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Your Planet, Your Health

By: Ralph Levinson & Luc Lewitanski
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  • Summary

  • "Your Planet, Your Health" strives to summarise the science behind earth's climate and our existence on it – Our aims are to contextualise the history of discourses and ideas about the environment and to debunk misinformation – We share positive stories, and explore the knowledge and tools that we can use to be good earthlings. This podcast on planetary health is hosted by Ralph Levinson, MD Health Sciences Professor (emeritus) School of Medicine, UCLA, and Luc Lewitanski, a journalist covering technology, politics and power. Planetary health is about how the environment affects us and the people and the beauty in the world we love. Read more at https://www.planetaryhealthforbusypeople.com/
    © Luc Lewitanski
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Episodes
  • The Lawn Con: Manufactured Conformity

    The Lawn Con: Manufactured Conformity
    Jun 3 2024
    In this episode, Ralph and Luc unpack how Americans got so obsessed with maintaining square green carpets on their front yards. We dive into the history to trace back the origins and dissemination of this artificial aesthetic. We also look into solutions, ranging from bans on gas leaf blowers to cash schemes to encourage people to quit their lawn.We read a poem about the lunacy of leaf blowers, and highlight ways in which manicured suburban imported lawn grass is a synecdoche for colonialism. You can also watch this episode on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-l1JO3FbzEChapters:00:00 Introduction: Local bans on gas-powered lawn equipment01:48 Poem about leaf blowers by Touch Moonflower03:59 Commenting on the poem06:51 How did lawns become so common in the USA?07:56 Versailles' green carpet and Italian Renaissance landscapes inspired the British lawn18:59 How 18th Century aristocratic English turf grass took root on the new continent21:53 Thorstein Veblen on why American elites found lawns so respectable24:10 Founding fathers disseminate the pastoral ideal27:05 Planning communities of continuous lawn: Andrew Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted32:03 Frank J. Scott tells suburbanites that homogenous manicured grass is neighbourly34:48 How the lawn got cemented into the American imaginary in the aftermath of World War II37:16 Post WWII suburban developments empowered Home Owners Associations (HOAs)41:01 Quantifying the environmental impacts of modern US lawns45:47 Why imported turf grass is a synecdoche for colonialism50:40 Carpets of grass are fuel that spreads wildfires51:38 Gas powered leaf blowers are huge polluters55:00 How loud are leaf blowers?55:51 Lawn care is a Sisyphean task of sterilisation57:53 Norms around lawns are socially enforced59:59 What solutions have helped people quit their lawn?1:09:50 Conclusion and wrap up: the zeitgeist is shifting!1:11:50 Luc's cover of "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni MitchellSources:• Ann Leighton, American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century, 1986. • Michael Pollan, “Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns”, The New York Times Magazine, May 1989.• Georges Teyssot, The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life, 1999.• Monique Mosser, The saga of grass: From the heavenly carpet to fallow fields, 1999.• Cristina Milesi, “More Lawns than Irrigated Corn”, NASA Earth Observatory, November 2005. • Paul Robbins, Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are, 2007.• Ted Steinberg, American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn, 2007.• Elizabeth Kolbert, “Turf War”, The New Yorker, July 2008. • Joseph Manca, "British landscape gardening and Italian renaissance painting", Artibus et Historiae (297-322), 2015.• Jamie Banks and Robert McConnell, National Emissions from Lawn and Garden Equipment, Environmental Protection Agency, April 2015.• Christopher Ingraham, “Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them”, The Washington Post, August 2015.
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • How Diplomacy Closed The Ozone Hole

