Crosswinds: The Cost of Coal
In this week’s show, we take a look at the health, environmental and financial costs of coal that fall to people living near the mines, rail lines and ports used for its export. With the help of our partner podcast Crosswinds, we meet three impacted communities along a railroad connecting coal mines in West Virginia to ports on the East Coast. And we’ll hear how that rail infrastructure was built on the forced labor of...
East Orosi’s Long Struggle for Water Part 2: The Role of Community Utility Districts
In Part 1 of our series on water in the Central Valley of California we visited a town called East Orosi, which has been fighting for clean water for over 20 years. This week we turn our attention to their sewage system, which is also falling apart. Why has it been so difficult for East Orosi to get clean drinking water and fix its sewage problems? To answer that question we take a look at the entities that run things like sewage and...
East Orosi’s Struggle for Clean Drinking Water
East Orosi hasn’t had safe drinking water in over 20 years. The water is full of nitrates, runoff from industrial agriculture, which is harmful to human health. The community has taken action to find a solution, from lobbying at the state capital to working with neighboring towns. And they may finally have one. New California laws, passed in the last five years, have opened up funding to build water infrastructure in small...
The Promise and Peril of Geoengineering
As we head into an ever warming world, some experts and politicians are embracing a possible solution to climate change called geoengineering. Theoretically geoengineering could slow down climate change, stop it, and maybe even remove carbon from the air. It sounds like the perfect answer in for a global political system that just can’t stop burning fossil fuels even if it kills us all. However, it might not be the easy fix...
Whose Point Reyes? Indigenous History and Public Lands
Dive into the history of Point Reyes National Seashore in northern California with us. It’s one of the most iconic national parks in the region, known for rugged sweeping beaches and the famous tule elk. We’ll recount the waves of colonization that violently upended the lives of the Coast Miwok peoples who lived there – and one Indigenous woman’s struggle to preserve her family history. The story of Point Reyes is a...
The Rest of the Story: Indigenous Resistance
In this episode, we revisit two stories concerning indigenous rights we’ve covered in the past. In the first half, Rebecca Nagle joins us to discuss the Supreme Court decision to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act and why the legitimacy of the law is so important to tribal sovereignty. We also talk about the right’s legal strategy in the last few decades and what that means for decisions at the Supreme Court. In the...
