I’ll be double-hosting on KALW today. First, on Your Call’s One Planet Series at 10am PT, we discuss the Trump administration’s attack on environmental protections.
Donald Trump’s EPA chief, Lee Zeldin, plans to roll back more than two dozen regulations that protect our health, air, water, and climate, eliminate the Office of Research and Development, and fire hundreds of scientists. Joining us to discuss will be:
- Ken Alex, director of Project Climate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & Environment
- Marianne Lavelle, award-winning reporter for Inside Climate News
Later in the program, we’ll examine the Trump administration’s decision to drop a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s cancer alley, with Robert Taylor, executive director of Concerned Citizens for St. John.
Then at 6pm PT, I’ll be hosting State of the Bay. First, we’ll talk to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie about his new plan on homelessness.
Then we’ll talk about the suffering endured by millions of people due to Long Covid, with Dr. Linda Geng, co-director of the Stanford Long Covid Collaborative, and Philip Hoover, a screenwriter and North Bay resident who has firsthand experience navigating life with Long COVID.
Finally, we’ll talk to Ramon Ramos Alayo of the dance festival CubaCaribe.
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!
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’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!
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.
On today’s Your Call’s One Planet Series, leading environmental justice activist Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, joins us to discuss her new book Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope.
In this deeply personal collection of essays, Flowers explores urgent political issues, from reproductive rights to the disenfranchisement of the rural poor, from food justice and gun violence to the history of infrastructure in the South where she grew up and still resides.
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!
Double shot of KALW for me today! First, on Your Call’s One Planet Series at 10am: how will the rising cost of home insurance, driven by worsening climate disasters, push up the costs of owning a home? In some cases, insurance companies are pulling out of towns altogether. And in others, people are beginning to move away. Abrahm Lustgarten, an investigative reporter at ProPublica and The New York Times, will discuss these trends.
Later in the show, we’ll examine the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency with Marianne Lavelle, an award winning reporter for the Pulitzer Prize-winning, non-profit, news organization Inside Climate News. According to Inside Climate News, employees tasked with overseeing environmental justice initiatives at the Environmental Protection Agency could be placed on immediate administrative leave, leaving them in limbo.
Then at 6pm PT, I’m hosting State of the Bay, where we’ll talk to UCSF doctors and scientists about the impact of uncertain federal funding on our public health and on the cutting edge research happening here in the Bay. Guests include Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, infectious disease doctor at UCSF, and Pamela Munster, Professor in the Department of Medicine in Hematology/Oncology at UCSF.
We’ll also discuss how the Rose Pak Democratic Club recently ended its affiliation with the Democratic Party. Joining us will be Jeremy Lee, President of the Rose Pak Democratic Club, and Ko Lyn Cheang, Asian American and Pacific Islander reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
And finally, we’ll hear from the director of the new film Underdogs, about how the human-dog bond transforms incarcerated people.
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!