    How Diplomacy Closed The Ozone Hole
    Apr 14 2024
    In this episode, Ralph and Luc spotlight an environmental success story: the Montreal Protocol's role in healing the ozone layer. We draw comparisons to the pitfalls of the IPCC's COP process and try to derive a diplomatic blueprint for climate policy. We look into the science of how ozone and chlorine works in the stratosphere, the history of the activist scientists (Sherwood Roland and Mario Molina) who first sounded the alarm about CFC's destruction of the ozone layer, and the work of technocrats in devising their replacement. We also examine the geopolitical dynamics that were foundational to this planetary victory. You can also watch this episode on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlz8O0_fkh4 Sources: • We sample clips from the 2019 PBS documentary Ozone Hole: How We Saved the Planet, written and directed by Jamie Lochhead — notably interviews with Mario Molina, Joan Roland (widow of Sherwood), Lee Thomas (administrator at the EPA), Crispin Tickell (adviser to Margaret Thatcher) and Bob Watson (NASA). https://www.pbs.org/show/ozone-hole-how-we-saved-planet/ • We also sample clips from this 2021 interview with Susan Solomon (the atmospheric chemist who demonstrated CFC’s impact on ozone) and Stephen Andersen (leader of the Montreal Protocol and co-chair of its Technology and Economic Assessment Panel), by the Future of Life Institute, in which they share their roles in the closing of zone hole.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hwh-uDo-6A • We cite elements from the 1998 book Ozone Diplomacy: New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet, by Richard Elliot Benedick. • We cite the 2002 book Ozone Connections: Expert Networks in Global Environmental Governance, by Penelope Canan and Nancy Reichman. • We cite the 2019 book The Ozone Layer: From Discovery to Recovery, by Guy P. Brasseur. • We cite the 2021 Nature article The Montreal Protocol protects the terrestrial carbon sink, by Paul J. Young, Anna B. Harper, Chris Huntingford, Nigel D. Paul, Olaf Morgenstern, Paul A. Newman, Luke D. Oman, Sasha Madronich & Rolando R. Garcia.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03737-3 • We refer to insights from the 2021 book Cut Super Climate Pollutants Now!: The Ozone Treaty’s Urgent Lessons for Speeding Up Climate Action, by Alan Miller, Durwood Zaelke and Stephen Andersen. • We also cite from the 2023 book 35th Anniversary of Protecting the Ozone Layer, by Marco Gonzalez and Stephen Andersen. Read more at: https://ozone.unep.org/ozone-timeline and https://csl.noaa.gov/assessments/ozone/2022/downloads/twentyquestions.pdfChapters:0:00:00 Introduction: COP 28 Wrap-up0:02:49 Science of the Ozone Layer0:04:30 History of CFCs: Thomas Midgely’s invention and subsequent uses (1930s)0:08:21 Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina’s Research shows CFCs' dangers for ozone (1970s)0:17:42 Consumer Boycott of CFCs: All in The Family0:24:05 Consumer Boycott of CFCs: children’s Entertainment led Mc Donald’s to change its packaging from foam to cardboard0:29:51 Sherwood Rowland coins the term “ozone hole”0:32:04 Ozone concentrations in the Antarctic were so low that the scientists thought it was a measurement error0:33:53 Susan Solomon’s model explains how CFCs caused the ozone hole (1980s)0:38:18 Scientists fly an airplane into the ozone hole0:39:31 Global Diplomacy: First Framework, the Vienna Convention (1985): a modest start0:40:45 Global Diplomacy: The Montreal Protocol’s "start and strengthen" amendment process0:46:51 Geopolitics of the Montreal Protocol - comparing nations' relation to CFC production in the 1980s0:59:51 Global Diplomacy: Stephen Anderson on the effectiveness of involving engineers to work on replacements (industry released their patents)1:04:34 Stephen Andersen presents technological innovations that came as the fruit of his Technology and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP) and why it worked1:17:31 Ronald Reagan's Administration contained factions that disagreed on whether to act on ozone1:22:50 Margaret Thatcher's surprisingly collaborative response1:25:21 2016 Kigali Amendment bans HFCs - the Montreal Protocol takes on greenhouse gases1:32:11 World avoided scenarios: How effective has this process been? What do we estimate would have happened otherwise?1:37:33 Comparing what worked with ozone to the climate change movement: distinctions between Montreal Protocol and COP and lessons to learn1:47:01 Closing Phytoplankton Song
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    1 hr and 49 mins
  • Talking Climate with Conservatives

    Talking Climate with Conservatives
    Feb 12 2024

    In this episode, Ralph and Luc chat with Michael Jefferies, Regional Conservative Outreach Coordinator for the Citizens' Climate Lobby. Together, we get out of our filter bubbles and find some common ground.

    We discuss Michael's faith-based journey on climate issues, bipartisan proposals on issues ranging from a carbon tax ("Carbon Fees and Dividends") and import tariffs, along with strategies to communicate about the environment to conservatives.

    We also listen to excerpts from former Senator Bob Inglis talking about his experience as a pro-climate Republican.

    We hear a political advertisement recorded by Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi together on a couch back in 2008.

    We read excerpts of:
    • Dorothy Sayers' "Why Work?" speech from 1942 and
    • Pope Francis' "Laudato si'" encyclical from 2015.

    If you'd like to connect with the Citizens' Climate Lobby, you can find them at:
    https://cclusa.org/join

    Chapters:
    0:00:00 Introducing our guest, Michael Jeffries, Citizen Climate Lobby's Regional Conservative Outreach Coordinator
    0:02:00 What Michael heard about climate change growing up in a conservative household (Rush Limbaugh)
    0:05:38 How Dorothy L. Sayers' "Why Work?" WW2 speech got Michael to consider prioritising nature over growth from a Christian lens
    0:13:10 From Saint Francis of Assisi to Pope Francis' Laudato Si: We are Nature
    0:17:41 Michael's climate journey: Campus activism
    0:19:55 How Michael started working at Citizens' Climate Lobby on pro-climate legislation with Indiana's very conservative senator Mike Braun
    0:26:04 Bipartisan Bills with major climate provisions that passed under the Biden administration: Infrastructure and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act, the Growing Climate Solutions Act
    0:29:31 The PROVE It Act: getting the DOE to measure emissions worldwide
    0:33:42 Carbon Tax: the French example of "Gilets jaunes": what went wrong to cause the yellow vest protest against it?
    0:36:02 Carbon pricing: Citizens' Climate Lobby's proposal for a carbon fee and dividend
    0:44:04 Republicans are scared of getting primaried for introducing a carbon tax
    0:46:59 Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi's couch commercial for climate action
    0:48:02 How Republican Congressman Bob Ingliss lost his primary to Trew Gowdy after the Koch Brothers shifted their funding
    0:52:41 The Bob Ingliss Mixtape: clips of former congressman talking about climate issues
    0:59:12 How the climate discourse got polarised and stopped being a bipartisan issue
    1:02:32 Michael's approach when talking to a conservative audience about climate
    1:05:05 Wrap up: Michael Jeffries points out the contradiction of incremental fixes being insufficient to grapple with the issues of degrowth that moved him in the first place
    1:08:11 Outro: Ralph and Luc briefly debrief the interview
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    1 hr and 11 mins
Earth Sciences
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