 1/21/10,
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Gather up agricultural leftovers, blast them with pyrolysis (high heat, low oxygen), and what you get is a crumbly, black matter that could save the world. Making biochar generates clean energy, and at the same time sequesters carbon dioxide in a charcoal-like substance that just happens to work fertile wonders on crops and gardens. Jason Aramburu is the young whit behind Re:Char, a fledgling startup developing micro-scale reactors, which he hopes to see pumping out biochar on every continent. (He also provided TreeHugger with a special report on mountaintop removal last June.) Jason was a Social Innovation Fellow at this year's Pop!Tech conference, which is where we caught up with him and got the scoop on biochar and his new venture.
Special thanks to Pop!Tech for making this interview possible.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump...
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1/8/10,
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 Image: Casajuntoalrio
Willie Smits long ago abandoned the customary role of the microbiologist. After working in the Indonesian rainforest for three decades (and marrying a tribal queen), he has taken it upon himself to regrow the delicate ecosystems ravaged by ruthless forestry, save the orangutans (OrangutanOutreach.org) and invent a hi-tech system for harvesting sustainable ethanol from sugar palms (without even cutting down the plant, or "harvesting its organs," as he puts it).
Indonesia is now the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses and the largest producer of palm oil, a dubious substance that ends up as ethanol and cheap food additives. Smits' alternative not only produces sustainable ethanol, but dries food, pumps out clean energy and water, and offers satellite telecommunications to local farmers.
Special thanks to Pop!Tech for making this interview possible.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
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12/24/09,
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The climate summit in Denkmark, known as Cop15, has drawn to a cloudy close. Now it's time to try and make sense of what actually happened, who did what, and how the results will shape our troubled relationship with the planetary climate. This week, two of our corespondents talk with TreeHugger Radio about what they saw in Copenhagen. Alex Pasternack reports on what took place within the tense summit meetings, and focuses special attention on the weighty role played by China (Alex has lived in Beijing at length). April Streeter reflects on what went on around the summit amid the swirling buzz of NGOs, activists, and other climate pilgrims. She also tells us about some of the inspiring demonstration projects, like the Copenhagen Wheel, that were unveiled, and describes the not-altogether-friendly interactions between police and demonstrators.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
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12/17/09,
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Not your typical architecture firm, Sheila Kennedy and her cohorts at KVA MATx are stripping apart the built environment and reassembling it with an eye for flexibility. Her vision: a world of distributed power in which solar potential is woven into the fabric of daily life, from high design in Germany to African tailors and boda-bodas (bicycle taxis). Her malleable solar light technology, dubbed the Portable Light Project, is already out there, meshing with local need and know-how to bring renewable energy into diverse niches of the world. She spoke with TreeHugger Radio about FLAP (Flexible Light And Power--a collaboration with Timbuk2 that turned goers of the Pop!Tech conference into beta testers), her vision for the "Soft House," and the future of design.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump.
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12/3/09,
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When people describe their first time seeing mountaintop removal coal mining, the response is invariably the same: dropped jaws and sunken hearts. Along with her prolific work in film and television (ER, Raising the Bar), Gloria Reuben is a tireless backer of clean energy, global public health, and climate sanity. She talks with TreeHugger Radio about the myth of clean coal, the grim tale of mountaintop removal, and her hopes for Copenhagen.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download. Music from Stars.
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11/26/09,
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 Image: Local Motors
Here's how it works: designers submit their concepts online, the community votes, then Local Motors works with the winners to bring these cars to life. This process, says founder Jay Rogers, has more in common with the way Mozilla makes Firefox and American Idol picks stars than the way Detroit has traditionally made automobiles. Rogers tells TreeHugger Radio about the first crowdsourced car, the Rally Fighter, and what Local Motors can mean for sustainability.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download. Special thanks to the Pop!Tech conference for helping arrange this interview.
Full text after the jump.
