BE THE CHANGE Climate Conversion

This program explores how green leaders are converting to climate activism. And how you can move from spectator to citizen action.

You'll hear Forest Ethics co-Founder Tzeporah Berman in a moving speech, going to a new climate group Power Up Canada. United Church Pastor Bruce Sanguin gives us a new vision of Gaia-friendly Christianity. And Maureen Jack-LeCroix explains her calling to "Be the Change" - as host of the recent Be The Change Circles event in Vancouver. There's more... Arran Stephens of Nature's Path, and two conference guests - but first, here are some links to help you dig further.

BE THE CHANGE EARTH ALLIANCE
http://www.bethechangeearthalliance.org

You Tube video of founder Maureen Jack-LeCroix - why she devoted 10 years to Gaia and founded Be The Change Circles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smLyRHo7aS0

ECOSHOCK PROGRAMS ON CLIMATE, DRYING FORESTS AND FIRES

BURNING DOWN THE WEST Wildfires stoke the carbon load. Ecoshock Show 071116 (1 hr) Interview: Dr. Tom Gower, saying fires in N. Canada make positive feedback; speech by Temperate Rainforest activist Pas Rasmussen - why she is now a climate activist as well. Echoes by Andrea Reimer of the Wilderness Committee. New research on the Rockies burning by Lara Kueppers; were California fires climate change?
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock/ES_071116_Show.mp3

CURRENT PLAGUES - FUTURE FORESTS Can forests keep up with global warming? Ecoshock Show 070706 1 hour
Dr. Clive Welham on ravages on pine bark beetle in Rockies; Dr. Del Meidinger speech "Future Forests" to 6th N.A. Forest Ecology Conference.
http://www.ecoshock.org/cfro/2007/ES_070706_Show.mp3

RISING SEAS, DRYING WEST Ecoshock Show 080815 Top IPCC organizer & U of Arizona Professor Jonathan Overpeck speech at Washington U. After updating the world climate report, Overpeck predicts climate impacts on North America. 1 hour CD Quality Lo-Fi 14 MB http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080815_Show_LoFi.mp3

Drying of the West with National Geographic author Robert Kunzig; the first Carbon Tax in North America in B.C. (and what it means for the U.S.); censored Canadian scientists - speech clip from Dr. John Fyfe, IPCC author. Oh yeah, and some hope. 1 hour. Ecoshock show 080222 Lo-Fi 14 MB
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080222_Show_LoFi.mp3

TZEPORAH BERMAN SPEECHES

Climate Conversion - Tzeporah Berman speech Be The Change Un-Conference, Vancouver May 23, 2009. 16 minutes Lo-Fi
http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/ecoshock/ES_Tzeporah_Berman_090523_LoFi.mp3

A CLIMATE OF CRASH AND CHOICE Finance & elections. Mike Whitney on Wall Street mess -Bush's plan to grab the money & run. Voting for climate action. Brianna Cayo Cotter U.S. PowerVote.org; Tzeporah Berman speech introducing PowerUpCanada.ca. Also Rep Ed Markey web cast on new Green Jobs initiative. Plus some fun (e.g. George Carlin) and music. Ecoshock Show 080926 1 hour
Lo-Fi 14 MB
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080926_Show_LoFi.mp3

Tzeporah Berman at Bioneers Conference October 2006. About 20 minutes.
http://www.ecoshock.org/cfro/ES_Berman_Bioneers_061021.mp3

POWER UP CANADA
http://www.powerupcanada.ca/


THIS WEEK'S ECOSHOCK PROGRAM BEGINS....

Dear extra-terrestrial visitor,

Things are past serious here on Planet Earth. Our top scientists, the people who study and measure, warn the web of life is headed toward utter catastrophe, possibly in just ninety years. The ocean, source of our oxygen and mother of most life, is turning acid due to our carbon pollution. Our once stable climate, the basis of our agriculture and civilization, is undergoing violent change.

As I record this, smoke from forest fires - hundreds of miles away in the mountains, is filling our great city. I can smell the distress, and it's only June, not even fire season yet. Last night, as we watched TV news, a reporter showed the tinder dry conditions on Vancouver Island. "My God" said my companion, "that is the rain forest. The rain forest, untouched by fire for a thousand years or more, could burn."

