Tag Archives: ecotalk

Sander DeVries: 41 Pounds of junkmail a year

Nojunkmailsign
Sander DeVries stops by to tell Betsy about his and his brothers’ jobs moonlighting as superheroes who are going to rid your life of junkmail. I’m getting at least 41 pounds of junkmail a year, my share of more than a hundred million trees a year. So there is no doubt that I am going to sign up with 41 Pounds and pay them 41 dollars for five years of junkmail amnesty. The fact that half of that 41 bucks is going to charity is the icing on the cake. LISTEN (7 min)

Chip Heath: Made to Stick

Made_to_stick_jacket_sm
We’re getting better, but we still need to learn how best to market the product Earth. Chip Heath and his brother Dan have written Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, a book that surveys the whole spectrum of ideas that successfully lodged themselves in the collective imagination, from Kennedy’s Moon Mission to Bill McKibben’s notion of "Cradle to Cradle" Architecture, and finds out what made them stick: "We talk in these abstract ways that mean things to people inside the movement, but that don’t necessarily mean things to outsiders." LISTEN (11 min)

Dan Imhoff & Food Fight

Foodfight_669966
Watershed Media Director Dan Imhoff (and author of Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World) joins Betsy to talk about his crucial (and quite colorful and handy) new book Food Fight: A Citizen’s Guide to the Farm Bill. The US Farm Bill wields enormous leverage over our food and our health, and the extent to which we are informed of its contents is the extent to which we can avert a looming diabetes crisis among our children, and apply subsidies in a way that makes dietary and economic sense. Want to help the family farmer? The first thing you can do is stop assuming that the US Farm Bill is only relevant to the family farmer. LISTEN (9 min)

Will Steger & Global Warming 101

Globalw101
On day thirty-two of his trek through Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, renowned explorer Will Steger takes a break  to tell Betsy how climate change is effecting the livelihoods of the people who have lived there for centuries: "This is ground zero of global warming." This is also Global Warming 101, Will’s initiative to share with us the cultural face of the lands that, through no fault of their own, are the first to experience a man-made climate. LISTEN (11 min)

San Francisco: Paper, not Plastic (plus Sharon Rowe & EcoBags)

Ecobags
EcoBags founder Sharon Rowe joins Betsy to celebrate San Francisco’s decision to ban plastic bags from all supermarkets, which I predict will come to be seen as a shining example of responsible governments (and local governments at that– forget about Bush, contact City Hall!) setting the table for practical, innovative businesspeople to feast on the opportunity to make a sustainable living. Practical, innovative businesspeople like Ms. Rowe, who saw the writing on the wall (or the plastic bags in the trees) way back in 1989. LISTEN (11 min)

Subscribe

Broadcast Archives

Login