Sliding scale electric car shares and rising numbers of used EVs are making them more accessible. A startup is answering the question: How good is that used EV battery?&nbsp;

You Don't Have to be Rich to Drive Electric

An innovative community energy center, cities with natural gas bans, and a crusading HVAC contractor are all on a mission to electrify our homes.&nbsp; To be zero carbon by 2050,&nbsp; we have to start now and retrofit millions of buildings each year.

Kiss Your Gas Goodbye

Veganuary and Plantiful New Year's month long challenges are remarkably effective at enticing people to try (and keep eating) more plant based meals.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;  Current levels of meat and dairy consumption are incompatible with a stable climate, yet many who understand this still find it difficult to to change our diets. You don't have to be vegan to cut your carbon foodprint. Small steps can make a big difference.

New Year's Pledge Helps Millions Eat Healthier

Activists accelerate states' switch to clean big rigs.&nbsp; A story about the power of coming together and speaking out for climate and justice.

Clean Trucks Coalition Puts Pedal to the Metal

For decades university departments, liberally lubricated with fossil fuel dollars, have been turning out research that adds a scholarly veneer to the industry's policy agenda. First that was opposing the regulation of oil and gas; now it's promoting carbon capture so they can keep selling their product. Students and faculty are shining a light on fossil fuel infiltration of academia and organizing to ban fossil fuel dollars from climate and energy research. We talk with undergrads and PhD students at Stanford and George Washington University about their research showing how fossil fueled research is skewing climate policy and how they are organizing to stop it.&nbsp;

Fox in the Henhouse: Getting Oily Hands Off Climate Research

Part One of a mini-series exploring potential pathways to a sustainable garment industry.  We explore some routes to slow fashion: restoring regional wool production in Pennsylvania, curbside pickup of used clothes in Massachusetts, second hand clothes, and raising garment worker wages&nbsp;  &nbsp; &nbsp;

It's Getting Hot, Let's Wear Less Clothes:  Slowing Fast Fashion, Part 1

Wage theft was endemic in California's garment industry until a small group of workers, mostly women and immigrants, organized and passed a law forcing clothing brands to guarantee their pay.&nbsp; Raising garment worker wages is one way to put fast fashion out of business. &nbsp;

A Garment Worker Victory

Meet a retiree in rural OR and a group of millennials in WA who are spreading community owned solar projects across their states.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Community Owned Solar

With growing conflicts over solar development on farm land, dual use may provide middle ground and enough income to help small farmers keep farming. That's how Byron Kominek found himself putting a solar garden on one of his hay fields and hosting teams of agrivoltaic researchers. Colorado farmers Byron Kominek and Liza McConnell and Jordan Macknick, head of agrivoltaic research at the National Renewable Energy Lab, are finding some crops grow better under solar panels and use less water.

Throwing Shade: Some crops thrive under solar panels

When I read in 2020 that Colorado ran a pilot program to give away just 13 e-bikes, I scoffed. What difference could that possibly make? Now I have to eat my bike helmet.- Wendy Ring, Cool Solutions Producer and Host. That mini-pilot laid the foundation for Denver's wildly successful e-bike program which became a model for statewide programs in Colorado and around the country. The consistent emphasis on removing barriers to bikes for low income residents is building pressure to address unsafe street conditions in Denver's low income neighborhoods. Guest Storytellers: Christian Willis, Colorado Energy Office Rachel Hultin, Bicycle Colorado Frieda Mitchell & Darnell Robinson, Can Do CO participants Mike Salisbury Denver Office of Climate Action Sustainability and Resilience Ash Lovell, People for Bikes &nbsp;

Denver's Super Successful E-Bike Program: New bike owners cut car trips and emissions

A pilot study replacing gas stoves with induction stoves in a public housing building in the South Bronx did the expected and decreased indoor air pollution. Two unexpected discoveries were the popularity of the induction stoves and that the building's old wiring could only deliver enough juice to replace stoves in a fraction of the apartments. Replacing all the gas stoves with induction stoves and the building's broken boiler with heat pumps will require an expensive electrical upgrade. To avoid those costs in the future, NYCHA used its&nbsp; purchasing power to get manufacturers to build heat pumps which use less electricity, plug into 110 outlets and install easily in their buildings' windows. &nbsp; Contributors:&nbsp; Story: Annie Carforo, Michelle Feliciano, Vlada Keniff, Mary Rivera, Angela Morales Music:&nbsp; Scott Holmes, Kevin McLeod, Maarten Schellekins, Jason Shaw, and Jahzzar

Out of Gas, In with Justice

80% of the buildings that will be here in 2050 are already built and they cause 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions.&nbsp; How will we get them off fossil fuel? This is the story of a research collaboration between the city of Chicago, community organizations, a utility, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to find out the best way to retrofit homes and lower energy bills for the city's low income residents. They discovered it can be done and is simpler than you think.&nbsp;

Decarbonizing Based on Need, not LEED

When we fix what we have, we reduce emissions, and strengthen communities. &nbsp;80% of the carbon pollution from our laptops, cell phones, and appliances is embodied carbon, emitted before we even open the box.&nbsp; A return to repair means changing our culture and challenging corporate monopoly. We have stories about a repair cafe in Chicago and about a coalition of Minnesota techies and farmers who overcame corporate lobbies to win passage of the nation's strongest Right to Repair law.&nbsp;&nbsp;    iFixIt

Reviving Repair:  From repair cafes to state capitols, people are challenging throwaway culture

The David who fought Goliath had two sisters. This is the modern day story about two women taking on a giant. They started alone, standing up against a huge multinational petrochemical corporation, and won. Diane Wilson, a fisherwoman from Seadrift Texas, won the largest ever penalty in a citizen clean water lawsuit, defending her bay from plastic pollution. Sharon Lavigne of St James Parish, Louisiana, stopped the same company, Formosa Plastics, from building the largest petrochemical plant in the world in her small Black community.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is an updated story first broadcast in 2021&nbsp; &nbsp;

This Is My Home: Women whup petrochemical giant

This year's Farm Bill will determine whether US agriculture cuts its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. Republicans want to divert $20 billion away from agricultural climate solutions. Farmers who've adopted these practices say they increase soil carbon and climate resilience.  We hear stories from farmers about compost, cover crops, prescribed grazing, and more. Sustainable agriculture advocates Renata Brillinger of the California Climate and Agriculture Network and Erik Kamrath from the Union of Concerned Scientists advise us what to tell our Congresspeople. (It's simple).&nbsp;

The Battle for a Climate Friendly Farm Bill

The best way to store more carbon in forests is to stop cutting down big trees.&nbsp; Families own more US forest land than timber companies or the government. A new program pays them not to log their big trees and to help new trees grow.&nbsp;

Small Forests, Big Carbon

Radio producer, climate activist, physician

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