Mother Earth Podcast

Could Boston become the greenest city in the world? Leading Boston mayoral candidate and city council member Michelle Wu believes it can. Michelle may very well be America's most important municipal climate leader. She joins us for an illuminating conversation in this special episode of the  Mother Earth Podcast. In our conversation Michelle discusses her far-reaching vision of Boston as the world's leading green city and her detailed Boston Green New Deal plan that takes an integrated approach to the climate crisis with policies to address climate justice, housing, food, transportation, support of Boston's small businesses, and more. Michelle wants to make Boston's subways and buses free and explains why and how. She discusses her goal and plans for Boston to reach net-zero emissions by 2040, a decade earlier than President Biden's goal. And she explains the important environmental policies she has successfully spearheaded as a Boston city councilor. Michelle also discusses her experience growing up as a first generation American citizen, and how her family, culture, and her own life experiences shaped her into the forward-thinking leader she is today. Her compelling life story is utterly improbable and we hear firsthand in this episode how she grew up in an immigrant family with no interest in politics, became an apolitical young adult, and yet somehow became a rapidly rising, progressive, outside-the-box political leader in the rough and tumble world of Boston politics. How important is this conversation?  Consider cities consume over two thirds of the world's energy and account for more than 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. And that cities are now on the cutting edge of our most important solutions to the climate crisis. Leaders like Michelle Wu are critical in devising and implementing these solutions. Join us for this compelling conversation and for some inspiration on how a new, young generation of leaders is stepping up to meet the ultimate challenge of our time. To support the Mother Earth Podcast, please tell your friends and family about it, subscribe, and share online.  For People and Planet, thank you for listening.

Michelle Wu

In this second of two special bonus episodes to Season One of the  Mother Earth Podcast, we sit down for a timely conversation with Nathaniel Stinnett.  Nathaniel is the founder and executive director of the Environmental Voter Project. The EVP knows EXACTLY how to find non-voters who rank the environment as their top electoral priority and turn them into voters.  Nathaniel founded the Environmental Voter Project in 2016 to turn millions of non-voting environmentalists into voters. And he has seriously succeeded. In the 2020 presidential election, Nathaniel and his colleagues turned tens of thousands of historically non-voting environmentalists into voters in Georgia, more than the margin of victory. They did the same thing in Arizona. And across the country in 12 states they turned out hundreds of thousands of environmental voters who formerly were non-voters. In my conversation with Nathaniel, he explains how the EVP uses sophisticated big data to identify non-voting environmentalists and then employs cutting edge persuasion techniques based on behavioral psychology to turn them into voters. They test their methods against control groups and these tests have proved that their methods work. And EVP shows up over and over in local and state races throughout the country to ensure that the voting habit sticks over time. Tune in to this episode to hear about this fascinating and absolutely critical approach to turning the tide on the politics of climate change. Most importantly, tune in to learn how YOU can get involved RIGHT NOW in the Georgia Senate elections. The EVP is running Georgia voter phone banks throughout December and right up to the last day of voting on January 5. The voting already has begun in Georgia so there is not a minute to spare. Jump on the EVP website NOW and volunteer and donate. Your time and money will not go toward some useless TV ad but to proven techniques that WILL turn out key voters. As always, the podcast is available on  Apple Podcasts,  Spotify or any other podcast app with the links on our  website. To support the podcast, please tell your friends and family about it and share online. My conversation with Nathaniel gave me more hope on the climate crisis and our other pressing environmental problems than anything I have heard in a very long time. I think you'll find it inspiring too. For People and Planet, thank you for listening.    

Nathaniel Stinnett

"If we committed to the Green New Deal with the vervor that we did for World War Two, we could do this in about a decade."  -Saul Griffith. The Green New Deal is easier than we think! This week on the Mother Earth Podcast, we hear from America's leading energy expert, entrepreneur and inventor, Saul Griffith, who sits down with host Matt Pawa for an in-depth conversation on the Green New Deal. Saul has a powerful message: the Green New Deal is not only possible, it will provide enormous benefits to our economy and society.  Saul is the CEO and founder of Otherlab. He and his Otherlab colleagues undertook a  comprehensive study of the U.S. energy system under contract from none other than the U.S. Government. Their results show that just by electrifying most of our energy system, we can reduce our energy usage by over fifty percent! In our conversation with Saul, he leads us step-by-step through the electrification-decarbonization process; and he explains how we can produce the electricity we need to heat and cool our homes, power our cars and run our businesses with clean, green renewable energy.    Saul also describes how implementing a Green New Deal will not only mitigate the climate crisis, it will reduce air and water pollution, save us money on our energy bills, create millions of good new jobs, eliminate billions of dollars in healthcare costs, and rejuvenate our economy for decades to come by putting our people back to work building the wind turbines, solar panels, and other green technologies that we need here at home and can sell to the rest of the world. This is the roadmap to the Green New Deal that we've been waiting for and we get to experience it firsthand as we ride shotgun with Saul on this podcast road trip. But Saul has gone way beyond a technocratic analysis. He is a student of history and explains how America rose up to meet this kind of a massive challenge once before. Saul reminds us of America's greatness when it built the "Arsenal of Democracy" -- the tanks, jeeps, airplanes, and armaments that saved the world from fascim in World War Two. America turned its industrial system on a dime to produce the Arsenal of Democracy and can do so now to save the world from the climate crisis. Saul goes further still and reminds us of America's role in devising financing mechanisms in the 20th Century, like the 30 year mortgage and the car loan, that serve as templates for how we can affordably retool our homes, offices and factories now to run on renewable energy. Saul may have grown up in Australia, but he seriously loves America. Saul is working on a book on the Green New Deal and placing it in the historical context of America repeatedly rising up to meet great challenges. Listeners who tune in to this episode of the Mother Earth Podcast will be rewarded with a sneak preview of the ideas in this important book from one of American's leading green thinkers as well as a stirring call to action for America to once again rise to its greatness. For People and Planet, thank you for listening.