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11/12/09,
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A healthy and high-tech green collar economy has been a great promise of the Obama administration. On the front lines of the fight to create green jobs and spur the economy is the Apollo Alliance, an amalgam of labor, business, and environmental groups. Jerome Ringo, President of Apollo, speaks with TreeHugger Radio about his group's "moonshot mission," the vitriol of Glenn Beck and Fox News, the resignation of Van Jones, and the role of African Americans in the climate fight.
Ringo was a keynote speaker at this year's Bioneers conference, and we thank the conference organizers for helping arrange this interview.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download. Full text is available after the jump.
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10/29/09,
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Amanda Little built a journalistic career decrying the pains and convulsions of our petrol-obsessed society, but it wasn't until she embarked on a very personal quest did the story of oil become illuminated in human terms. Amanda tells TreeHugger Radio how, to write her first book, Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells--Our Ride to the Renewable Future, she went inside the Pentagon and the Talladega Superspeedway, visited corn farmers and rode along with T. Boone Pickens, witnessed a boob job and landed on a Gulf Coast oil rig. Through it all, she learned a new-found respect for the hydrocarbon, and a renewed vision for a green future.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Also check out our text interview in which Amanda talks about her recent move to Nashville.
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10/15/09,
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 Photo: George Whiteside
Margaret Atwood is one of the most respected authors of our time, with dozens of books of poetry and fiction to her name, among them Cat's Eye, The Handmaid's Tale, and Oryx and Crake. Her latest book, The Year of the Flood, is set in a fallen future: society has crumbled, climate change and pandemics ravage the planet, and people are forced to rediscover their relationship with the land. Miss Atwood chats with TreeHugger about the God's Gardeners (the book's rooftop-gardening eco cult), her pantheon of ecological saints, and the greening of her book tour and her own life. (Our apologies for the sound quality--we did our best.)
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download. Music from Piers Faccini.
Full text after the jump.
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10/8/09,
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If, in the United States, you happen to decided you'd like to earn your PhD in chemistry, you may notice that at no point are you required to take a course in toxicology. This is partly the reason we're now being assaulted by a growing mob of dangerous substances as they float through our oceans and bloodstreams. So says science journalist Elizabeth Grossman whose new book, Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, is a sleuth job into the world of synthetic estrogens, carcinogens, nanoparticles, and other man-made poisons that may be making us fat, angry, stupid, and dead.
Listen to the podcast of our interview with Elizabeth Grossman via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Music credit: Stereolab
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9/25/09,
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It wasn't easy. In fact, Newsweek's Deputy Editor Kathy Deveny admits that if she knew how hard it would be, she probably wouldn't have. But what's done is done: Newsweek spent more than a year vetting the 500 biggest companies in America and ranking them from greenest to brownest. Deveny breaks down the grueling process for us, explaining why the winners won and the losers lost.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
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9/11/09,
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The world has been watching Colin Beavan--better known as No Impact Man--for some time. Now, his year of no-impact living at an end, he is sharing the ups and downs, the laughter and nail-biting, and all the lessons that came from what The New York Times dubbed "the year without toilet paper." No Impact Man is now a film, a book, and a nonprofit (NoImpactProject.org), and the critics are scurrying about trying to make sense of it all.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Music credit: Andrew Bird
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9/9/09,
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Bill McKibben (author of Deep Economy and The End of Nature) is the man behind 350.org, the campaign to convince the world that we aren't safe until global carbon dioxide levels are down to 350 parts per million. In the run-up to major climate talks in Copenhagen, the author-turned-organizer has orchestrated what he hopes will be the largest day of climate action in history, complete with scuba divers in the Maldives and monks in Tibet.
