As the world continues to grapple with the challenge of climate change, with some working non-stop to fight the crisis and others only paying lip service, we provide you with 10 podcasts on the environment you should listen to this year to keep you abreast with stories around the crisis.
These podcasts will keep you in the know, arm you with the useful information you need to act, create your own change and help the planet in the fight against climate change.
1. Sustainable World Radio – Ecology and Permaculture Podcast
The Ecology and Permaculture Podcast, which is hosted by environmental educator and film director Jill Cloutier, interviews teachers, designers, environmentalists and activists who work within nature. Originating in 2004, the podcast focuses on solutions, not problems, with many episodes using a how-to format: how to create a hydroponic garden, etc. The episodes range in topics from plants and herbal medicine to earth repair, regenerative farming and ethnobotany. There is something for everyone.
2. People, Places, Planet Podcast
This podcast which is put out by the Environmental Law Institute is an eclectic mix of stories dealing with all aspects of the changing environment from the lens of the law. Its emphasises listener advocacy and engagement, providing actionable steps people can take to improve our world. In doing so, you can listen, learn and actually help create a sustainable world with every episode.
The podcast, which is in its fourth season, focuses on the intersection of regular people and the environments in which they find themselves, with policy and legal expert interviews.
3. Broken Ground
Broken Ground is put on by The Southern Environmental Law Center, and, therefore, focuses on environmental stories in the southern U.S. The show uses multiple hosts to look deeply at environmental justice. This season, the show is focusing on women on the front lines of the fight for that justice. The episodes empower listeners to take action across their own communities, creating small changes to shift issues on a large scale.
4. Hot Take – Critical Frequency
Hosted and created by climate journalists, Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt, this podcast takes environmental media coverage and puts it through a “feminist and race-forward” lens. Hot Take is an intersectional show that includes frequent guests and interviewees and concentrates on the larger issues facing the planet today.
5. The Big Switch
Hosted by Dr Melissa Lott who is the research director at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, this podcast explores our current power grid and the ways we can change it to benefit our society moving forward by interviewing experts in the field. The Big Switch is a five-part series on how our energy system is being rebuilt to address climate change. It does not only focus on how the energy system is being rebuilt but how it could be rebuilt by transforming our industrial landscape to get to a net-zero energy system in the coming years.
6. The Energy Gang
The Energy Gang was one of the first environmental podcasts on the scene, and it remains one of the most popular. Focused on cleantech, hosts Stephen Lacey and Katherine Hamilton explore various avenues of renewable energy with humour, wit, and intelligence. Former host of the show Jigar Shah now heads the U.S. Department of Energy’s loan programs and Hamilton is a former researcher at the Renewable Energy Laboratory.
7. The Climate Pod
Two brothers just having a conversation that happens to be about climate change. Ty and Brock Benefiel, who run the podcast are skilled interviewers who bring on a litany of leading climate activists to talk about climate policy, particularly its intersection with big money. Each topic is discussed for about an hour, giving an in-depth look at all angles before letting listeners go.
8. Climate Changers
This podcast focuses not just on the climate problems and initiatives themselves, but on the people working to fix those problems through those initiatives. Recently, the host of the podcast, Ryan Flahive has been focusing on sustainable food and regenerative farming, but earlier episodes set the scene by giving these issues a broad base in the contextual backdrop of all climate issues.
9. Columbia Energy Exchange
Hosted by Jason Bordoff, the former special assistant to the president on Energy and Climate during the Obama administration, and Bill Loveless, an energy journalism educator, the show interviews hard-hitting experts and powerful energy leaders in our international political landscape.
10. Breaking Green Ceilings
Breaking Green Ceilings gives the important perspective of marginalized and underrepresented populations in the fight against climate change. So often, global issues affect people with less privilege in a more dire way, and their circumstances are individually harmed. Leaders can have trouble seeing these problems, and the most important thing society can do is to listen to the lived experiences of those on the ground and those working to help them. Host Sapna Mulki is a second-generation Kenyan Indian with an M.A. in sustainable international development.
Story was adapted from EcoWatch.
