A MATTER OF DEGREESHOSTED BYDR. LEAH STOKES, DR. KATHARINE WILKINSON
Give up your climate guilt. Sharpen your curiosity. Join Dr. Leah Stokes and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson as they tell stories about the powerful forces behind climate change — and the tools we have to fix it. This show makes sense of big climate questions and critical topics. Our episodes are filled with stories of bold climate leadership, groundbreaking campaigns, and people doing their best to be part of the solution.
A Matter of Degrees is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media, The 2035 Initiative at UC Santa Barbara, and The All We Can Save Project.
The great sociologist had us do a go around and talk about who we were and what we were doing. There's 7 of us, I think. And I I went last, and I was like, Well, I've stopped writing books because I'm trying to be a better climate activist. And Thelma and I are launching this new project next month. And, basically, the whole group of people just looked at me and said, Rebecca, that needs to be a book. I was like, okay. And I think in some weird Protestant way, that's not my normal way. I thought that because I really like writing books, and it's the only thing I really know how to do. There's something we're enunciatory about not writing books, but books are a very good way to bring information together to reach people etcetera. And I was act I'd actually secretly kind of been thinking it. So by 10:30 the next morning, we had an agreement to publish, and we're off and running. Because I I already had a relationship with Haymark at the publisher, and it was kind of an amazing project. We Thelma is a true organizer. She came and stayed with me for a week and turned a big sheet of, Cortan. I had into a whiteboard because you cannot be an organizer without whiteboards. And, so we just wrote on postage what we thought the book should cover. We wanted to create something very broad and accessible. We felt like there's a ton of books on climate. Most of them are more specialized. Some of them are very technical and not so accessible to newcomers. But often they just focus on one aspect of it. And it didn't feel like there was a really welcoming, overview guide that both helped equip people with what you might need to know and was not just all discouraging and doomy and gloomy And, so we divided up what we thought the subject should be, then we brainstormed about who should write it. And it was really magical. Everyone we asked said, yes. Some of them were interviews. Most of them wrote or rewrote essays
I've seen cutting them as the only viable engine for a struggling economy in Southeast Alaska. This is a matter of degrees, stories for the climate curious. I'm doctor Katherine Wilkinson. And I'm doctor Leah Stokes. Today, we're gonna consider what's possible for the Tongass, what we stand to lose if we lose the forest, but also what we can gain from the people who are reimagining the decades long fight to protect it. I'm really excited to hear the story that you've brought us today, Catherine, because I know that that trip you took had a big impact on you. And I know that this Tongass Forest has been through a lot. It has. And we're gonna get to all of it or at least as much as we can in one podcast episode. To begin this Tongass journey, I reached out to Marina Anderson, one of the forest's most important advocates. She's a prominent tribal and community leader and the deputy director of a local collective impact network called the Sustainable Southeast Partnership. Marina was born and raised in Southeast Alaska. James Anderson, Dihat U'i Jin. Forrest Anderson, Diaw U'i Jin. Prince of Wales Islands, My name is Marina Anderson. I'm of the Raven Wiety from the Sculpin House. My people are from Hanyakwon, which is known today as Clowoc on Prince of Wales Island. My grandmother was married
And Joe Biden launched the justice 40 initiative as a part of an executive order called tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. Following in the footsteps of the New York law, the federal initiative directs 40% of the benefits of federal investment to disadvantaged communities. This includes clean energy, clean transit, affordable housing, and workforce development. Rawa sees the links between New York state and president Biden's new commitment. I feel absolutely hopeful. And let me tell you where the hope for me ignites and that's where the fire is and that's where we have to, you know, keep that flame alive is the fact that it happened at all at the federal level soon after New York state was able to pass the CLCPA. I think that as a nation, we don't often hear of the good news and the good work that's happening because there's so much distraction and so much noise. But I can tell you that this fight that happened, in New York state took decades, that this fight that happened at the federal level took decades. And these wins are tremendous. As Rahwa says, the federal justice forty initiative is a huge win, and yet, the federal promise to benefit disadvantaged communities is still in its early days. In today's episode, we dig into the details asking, what does climate justice really look like in practice? This is a matter of degrees, stories for the climate curious. I'm doctor Leah Stokes. I'm doctor Katherine Wilkinson. And I'm Nikayla Jefferson. Nikayla, it's so great to have you back on the show to report today's story about this big policy idea that disadvantaged communities should get 40% of the pie when it comes to climate action. We love big policy ideas on this show. And for those who haven't heard it back in season 1, Nikayla was an amazing
She won. She won by just 280 votes. It was one of the tightest races in Arizona history. See what we're saying in the what can I do series? Voting is a piece of the puzzle. 280 votes. That's quite amazing at a statewide level. And I think Chris' victory really goes to show how powerful just a handful of votes can be, especially when we're talking about the local and state levels. And, you know, on top of Chris becoming attorney general, this episode remains super timely because the fact is American Electric utilities are still slow walking on climate, Literally the worst dance moves on the dance floor. You don't like the slow walk? It's not your thing? I'm not into it. Well, that's what utilities are up to. And I know that because last year, I published this paper which looked at the history of electric utilities sowing climate denial, doubt, and delay. And I also worked on a report with the Sierra Club where we dug into the 50 dirtiest utilities. And the fact is they are still proposing massive amounts of dirty gas, and they're not planning to retire their dirty coal. So we are not moving in the right direction when it comes to our electric utilities in this country. These sound like some really important things for us to link to in the show notes, so find further reading there. And spoiler alert, there are a lot of failing grades in that Sierra Club report. Electric utilities have spent 1,000,000, not of their own money, of customer dollars to fund ad campaigns against renewable energy. And one prime example is Arizona Public Service. So without further ado, we hope you enjoy slash despise this episode and its tale of dirty misdeeds. In 2013, a series of attack ads blitzed television sets across
Temperature will rise in the future. I asked Kate to explain to me what she had learned from her research about why the planet is getting hotter. It's not unusual to have a hot day. It's not unusual to have a hot year, but it is really unusual to have a couple hot decades, and it is extremely unusual to have a sustained increase in the global mean temperature, like we've been experiencing since the industrial revolution. Most of the universe is really boring. There's only one good planet that we know about in all of space, and we live on it. And so I started getting really interested in how I could use my physics background to study the only planet where all my friends live. And so I became an earth scientist. So climate models are basically toy planets that live on computers that you get to do incredibly messed up things to. You can do experiments in a climate model that you could never do in the real world. You can set off a volcano in London if you want to. You can get rid of the Rocky Mountains. And that's really fun because that allows you to learn about how interconnected everything is and why the climate is the way it is. So that's a really fun aspect of my job. Climate models produce a giant amount of data, and a lot of my job is sifting through that data, not just from climate models, but from satellite observations, from land based observations, from paleoclimate datasets, and really trying to make sense of what's happening. And for a long time, scientists used both models and observations to know with certainty that burning fossil fuels was increasing carbon in the atmosphere, and that was causing the planet to warm
