Moir’s Environmental Dialogues

Maya K. van Rossum, the Delaware River Keeper and author of the book: The Green Amendment, securing our rights to a healthy environment talks with Rob. It is always an uphill battle to stop polluting. People believe they may do whatever they like on property they own without regard for how their actions harm neighbors and people downstream. When fracking threatened to destroy land and drinking water, Maya van Rossum and other petitioners, successfully made the case that people have rights to clean water and clean habitation in their homes and neighborhoods. They won a watershed legal victory that protected Pennsylvania communities from ruthless frackers. They also launched the Green Amendment movement to affirm as a constitutional right a clean and healthy environment. Maya talks about battles won for clean water and the battles waged today.

St. Johns (FL) Riverkeeper, Lisa Rinaman talks about cleaning the waters of a river once labeled #6 on a list of America’s Ten Most Endangered Rivers. The new State of the Lower St. Johns River Basin Report looks at water quality, fisheries, aquatic life and contaminants. With the link between excess lawn fertilizing and harmful algal blooms established, FL Friendly landscaping ordinances have been implemented. Nutrient levels have declined. Worsening trends are salinity rising, nonnative species increasing, and much habitat loss. Success for Jacksonville’s Manatee Protection Plan. Improved conditions for manatee, bald eagles, and wood stork. Finfish stocks are sustainable. More work to be done on algal blooms, fecal coliform levels, and to improve grass beds. The St. Johns River is no longer one of America’s endangered rivers and is improving as an amenity for Florida.

Tom Sanders with the Worldly Adventures of Archibold Clutterbuck and Friends talks with Rob about a new homeschooling education program featuring endangered wildlife teetering on the brink of either survival or extinction. To learn more about tigers of the sea known as bluefin tuna, educators and students are invited to visit the Ocean River Institutes page webpage. Tom presents an innovative and engaging education program. Rob describes why save the infamous orangutan, rhinos and pangolin, as well as the giant ibis of Cambodia. The saiga antelope has a nose that reminds one of Gonzo the Muppet, suffered a disease outbreak in 2015 and may now have the distinction of being the most endangered mammal. Just as rare, the saola has straight horns that remind locals of “spinning wheel posts” was only discovered by scientists in 1992. Tune in for life histories of seven endangered species that may soon be gone.

This week ORI Intern Morgan Berman and Rob focus on the element that makes up all life: carbon. Excessive carbon in the atmosphere is the driver of climate change. First, we talk with Ed Smith, Head of Carbon at Indigo Ag, a budding agricultural technology company. Ed speaks about Indigo’s newly-announced Terraton Initiative, which is garnering global attention and local business in our native city of Boston. Indigo Carbon is a two-pronged program, using seed microbiology and artificial intelligence, to reduce atmospheric carbon. Ed explains how anyone and everyone can educate themselves on carbon capture and carbon markets. Next, David Wagner, environmentalist and former energy consultant, explains the workings of utilities and the electric grid. He provides helpful tips for homeowners about peak usage. Efficiency is the name of the game in the energy sector. Energy conservation is often more than half of the battle. The importance of efficiency and new approaches to carbon management becomes clear when the two talk about carbon emissions. Capturing carbon and reducing emissions are the ways to a more sustainable future.

This week on Moir's Environmental Dialogues Morgan and Jessie speak with two environmentalists from different perspectives. First, they speak with Carla Giannattasio who works for Hilton International on their Corporate Responsibility Team. Carla speaks about her experience working with smaller nonprofits in comparison to the larger corporate atmosphere of which she is currently a part and explains what she has learned so far from her post. Next, Jessie and Morgan Speak with Melissa Shackleton Dann who has held several varied positions in the environmental realm. Melissa speaks about strategy and how she has worked to bring attention to the holes of environmental coverage.

On this week’s program, Jessie and Morgan host two guests to discuss issues of food access from different perspectives. Erica Satin Hernandez, Coordinator at Shape-Up Somerville, speaks with interns Morgan and Jessie this week on the radio show about many of the wonderful initiatives in the works to offer healthy options to residents of Somerville. Erica discusses her trajectory through the food security world, and talks about the intersectional nature of tackling community health initiatives. This weekend is the first weekend of Shape-Up’s Mobile Market, a traveling farmers market put on by the city aimed at offering fresh produce in an accessible way. The Mobile Market, in addition to being accessible in its location (which moves 4x a week) is also fully available to all people in the city receiving nutritional assistance. For more information on Shape-Up’s programs, visit their site: https://www.somervillema.gov/departments/health-and-human-services/shape-somerville. Charlotte Mondale is a senior at Tufts who just finished a 5 month long semester examining the dynamics of food security and food systems in four different continents. Charlotte sat down with Morgan and Jessie to discuss the relationship between the environment and climate change, food justice, the role of colonization, agriculture policy, and global governance structures on food security. We discussed the erasure native foods and how globalization affects availability of certain foods. Do you believe that GMOs are harmful or beneficial? Tune in to hear more about the debate between climate change, food and economic security, and GMOs.

Sea scallops have black eyes and bay scallops are blue-eyed. Skylar Bayer describes the survival strategies of bay and sea scallops in Maine. Bryce Stewart tells of the life of king and queen scallops in Scotland. Young king scallops wear byssus threads to hold onto to high-rise hardscapes. Adolescent scallops loose the threads to become remarkably active, out maneuvering crabs at the click of a claw. Adult scallops settle in to a low-profile couch-potato lifestyle on ocean floors where the sediments are not too fine or pebbles too big. Skylar reveals the truths behind the story of two buckets of scallop gonads lost during a hand-off outside a convenience store on Mount Desert. Flyers of missing scallop parts went up and out to media. Journalists from the Colbert Report traveled to the far-flung lobster state and were shocked by what they imaged – an obsessed woman with diabolical intentions to take over the world by doing science from her laboratory.

Rupert Read and Alison Green talk with Rob about a new movement of rabble-rousers speaking truth to power, out of the UK, calling all to address Climate Change, to action to avert the climate crisis affecting us all, and to put off the Anthropocene extinction. The Extinction Rebellion is an international social movement that aims to drive radical change, through nonviolent resistance, in order to avert climate breakdown and minimize the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse. We’ll call on governments to tell the truth about the climate and wider ecological emergency, reverse inconsistent policies, and to enact legally binding policy measures to cut back on all luxuries, eliminate waste, and to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025.

Paul Holthus talks about saving the ocean by bringing industries and corporations together to form the World Ocean Council. Paul will tell us about some of the international ocean conservation issues the Council is working on, including adaptations for climate change, port waste facilities, plastic pollution, biodiversity in international waters, mineral mining, environmental impact statements in vast ocean areas, marine spatial planning, and responsible management of the Arctic’s Northwest Passage. That diverse corporations can work in concert together is remarkable and how Paul helped to bring this about is of interest to communities of all sizes.

Swedish Climate Change Activist Greta Thunberg with Dad, Svante, and Marten Thorslund, We Don’t Have Time spoke at UN Conference in Poland. Greta holds adults responsible for stealing the future of children to live in luxury. Svante tells of the changes his family had to make in response to the crisis. Marten tells of finding and interviewing Greta before the Parliament House with a black and white cardboard sign “School Strike for Climate.” Rob Moir tells of their time together in Katowice presents their words on two panel presentations. Plus Greta's private talk to the UN Secretary.