happens when a rural community in Tennessee is confronted with a bizarre phenomenon — caused by global warming. And futurist James Howard Kunstler says we’d better dispense with our penchant for magical thinking. His book is  TOO MUCH MAGIC: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation. Continue reading

Podcast

Paolo Bacigalupe (encore), Susan Rockefeller, MISSION OF MERMAIDS & Jason Chin, ISLAND

Susan Rockefeller
Jason Chin

Filmmaker Susan Rockefeller discusses her film, MISSION OF MERMAIDS: A Love Letter To The Ocean. Also, children’s book author, Jason Chin, talks about his acclaimed new book, ISLAND: A Story of the Galapagos. But first, WV encores our 2011 interview with Paolo Bacigalupe about SHIPBREAKER, his dystopian sci fi novel that takes place in a world altered by climate change.

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Podcast

Brian Fagan, THE ATTACKING OCEAN & Christine Shearer, KIVALINA

Christine Shearer
Christine Shearer
brian fagan
Brian Fagan

Brian Fagan talks about his book, THE ATTACKING OCEAN: The Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels, and we also air our 2011 interview with Christine Shearer about Kivalina, an Alaskan community that is already getting hammered by sea level rise.

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Podcast

Richard Heinberg, SNAKE OIL & Bill McKibben, OIL AND HONEY

Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben
Richard Heinberg
Richard Heinberg

When it comes to fracked fossil fuels, are we being sold a bunch of snake oil? Energy analyst Richard Heinberg talks about his riveting new book, SNAKE OIL: How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future. And journalist Bill McKibben helped spark the global mass movement to save the climate. McKibben tells the story of how that movement developed — and a parallel story of his neighbor in rural Vermont who just happens to be a foremost beekeeper. McKibben’s latest book is OIL AND HONEY: The Education of An Unlikely Activist.

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Podcast

David Bollier on The Commons: GREEN GOVERNANCE & VIRAL SPIRAL

David Bollier
David Bollier

Journalist and activist David Bollier talks about his most recent book, co-written with legal scholar Burns Weston, GREEN GOVERNANCE: Ecological Survival, Human Rights, and the Law of the Commons. Then we re-air our 2010 interview with him about the digital commons, VIRAL SPIRAL.

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Podcast

Jason Mott, THE RETURNED & Christian Parenti (encore), TROPIC OF CHAOS

Jason Mott
Jason Mott
Christian Parenti
Christian Parenti

Jason Mott talks about his terrific debut novel, The Returned. It’s about what happens when loved ones who have died return to their families unscathed.

And world leaders are once again discussing climate change, this time at the UN climate talks in Warsaw, Poland. Meanwhile, the Phillipines is struggling to recover from supertyphoon Haiyan. We put climate change and conflict into context with Christian Parenti. We re-air our 2011 interview with Parenti about his book, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.

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Podcast

Ruth Thomas-Suh, REJECT, Herbert Thomas, THE SHAME RESPONSE TO REJECTION & John Cushman on KXL

ruthpicture
Ruth Thomas-Suh
Herbert Thomas
Herbert Thomas

Ruth Thomas-Suh talks about her powerful new film, REJECT. Joining the conversation is her father, Herbert Thomas, author of THE SHAME RESPONSE TO REJECTION. And environmental journalist John Cushman talks about about what’s really in the State Department’s Environmental Impact report on the Keystone XL pipeline.

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Podcast

John Cushman of Inside Climate News: Keystone XL Pipeline

John Cushman
John Cushman

If you were reading or listening to the news this week, you might have heard about the State Department’s environmental impact report on the Keystone XL pipeline. If so, you probably think it cleared the way for the pipeline to go forward. At least,that’s what most of the media seemed to think.

But the reality is more complicated than that. In fact, while it contained language cheered by proponents of the pipeline, the report also raised some real questions that environmentalists will be using as ammunition in the continuing fight over whether Keystone XL will be built. John Cushman discusses what the report does and doesn’t say and why the fight to stop Keystone XL is so important.

The State Department’s EIS, it turns out, “relied heavily” on studies funded by Alberta, Canada government agencies and carried out by Jacobs Consultancy, a subsidiary of a major tar sands developer, as Cushman reported several days after his interview with WV:

The Jacobs Consultancy is a subsidiary of Jacobs Engineering, a giant natural resources development company with extensive operations in Alberta’s tar sands fields. The engineering company has worked on dozens of major projects in the region over the years. Its most recent contract, with Canadian oil sands leader Suncor, was announced in January.

“The Alberta Oil Sands are a very important component of our business,” the parent company said in late 2011, announcing seven new contracts in the region. “Jacobs has a strong history in the area, and we are pleased to support our clients in these initiatives.”

A journalist in Washington since the mid 70s, Cushman covered the EPA for the New York Times and now works with Inside Climate News, the online news site that won a Pulitzer Prize last year for its report,”The Dilbit Disaster,” an investigation into the million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010.

Podcast

Boris Fishman, A REPLACEMENT LIFE & John Cushman, KEYSTONE AND BEYOND

Boris Fishman
Boris Fishman
John Cushman
John Cushman

Boris Fishman talks about his terrific debut novel about coming of age as an immigrant in America, A REPLACEMENT LIFE.

And Obama just announced a get-tough policy on carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. Now the question is, will he or won’t he on the Keystone XL pipeline? John Cushman of Inside Climate News tells the story leading up to Obama’s predicament on the pipeline and where he might go in the future. Cushman’s new e-book is KEYSTONE AND BEYOND.

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Podcast

Elizabeth Kolbert, THE SIXTH EXTINCTION & Annalee Newitz, SCATTER, ADAPT AND REMEMBER

Annalee Newitz
Annalee Newitz
Elizabeth Kolbert
Elizabeth Kolbert

Science reporter Elizabeth Kolbert talks about her book,The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. And Annalee Newitz discusses the prospects for human survival amid the mass extinction we are causing. Her book is Scatter, Adapt and Remember.

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Podcast

Paul Ehrlich, HOPE ON EARTH & Ryan Mitchell, TINY HOUSE LIVING

Paul R. Ehrlich
Paul R. Ehrlich
Ryan Mitchell
Ryan Mitchell

World-renowned biologist Paul Ehrlich of The Population Bomb fame talks about his new book (with Michael Charles Tobias) Hope on Earth: A Conversation. And Ryan Mitchell discusses Tiny House Living: Ideas For Building and Living Well In Less than 400 Square Feet.

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Podcast

Naomi Oreskes, THE COLLAPSE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION & Dr. James Hansen, STORMS OF MY GRANDCHILDREN

Naomi Oreskes
Naomi Oreskes
Dr. James Hansen
Dr. James Hansen

Naomi Oreskes talks about the speculative novel she co-wrote with Erik Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Then, as the world prepares for climate talks and the People’s climate march in New York City, we hear our 2010 interview with climatologist Dr. James Hansen.

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