I’m double-hosting today on KALW. First, on Your Call’s One Planet Series at 10am PT, investigative journalist Antonia Juhasz discusses her new piece Is Trump’s “Minerals Deal” a Fossil Fuel Shakedown?. A significant portion of Ukraine’s natural resources, including fossil fuels and minerals, is in territory controlled and occupied by Russia.
Later in the show, Los Angeles Times reporter Liam Dillon discusses the debate over affordable and multifamily housing in the Pacific Palisades following the recent LA fires.
Then at 6pm PT, I’ll host State of the Bay, which we’ll kick off with an interview with newly elected District 11 Supervisor Chyanne Chen.
Then, I’ll talk to two award-winning journalists – Katey Rusch and Casey Smith – who spent five years exposing a widespread practice of “clean record” agreements —loopholes that let police officers erase misconduct from their records and land new jobs in law enforcement.
Finally, we hear from the director of a new documentary for diehard Oakland A’s fans called The Last Game.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT for Your Call and then again at 6pm PT for State of the Bay. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call Media Roundtable, we discuss the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a human rights advocate and lead negotiator for the 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University. He is being held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana.
According to the Intercept, since his arrest, his attorneys have fought any suggestion that this case is about whether their client committed a crime or is a threat to national security. Instead, they say, it’s about the US government stifling Khalil’s advocacy for Palestine. Joining us will be:
- Laura Jedeed, freelance journalist based in New York City
- Jonah Valdez, reporter for The Intercept
Later in the show, we’ll examine the fallout from Senate democrats agreeing not to filibuster the Republican budget as well as the GOP’s deep cuts to social and health services. To help us unpack it:
- Michael Mechanic, senior editor at Mother Jones and author of Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All
- Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
Aviation is a significant and growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. But the federal government in the United States has failed to address it so far. In response, some state policy makers and advocates are now considering legal avenues to effectively require the use of sustainable aviation fuels, which emit less carbon than traditional jet fuel when burned — and in some cases can eliminate these emissions altogether.
Opponents will undoubtedly argue that such state-based initiatives conflict with federal law. A new report from UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE), State of Aviation Decarbonization: State Policy Options to Regulate Carbon Emissions from Aviation and Federal Preemption Risk, provides an in-depth analysis of these legal issues with respect to three potential state policy approaches:
- regulation via a low carbon or clean fuel standard, which creates a carbon intensity target for all fuels – including aviation – with low-carbon fuels that fall below the threshold generating credits that can be sold, while those above the benchmark create deficits;
- state and local plans that implement the federal Clean Air Act; specifically, indirect source rules on airports that would require reduction of co-pollutants from airport mobile sources, including aircraft emissions due to burning high-carbon fuels; and
- state authority to tax and impose fees on high-carbon aviation fuel, in order to discourage their consumption and instead provide revenue that can fund use and deployment of lower-carbon alternatives.
The report ultimately concludes that a low carbon fuel standard regulation would provide the greatest potential impact on sustainable aviation but entails the most legal risk among the three approaches, while increased taxation or fees on high-carbon jet fuel could have a potentially significant impact on sustainable aviation fuel if revenues support deployment of low-carbon alternatives, with a moderate risk of federal preemption.
Overall, State of Aviation Decarbonization finds that well-designed state initiatives have a good chance of surviving legal challenges, and it offers strategies to reduce the likelihood of successful challenges.
Download the report here.
On today’s Your Call One Planet Series, Harvard university anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh joins us to discuss her new book, Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola. Greenhalgh tells the story tells the story of how, in the midst of an explosive epidemic of obesity, Big Soda mobilized academic allies to create a science that would protect profits on sugary drinks by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the primary solution to obesity — a view few experts accept.
The 1990s was a rough decade for the soda industry. In the US, obesity rates were exploding. Public health critics began fingering sugary soda as a main culprit and calling for taxes on soft drinks. With profits on sugary drinks threatened as never before, Big Soda had to be defended. Coca-Cola would take the lead. The book draws concepts from the social studies of science and anthropology to track a largely hidden project of the food industry that was global in scope. That project sought to create an industry-friendly science of obesity, spread it to key markets abroad, and get it embedded in official policies on diet-related chronic disease.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guest? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call Media Roundtable, we’ll discuss Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink, a documentary that tells the story of Alden Global Capitol, a secretive hedge fund that is plundering what is left of US newspapers, and the journalists who are fighting back.
In 2011, Alden began buying up newspapers across the country. In 2015, reporter Julie Reynolds began investigating Alden, which bought her small-town daily, the Monterey County Herald, along with more than 100 other newspapers nationwide.
She exposed how these self-described “vulture capitalists” would strip newspapers of their real estate, gut their newsrooms, and run away with the profits. Her reporting sparked a movement of journalists who took to the streets to tell vulture capitalists to “get the hell out of the news business.”
What is lost when billionaires take over our news organizations? What can we do about it? Joining us will be:
- Rick Goldsmith, veteran documentary filmmaker and director of “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink”
- Julie Reynolds, freelance investigative reporter, co-founder of Voices of Monterey Bay, and former investigative reporter with the Monterey County Herald
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call’s One Planet Series, we’ll discuss the importance of environmental journalism with:
- Mark Hertsgaard, executive director of Covering Climate Now, environment correspondent for The Nation, and author of Big Red’s Mercy: The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and A Story of Race in America.