It's only a matter of short time. The great pine forests of the Rocky Mountains have been killed by global warming. They stand dead, valley after valley, each long trough visible from space, waiting to burn. Each great tree is a tower of carbon taken from the atmosphere. Now it will go back, in great bursts of fire that nothing can stop. A burp of carbon worse than the Indonesian rain forest fires of '97-'98. Greenpeace predicted this in 1994, in a report called "The Carbon Bomb". Now, it's happening. Here in the Rockies, all from California right up to the Yukon. Even the boreal forest, clothing the North, is burning out more carbon than new trees can gather. Vast forests will convert into grasslands or scrub deserts.

We don't know how far all this new carbon, coming in the next decade, will push the climate.

The carbon whirlwind is still of our own making. Will you be a witness? Or will you be the change we need?

This is Radio Ecoshock. I am your host, Alex Smith.

READ MORE

URBAN MELTDOWN II

American cities in decay. Refugees not from New Orleans after Katrina. This is a different kind of Hurricane. A trifecta of climate change, high oil prices and the real estate bubble leaves abandoned holes from Detroit, Philadelphia, Phoenix and beyond.

I'm Alex Smith, this is Radio Ecoshock. We'll track the causes and the victims.

In our opening cuts, you heard video Blogger George4title in his You tube special called "Detroit Ground Zero for Economic Collapse". An amazing drive-by of abandoned and burned out homes looking like Baghdad in America. It's a 5 part series you won't want to miss.

Our other voice was Clive Doucet, author and Councilman for Canada's capital city, Ottawa. When I recorded his "Urban Meltdown" speech a year ago - I didn't believe it. Now the evidence is in. Cities all over North America are under stress, as they go into record deficits and collapsing tax collections. Municipal bonds may be the next big default line in the economy.

We'll interview Clive Doucet to get the update.

We are talking millions of foreclosures already, and millions more to go in the next two years. In fact, all the mortgage holding agencies, both government owned and private banks, have started a new wave of record foreclosures, after a brief Obama rest. Where are all these people ending up? Sure people some rent, but the latest stats show rentals are actually down. Some new Americans go back to their home country. Folks move back with their families, or share tiny spaces.

Too many become homeless - and our social system is in no way prepared for the homeless emergency now developing in almost every city. A friend just told me their neighbors in a relatively upscale neighborhood in Phoenix both lost their jobs. Professional people. Suddenly the bailiffs show up and grab both cars plus the house. A family with 5 kids now living in two tents on the desert outside of town, with no water or toilets. Just like that.

Could it happen to you? Are the homeless annoying you? In this program we'll get a clue. Our guest host Allart interviews Harold G. Joe. Harold experienced a fatal homeless tragedy in his community. He decided to try just three days and nights on the street. As a documentary film maker, Harold took his camera along. The result is the movie "Broken Down", and an interview that could move hearts of stone.

Let's get back to Clive Doucet, the person who opened my eyes, while I was day-dreaming in a still-functioning place, a city of refuge, so far, in the developing storm.

[Clive Doucet interview]

I also cover some important world news.

READ MORE....and find all the links to news stories, interviews and sources for this show.

Alex

FIRESTORM - Carbon Rising

Ecoshock Show 080711

We begin with a first hand report from climate front-line - the California fires, with Maria Gilardin. Maria is the host of the TUC radio program, originating from San Francisco. This time she is sending out last emails, from her straw bail house, surrounded by four major fires in Mendicino County, California.

Although Maria has produced some excellent programs on climate change, including interviews with scientists like James Hansen of NASA, perhaps she never expected to be threatened by drying forests, heat, and drought, so soon. We only got her story because she has a satellite uplink, using solar power. All other electricity in the area is down. Her story is very moving.

That is followed by a report from the aboriginal people in the Yukon's dying forests. Around Hay River, as in Alaska and even in Washington State, the Spruce Bark Beetle has killed off vast areas of trees. It was formerly controlled by cold winters, but no longer, thanks to climate change. Just another sign of how the North is heating up.

The First Nations people, as they prefer to be known, have always lived from and in the forest. The animals they hunted and knew are dying off. The elders report even the number of squirrels and ground hogs is way down. No wonder, with a dead gray forest all around. The trees look ghostly. As in California, the people must cut down trees around their homes, as they wait for the fires that will surely come.

