Radio Broadcast Archives

How can the economy serve us, rather than us serving the economy, as we have done ever more desperately for the last twenty years. Last week the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco hosted a forum entitled Capitalism 3.0 on the very question.
We caught up with Gil Friend, President and CEO of Naturalogic "Strategic Advisors to a Sustainable Economy" about the current supply of good ideas and consumer’s demand for them. LISTEN (11 min)

TransFair USA Executive Director Paul Rice was one of the panel speakers at the Commonwealth Club’s Capitalism 3.0. He talks about his fifth year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, why the Economist is wrong on Fair Trade, and his 11 years working with farmers in Nicaragua. LISTEN (7 min)

Heidi Kuhn’s life’s work has been the replacement of "mines with vines" through her organization Roots of Peace. Whether in the Balkans, Vietnam, or Afghanistan (where Roots of Peace has an office), landmines are an environmental issue, as land cursed with the mines of wars past cannot provide its people with sustenance or work. One cannot have a healthy relationship with the Earth if one is afraid to walk upon it. PART ONE (11 min)  PART TWO (7 min)

Cornell Sophomore Carlos Rymer tells Betsy about his school’s contribution to the Campus Climate Challenge taking place all over North America, including a discussion between students and the administration about how higher learning can embrace true sustainability, and build a world where its graduates can thrive. LISTEN (9 min)

Advertising veteran Bob Kantor of the Hanger Network used his experience and his ingenuity to fill the needs that he saw in the marketplace: the need for new marketing opportunities and the problem of all the energy extracted from making wire hangers, and the 3.5 billion of them that end up in landfills. The result of his brainstorming? 100% recycled paper hangers that he promises are stronger and more durable than the wire ones in your closet. And selling adspace on them has made them profitable. LISTEN (10 min)

An actor and environmentalist in equal measure, Ed Begley, Jr. is so far off-grid that he pedals a stationary bike to charge his toaster. Lucky her, actress and comedienne Rachelle Carson is his wife. What does Hollywood do with a stubbornly idealistic husband and his smart & sassy wife? Why, of course, they put their foibles on TV!  Ed and Rachelle join Betsy for a chat about their hilarious new HGTV reality show Living with Ed, and the reality of living the most realistic reality show ever.
PART 1 (11 min) PART 2 (7 min)

Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network gives Betsy the update on Trifigura, the gigantic Dutch oil trader who dumped the toxic waste from our first-world lifestyles onto some of the world’s poorest people in the Ivory Coast, killing ten and sickening thousands. Will Trifigura be brought to justice for profiting off the health of human beings?

Also, Jim talks about the Electronic Waste Ban that some countries have signed on to…..while others have proven reluctant. Everyday these nations refuse is a tragedy, as Jim says that E-Waste amounts to an "Ivory Coast" every day. LISTEN (8 min)

Picture: The Digital Dump

Directors Judith Helfand and Daniel Gold are set to premiere their toxic comedy Everything’s Cool at the Sundance Film Festival next week. You’ll laugh until you cry. Or vice versa. In the film, Helfand and Gold follow some of Global Warming’s highest-profile messengers like Bill McKibben, Heidi Cullen, and Ross Gelbspan to see if they can bridge the almost comical chasm between the threat and our response to it. LISTEN (12 min)

We in the Environmental Movement spend so much of our time focused only on the very literal: soil quality, CAFE standards, international agreements, etc. But what insights might be gleaned from a more artistic perspective on the earth and our place in it? Mia Hanak, Executive Director of the Natural World Museum, tells Betsy how she connected a love for art with her care for the planet, and putting on an exhibit on the world’s biggest stage: The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. LISTEN (11 min)

Gary Cook, US Project Director for Russian nonprofit Baikal Watch, tells Betsy of the environmental horrors perpetrated in the Soviet era, how many environmentalists in Soviet Russia were exiled to Siberia, the beauty of Lake Baikal, and of what has and has not changed since the fall of the Soviet Union. LISTEN (10 min)