Sustainability Now! on KSQD.org

Who knew that ponds make music?  To the eye and ears, they seem silent and tranquil—except at night when, maybe, choruses of frogs serenade listeners.  But ponds are much noisier than that: you have to be very quiet and have the right equipment to really hear what’s going on.  And there is a lot going on: both the critters and the plants speak out.  Indeed, nature is full of sounds, many of them musical and, quite possible, the forerunners of human music.
Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. David Rothenberg, scholar, author, musician and composer and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology whose focus is on animal sounds as music. We talk about his most recent book, Secret Sounds of Ponds, for which Rothenberg tossed a microphone into ponds and heard “an entirely new world, a realm of the unexpected and stirring rhythms and tones of some of the smallest and loudest creatures on Earth.”

Everyone talks about climate but no one does anything about it.  In recent months, parts of Maui were nearly washed away by Kona Lows that dropped 60 inches of rain.  An unusual trio of Pacific cyclones on both sides of the equator drove warm oceanic water to the east, adding to climate turbulence.  And the world is being warned of an “off-the-charts” El Niño this coming fall and winter. And there’s more!  Are you having trouble keeping track of all of these phenomena?  Relief is at hand!
Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a tutorial about climate with Dr. Daniel Swain, a weather and climate scientist with the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources division and a research partner at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. He engages extensively with journalists and other media partners, serving as a climate and weather science liaison to print, television, radio, and web-based outlets and is the go-to guy when on latest climate research and findings.
Watch Swain's latest "Weather and Climate Office Hour" (May 13). Read his "Weather West" blog.

The attack on Iran by the United States and Israel demonstrated, among other things, the necessity of a rapid transition to renewable fuels, like solar and wind.  The technologies for capturing and converting them into usable form are heavily dependent on critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt and others. Indeed, critical minerals are driving a new wave of resource nationalism and extraction around the globe, many of them being eyed by President Trump as potential regions of intervention and conquest.  What does the gold rush for these minerals portend for world politics and economics? Are we on the brink of a new era of colonialism and imperialism or even resource wars? In two weeks, join me for a conversation about these matters with Professor Thea Riofrancos, from Providence College in Rhode Island, who recently published Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism.
Riofrancos is associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Her research focuses on resource extraction, climate change, the energy transition, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left.

Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—commonly known as PFASs and "forever chemicals"—have become ubiquitous in the environment and are being found almost everywhere in soil, water, plants and bodies.    The Trump Administration has lowered drinking water standards for PFASs presence but that does not mean the stuff has gotten safer. You might know PFASs in the form of Teflon which, for many years, are applied to non-stick cookware so those eggs slide off the pan.  But if you overheat that pan, the Teflon might also slide off.  PFASs slide off of many other things, as well. The environmental and health impacts of PFASs are almost totally unknown, although they are beginning to look pretty bad.
Join host Ronnie Lipschutz for a conversation with Dr. Faith Kibuye, a Water Resources Extension Specialist in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management and the Institute of Energy and the Environment at the Pennsylvania State University. Kibuye specializes in environmental engineering, focusing on water quality, aquatic chemistry, cyanobacterial blooms, and contaminants like pharmaceuticals and PFASs, and their fate, transport and transformation.

We’ve heard a lot about the problem of microplastics pollution. Just how bad is it?  What are its causes?  What are microplastics doing to us and the world?  Is anything being done to stem the accelerating production and consumption of plastics that end up in our water, our air, in animals, and in human bodies? Liste to a conversation about microplastics with host Ronnie Lipschutz, Dr. Myra Finkelstein, Adjunct Professor in the Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology Department at UC Santa Cruz and Dr. Steven Mentor a Santa Cruz climate activist and long-time environmentalist. Finklestein has been examining the health effects of plastic ingestion on seabirds to better understand the consequences for marine wildlife and human health. Mentor will discuss campaigns in California to regulate microplastics and what can be done to turn the tide of plastic packaging and consumption.
You can learn more about the topic from Food and Water Watch, the Netflix film "The Plastic Detox" and the Interstate Technology & Regulatory Council.