A rare type of freshwater salmon is also affected, perhaps from the changing chemistry of all the dead needles washing into their prehistoric lake system. A young woman speaker describes the way the community is trying to monitor their changing ecosystem, and plans to evacuate. A front line story, recorded by Radio Ecoshock.

Then one of Canada's top climate scientists, Dr. Gordon McBean reports on rising CO2. Since 2000, we have increased emissions by 2 per cent per year, and the last count, for 2006, is 3 percent. Despite all the talk about controlling emissions, the greenhouse gases are pouring out of developed and developing countries, completely out of control. McBean, who was deeply involved in the IPCC, gives a good short account of our current situation.

In early July, McBean led a group of Canadian scientists writing an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, calling for immediate and concrete action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The same thing is happening all over the world. Dr. Andrew Glikson, who spoke in our last Radio Ecoshock Show, has forwarded a letter sent by Australian scientists, warning that a climate shift may create a world where mammals may not survive. That's us, folks.

Leaving on a lighter note, sort of, we add to an on-going series of short features on how to feed yourself and your family, should it come to that. From the Sagebrush Variety Hour on community radio in Idaho, we interview Bucky Buckaw on raising backyard chickens.

1 hour program CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB

Production Notes: 30 sec music bed for station ID at 30:38. Song "Fix It Or Stop Complaining" by Dan Berggren.

Please note, Alex is going on holidays - but has prepared new programs for a hot Summer series.
These will be podcast to you as a group - load up your computer, CD-Player or Ipod for summer listening.

PLANKTOS: OFFSETS REAL & IMAGINED

[In Blogger, to hear the show, click the title above.]

When we purchase carbon offsets, or companies claim to be "carbon neutral" - are we kidding ourselves?

In the first of a two-part radio series, we look at one of the best-known "green" carbon offset companies, Planktos Corp. I spend the whole show interviewing the CEO, Russell George.

You can always learn a lot about the workings of the ocean, from Russ George. He tells us plankton, the very basis of the food chain, is greatly reduced since 1980. That means less food all the way up to fish, which are also declining severely.

George explains that just as water rising from the ocean creates the rain that feeds the land - so dust from the land has been feeding phyto-plankton, (also called algae) for millenia. But now George thinks that the extra CO2 tossed into the atmosphere has allowed groundcover, like grass, to stay greener into the summer. That means less dust, and less micronutrients like iron, reaches the ocean.

Plankton are thought by many scientists to have been (a) the source of all of our oxygen, and (b) a regulating factor (possibly) leading to ice ages. They are a huge engine that, when blooming, can suck incredible amounts of CO2 out of the air. Are they a big solution to climate change? Can they buy us time, while we install alternatives to fossil fuels?

Planktos Corp is planning to create new, permanent forests in Hungary, and then in the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Guai) of British Columbia. They will sell these carbon credits, mainly to hungry, would-be-green institutions and companies in Europe. The new carbon markets are already worth billions.

Russ George also has a dream to take rock dust, from natural iron ores, out to the Pacific, to "feed" the algae, and stimulate new blooms.

About a dozen government-funded expeditions have tested this idea. They found that new plankton did occur, but the impacts on the ecosystem, and the real carbon that gets stored, is difficult to predict. Major environment groups, including Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have strongly opposed Planktos' proposed "Voyage of Discovery" to the Pacific. Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shephard Society, has threated direct action to stop the project. He has been known to ram ships at sea.

Meanwhile, Planktos Corp purchased a former U.S. Research ship, the Weatherbird II. Already months late, it's in Florida, loading equipment for the voyage, allegedly with a former Greenpeace captain signed on.

We asked Russ George about his critics, and about his business prospects - which are always right on the edge, as a start up company that could make billions, or go bust.

This is important radio, about the future of our oceans, and whether climate capitalists can act independently there. I urge you to download the one hour program and listen.

Next week, in part two, we'll hear more from Russ George, from the Chicago Green Festival, but I'll also interview his critics, including stock watcher David Baines, and Pat Mooney from the environmental ETC Group.

You can now subscribe to the weekly one-h0ur Radio Ecoshock show, as a podcast.

Sign up for your IPOD, or any podcast receiver software, on this page:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/EcoshockShowNotes

NEW: You can also find the full text transcript of our interview with Russell George of Planktos.

Alex Smith
host
Radio Ecoshock
www.ecoshock.org