- Sammy Roth, climate columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of the paper’s Boiling Point newsletter
How should journalists cover the Trump administration’s moves to stop climate action?
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call Media Roundtable, we’ll discuss ‘Battle for Tibet,’ a new Frontline documentary that examines how the Chinese government controls Tibet’s Buddhist population. Joining us will be Gesbeen Mohammad, BAFTA and Emmy-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, and the director of the film.
Then we’ll look at the budget resolution passed by House Republicans this week that calls for a massive tax cut for the wealthy, and billions of dollars of cuts in Medicaid, a program that provides coverage of health and long-term care to 83 million low-income people.
David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter, co-founder of DCReport, and author of many books, including “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America”, will join us to unpack what’s in the bill.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call One Planet Series, we discuss a new analysis by Last Chance Alliance that shows the Oil and gas companies spent a record $38 million in 2024 to fight climate and environmental justice policies in California.
That brings the annual price tag for last year to $38 million, shattering the annual state lobbying record for the industry by 45%, which stood at $26.2 million in 2017. Spending by two groups alone, Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and Chevron, broke the previous record, coming in at $31.6 million in 2024. WSPA and Chevron accounted for 83% of the industry’s expenditure.
To talk more about the report, we’ll be joined by:
- Ryan Schleeter, communications director for The Climate Center
- Christina Scaringe, California Climate Policy Director at the Center for Biological Diversity Climate Law Institute
Later in the program, we’ll talk to Mark Olalde, award winning reporter covering the environment for Propublica, about how Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to shrink the federal government have left the country’s wildland firefighting force unprepared for the rapidly approaching wildfire season.
According to Propublica, the administration has frozen funds, including money appropriated by Congress, and issued a deluge of orders eliminating federal employees, which has thrown agencies tasked with battling blazes into disarray as individual offices and managers struggle to interpret the directives. The uncertainty has limited training and postponed work to reduce flammable vegetation in areas vulnerable to wildfire. It has also left some firefighters with little choice but to leave the force, their colleagues said.
Then on State of the Bay at 6pm PT, we’ll delve into the Bay Area’s homelessness crisis with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and DignityMoves CEO Elizabeth Funk. Why has it proven so tough to tackle? And could building more interim housing be the key to turning things around?
Then we’ll meet San Francisco’s new District 5 Supervisor Bilal Mahmood.
Finally, we’ll hear about challenges facing today’s boys from Ruth Whippman, author of the book BoyMom.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT for Your Call and then again at 6pm PT for State of the Bay. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
On today’s Your Call Media Roundtable, we’ll cover a lawsuit that could drastically change press freedom laws in the United States; that’s one of many important cases headed to the US Supreme Court. Kelsey Reichmann, Supreme Court Reporter for Courthouse News Service, joins us to discuss.
Then we’ll talk to Reveal podcast host Al Letson about his new podcast “More to the Story,” which is about to launch during a moment of massive media layoffs.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
From cars and trucks to buses and trains, electric vehicles are playing an increasingly vital role in decarbonizing mobility and reducing oil dependence. However, this transition brings with it a significant challenge: immense pressure on battery supply chains. As demand for EVs increases, consumer countries will need to develop and implement policies that address the environmental and social impacts of the supply chain, while ensuring a stable supply of these transition minerals.
A new report I co-authored that is released today by UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) outlines a framework for building a more responsible battery supply chain, drawing insights from the European Union’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation (2023). This regulation is designed to reduce the carbon footprint of batteries, limit the use of hazardous materials, decrease reliance on raw materials from outside the EU, and promote high rates of collection, reuse, and recycling. By advancing a circular economy, it strengthens supply chain security, supports energy resilience, and enhances the EU’s strategic autonomy.
The current battery supply chain faces several pressing challenges. Mining critical minerals can lead to human rights violations, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and soil degradation. Refining processes, particularly in countries with lax environmental regulations, emit greenhouse gases and toxic waste. In addition, many battery materials pass through complex global supply chains, making it difficult to trace their origins and ensure responsible sourcing due to lack of transparency and traceability. Finally, end-of-life management remains a pressing issue, as current recycling rates for lithium-ion batteries are low and too many batteries end up in landfills or inefficient recycling systems.
Based on the EU’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation and the Critical Raw Materials Act, the report offers actionable recommendations for policymakers and industry leaders worldwide to address these battery supply chain challenges. Some key recommendations for government leaders include:
- Mandating transparency and traceability requirements for sourcing critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, graphite, nickel, through regulations and supply chain audits to ensure responsible mining practices and minimize human rights and environmental impacts
- Developing rules to minimize the environmental footprint of both domestic mineral processing and imported minerals, including limits on water usage, energy consumption, and pollutant emissions, as well as mandating the use of best available techniques.
- Implementing mandatory due diligence requirements aligned with international standards, ensuring they are integrated into supplier contracts for key transition minerals to identify and address social and environmental risks in battery production.
By drawing inspiration from the European Union’s Sustainable Batteries Regulation, other jurisdictions can adapt and tailor these policies to fit their specific challenges. A unified approach within the major consumer countries to responsible battery sourcing, processing, and recycling can reduce environmental harm and ensure a fair and ethical transition to a clean energy future.
Access the full report here: A Policy Blueprint for Ensuring Sustainable Battery Supply Chains
This post was co-authored by CLEE Climate Fellow Shruti Sarode.