McKibben talks with TreeHugger about the recent good news from the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and about one of his greatest challenges to date: being a guest on The Colbert Report.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Music credit: Dengue Fever
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9/4/09,
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The thing they call the "Amazonian Chernobyl" is deep in the Ecuadorian rainforest where decades of oil drilling have left a noxious trail of saturated soil, tainted water, and inky black pits of sludge. Crude, the latest documentary from acclaimed director Joe Berlinger, tells the tale of the brave lawyer, Pablo Fajardo, once an oil field worker himself, as he fights to make Chevron, the fifth largest corporation in the world, take responsibility.
For more, take a look at our interview with Pablo Fajardo and Luiz Yanza, who were awarded the 2008 Goldman Prize for their work on the case against Chevron.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download. Full text after the jump.
Music credit: DJ Shadow
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8/27/09,
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In the second part of our interview, Daniel Goleman elaborates on how our ecological intelligence is woefully lacking, but points us toward technological tools that can up our IQ. GoodGuide, one of his favorites, offers a database of ratings on everything from food to toys. Goleman hopes shoppers will whip out the iPhone and do their research before voting with their dollars.
The first installment of our interview can be found here.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
(Music from Casey Driessen)
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8/20/09,
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Even those of you with good, green intentions are being pretty much ineffective as you grope toward a hazy green mirage. Why? Your ecological intelligence—your knowledge of the real impacts of the things you buy and do—is pitifully low. Daniel Goleman is the author of the mega best-selling Emotional Intelligence, a psychologist, and a New York Times science contributor. His newest book, Ecological Intelligence, is a look behind the veil at the true cost of what we buy.
More of Goleman's in-depth conversations with his experts can he found here.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
(Music from Casey Driessen)
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8/13/09,
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The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is at work all over the world, but you’ll know Paul Watson best for patrolling Arctic waters intercepting whaling convoys. Whale Wars, now in its second season on Animal Planet, follows Watson and his feisty crew aboard the Steve Irwin as they ram boats, hurl stink bombs, and try to otherwise spoil the whale hunt. In the process, Watson claims he has been shot and his crew pummeled with fire hoses, golf balls, and high-tech sound cannons. All the while the debate rages over whether this is terrorism, piracy, or heroism.
In our interview, Watson gives details of these daring encounters and drops some details of the coming season when his fleet will add the Earthrace, a record-breaking eco-speedboat, to directly intercept Japanese harpoon boats. Love him or hate him, Watson claims to be closing in on victory: “Our objective is to sink the Japanese whaling fleet economically, and I think we're achieving that. One more season, maybe two, and we'll put them out of business.”
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Music from K'naan (Full text after the jump)
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8/6/09,
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After hosting This Old House for more than a decade, Steve Thomas is now your green building guide on Planet Green TV's Renovation Nation. Steve shares with us some of the crazier things he's done on the show, talks about greenwashing in the industry, and elucidates his "five rings" of green building wisdom. He also lets us in on his plans for two exciting personal projects he's got in the works (don't tell his wife!).
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump.
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7/27/09,
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Norman Ollestad was eleven when the plane carrying him and three others, his father among them, collided with a blizzard-enshrouded mountain. After a nine hour descent, inching his way down frozen cliffs, he was the only survivor.
In Ollestad`s best-selling Crazy for the Storm, he tells the story of the crash, cutting away each chaper to the many interactions with nature, like surfing and backcountry skiing, that he and his dare-devil father shared. In our interview, Ollestad tells us how the crash that shaped his life only brought him closer to the natural world.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
Full text after the jump. Music from Chris Scruggs.
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7/23/09,
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 Image via Saatchi and Saatchi S
Greenwashing, says Adam Werbach, has run its course and is on the verge of finally dying off. This message comes from the citadel of green marketing, Saatchi & Saatchi S, of which Werbach is now chief. The death of greenwashing comes with the rise of radical transparency: "either your become transparent or transparency will be done to you," says Werbach in our interview. This is the theme of his new book, Strategy for Sustainability, Building Sustainable Businesses in Turbulent Times. He dissects this and more in the second part of our conversation.
Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.
You can find part one of our interview with Adam here.
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