Youth+Adult Climate Engagement

From Climate Week to Societal Climate Engagement (start time: 1:22) Last week tens of thousands of people from environmental nonprofit organizations, private companies, academia and other sectors came together in New York City for Climate Week NYC, which coincided with the United Nations General Assembly and the UN  Climate Summit. While climate activists, communicators and others discussed political and economic challenges and opportunities related to transitioning society to clean energy, world leaders at the UNGA displayed in their speeches a widening chasm between nations’ world views. On one end of the spectrum, President Trump rejected warnings of global warming, and on the other end Brazilian president (“Lula”) da Silva urged nations to protect forests and decarbonize economies. In these hyperpolarized times, it seems at once impossible and essential to talk across political divides, and to connect the dots between a healthy climate, a healthy economy, and a healthy human species. In today’s How On Earth, host Susan Moran interviews Dr. Maxwell Boykoff, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder , Faculty Executive Director of the SPIKE Center for Sustainability Education, and author of the book Creative (Climate) Communications;  and Sofia Billich, a junior at CU Boulder and Co-President of the CU Boulder chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby, a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to promoting climate solutions in Congress.

Host/producer: Susan Moran
Engineer: Abby O’Brien
Executive Producer: Beth Bennett

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Climate Change: A Laughing Matter?

Image credit: NASA

Comedy+Climate Change: (start time: 5:50)  In this week’s show we look ahead to Earth Day by discussing the latest science about climate change, as reported in the recently released assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And we explore the role that performing arts, especially comedy, can play in communicating, and processing emotions around, climate change. Our guests are Max Boykoff, a professor in, and the chair of, the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a contributing author of the recent IPCC report; Beth Osnes, a professor of Theatre and Environmental Studies at CU Boulder, and co-director of Inside the Greenhouse, a project at the university for creative climate communication; and Henrique Sannibale, an undergraduate student at CU Boulder studying environmental studies and business.

Hosts: Susan Moran, Joel Parker
Producer: Susan Moran
Engineer: Joel Parker
Executive Producer: Joel Parker
Additional contributions: Benita Lee

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