Podcast appearances and mentions of eric sorensen

House Agriculture Committee members will have a lengthy markup next week to find the instructed $230 billion in budget reconciliation savings. Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., explains Democrats' opposition to nutrition cuts and the scrubbing of the term "climate" at USDA.Then, former USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie discusses downsizing at the agency and Angela Rachidi from the American Enterprise Institute outlines proposed SNAP cuts in reconciliation.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

Congressman Eric Sorensen, representing Illinois' 17 district, talksabout his major accomplishments in the House of Representatives, hisdiscussions with area farmers on the climate issue, the Farm Bill, andmore.

Illinois Congressman Eric Sorensen talks to Joan Esposito. The first-term Democrat, who represents the 17th District, is seeking re-election on November 5.  His district is one of the congressional battlegrounds that could determine which party holds the majority in the next Congress. Visit Eric Sorensen's campaign website: https://www.ericforillinois.com. Catch "Joan Esposito: Live, Local and Progressive" weekdays from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Central on WCPT (heartlandsignal.com/wcpt820).

Congressman Sorensen discusses the recent situation in Macomb, the Farm Bill, a recent Town Hall discussion, and more on the WRAM Morning Show.

This morning, Greg and Dan welcomed Congressman Eric Sorensen of Illinois' 17th Congressional District.   In the interview, the Congressman is asked many questions about his perspective about his district and the country. Congressman Sorensen answers a variety of questions for our listeners about a variety of topics from the Farm Bill, Infrastructure, Affordability, his Constituency, and many more. The Congressman also shares his personal experiences and perspective on his tenure in Congress and what he hopes to accomplish throughout his career in Congress.   To support the Congressman's campaign visit ericforillinois.com, and for all his congressional duties visit sorensen.house.gov.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We discuss a deer nuisance meeting in Schuyler County with Schuyler County Farm Bureau President Chris Vogler.  We talk about Lock and Dam funding with U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen. We get an update with the Illinois Ag Leadership Foundation. DTN ag meteorologist John Baranick details cooler weather this week.  

President Biden chose not to run for reelection and endorsed Kamala Harris. Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., discusses what a Harris presidency could mean for agriculture.Then, Mike Stranz with NFU and Ethan Lane with NCBA share their thoughts on The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 agriculture and nutrition proposals being implemented in a Trump-Vance presidency.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

Congressman Eric Sorensen joined WRAM's Vanessa Wetterling on the WRAM Morning Show.

On Thursday, May 30, 2024, Congressman Eric Sorensen (IL-17) visited Monmouth to announce around $1 million in funding towards lead water service line replacements in Monmouth. Sorensen spoke with WRAM's Kailey Foster about the project as well as discussed the latest updates on the Farm Bill.

Congressman Sorensen discusses funding packages for Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel, talks technology, the Rock Island Arsenal, the Farm Bill, an upcoming trip to the Border, and more on the WRAM Morning Show.

Congressman Sorensen on the WRAM Morning Show.

Judge Joe McGraw is running for Congress in the Illinois 17th District. Judge McGraw is on the ballot on Tuesday, March 19th, running opposite Scott Crowl for the Republican nomination. The winner between McGraw and Crowl will face off against Congressman Eric Sorensen in November. Judge McGraw joined Wake Up Tri-Counties on Friday, March 15th, 2024, to talk about his trips to the southern border, his endorsements by members of law enforcement, and what he would like to see happen if he were elected to Congress in the 17th District. 

The Greg and Dan Show welcomes Congressman Eric Sorensen of the 17th Congressional District in Illinois to talk about his campaign for reelection. Sorensen discusses the increase of tribalized politics between both political parties, a potential TikTok ban and the obligation to protect the country's data, where the next farm bill stands, and the push for ethanol.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eric Sorensen, U.S. Representative from Illinois's 17th Congressional District, on the WRAM Morning Show.

Etta La Flora, one of the organizers for the Kewanee Community Black History Extravaganza, joined Wake Up Tri-Counties on Wednesday to talk about Black History Month and organizing this celebration of Black History in Kewanee. Among the guests expected to attend the Community Black History Extravaganza are Kewanee Mayor Gary Moore, members of the Kewanee City Council, Representative Travis Weaver, State Senator Neil Anderson, and Congressman Eric Sorensen. And the Wethersfield High School Choir is set to perform. Everyone is invited to attend the Kewanee Community Black History Celebration on Sunday, February 18th, 2024, beginning at 2 PM at First Congregational Church located at 224 West Prospect Street in Kewanee. 

The federal government convened a national summit to combat the growing problem of auto thefts in Canada. ‘The West Block' guest host Eric Sorensen interviews Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc about the jurisdictional roadblocks in tackling organized car thefts, possible new penalties for repeat car thieves, and more. Plus, Sorensen is joined by Canada's Ambassador to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman to discuss the ‘Team Canada' strategy, preparations for a possible Donald Trump re-election, and concerns over PM Trudeau's anti-MAGA rhetoric.

Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-IL) joined Cat Oriel on “Forbes Newsroom” to discuss being the first meteorologist in Congress in 50 years, being the first openly gay Congressman from Illinois, the need for bipartisan solutions on the southern border and his support for President Biden in 2024.Stay ConnectedForbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.comForbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbesForbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbesForbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbesMore From Forbes: http://forbes.comForbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Following the Canadian Medical Association's calls for urgent political action to fix the crisis in Canada's emergency rooms, ‘The West Block' guest host Eric Sorensen speaks with Health Minister Mark Holland about how his government is addressing the issue. Minister Holland also discusses Ontario's plan for more private health-care clinics and safeguarding Canada's medication supply. Plus, Sorensen sits down with Jonathan Madison, a Republican strategist, and Sarada Peri, former senior speechwriter to former U.S. president Barack Obama, to discuss the political stakes of the 2024 U.S. presidential race, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's concerns over a possible Donald Trump re-election, and more.

Concerns in the Middle East are rising following U.S. and U.K. targeted airstrikes on Houthi-linked sites in Yemen. These airstrikes come as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wraps up his latest tour of the region. ‘The West Block' guest host Eric Sorensen speaks with Frank Lowenstein, a former U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, on the implications of the U.S.-led strikes on Houthi sites, the White House's diplomacy in the region, and the next stages of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Plus, Sorensen sits down with a panel of doctors, Dr. Kathleen Ross (Canadian Medical Association) and Dr. Trevor Jain (Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians), to discuss the issue of lengthy ER wait times, how politicians should address the crisis, and more.

US Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-17) looks back on his first year in Congress and talks about bipartisanship, the economy, climate, AI and much more.

The federal government made a push for housing in its fall economic statement, while attempting to show some fiscal restraint. ‘The West Block' guest host Eric Sorensen speaks with Treasury Board President Anita Anand about the government's housing measures, the federal debt, spending cuts, and defence funding. Plus, Sorensen is joined by The Globe and Mail's Ottawa Bureau Chief Bob Fife and Toronto Star's parliamentary reporter Stephanie Levitz to break down the political reaction to the economic update, fallout over a vote on the updated Canada-Ukraine trade deal, and more.

As part of our focus on the Quad Cities, we talked with Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-IL17) who has endured to House Speakers in his first term. 

Today's DriveTime features comments from Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., on crop insurance and USDA Trade Undersecretary Alexis Taylor on trade relationships with Chile.

As Congress rushes to fund the government, Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., discusses the potential impact a government shutdown could have on America's farmers, ranchers, and consumers. Plus, he dives deeper into climate policy and what the dialog could look like in the upcoming farm bill.Then, USDA Trade Undersecretary Alexis Taylor joins from Santiago, Chile, to discuss the most recent trade mission and potential new U.S. trading relationships.Want to receive Newsmakers in your inbox every week? Sign up! http://eepurl.com/hTgSAD

Remembering the life of Tony Bennett; Congressman Eric Sorensen talks career path and climate change; Jenny Han talks season 2 of hit Prime Video show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the weekend!This is Stephen Colbert from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I'm here with your update for Saturday, June 10th, and Sunday, June 11th, 2023.According to the National Weather Service, Saturday will be Partly sunny, with a high near 82. There'll be a 50% chance of rain, particularly after 4pm, including a chance of thunderstorms, increasing to a chance of 80 percent in the evening. Saturday night will have a low of 60.Sunday there's a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1pm with a chance of thunderstorms before 10am. After that it'll be partly sunny, with a high near 74 with a low of 49 Sunday evening.Iowa could pay millions more than budgeted to help families pay for private schoolHundreds more Iowans than anticipated have applied for a new state-funded private school financial assistance program. More than 15,500 applications had been submitted for the state's new education savings account program to receive thousands of dollars to pay their students' private school costs, according to the Iowa Department of Education.And Iowans have more than 20 days left yet to apply.While lawmakers set aside more than $107 million for the program in its first year, as with public school funding, “the appropriation from the Legislature is a standing unlimited appropriation,” said Heather Doe, communications director for the Iowa Department of Education.“All approved ESAs will be funded,” Doe responded in an email.She did not respond Friday to a follow up message asking how the state would pay for additional scholarships beyond what lawmakers had budgeted and where those dollars would come from.Ahead of 2008 Iowa flood anniversary, Hinson introduces flood mitigation billAhead of the 15-year anniversary of the historic 2008 flood, Iowa Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, of Marion, introduced a bipartisan bill to improve flood and drought mitigation through existing federal conservation programs.Introduced along with Democratic Illinois U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, of Moline, the bill seeks to provide communities with resources to protect against flooding, by amending the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Regional Conservation Partnership Program to support practices that mitigate the effect of flooding and drought, or improve and expand flood resiliency.Hinson said elevating flooding as a natural resource concern within RCCP ensures flood mitigation, prevention and resiliency become a long-term priority for the program in helping communities secure resources protect themselves from flooding.Cedar Rapids-based task force responded to Davenport building collapseThe emergency response to a Davenport apartment building that collapsed May 28 — killing three and injuring several others — involved specially trained members of Iowa Task Force 1 from Cedar Rapids and Sioux City.The Cedar Rapids task force was called a couple of hours after the collapse, which happened around 5 p.m. Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend. The team, trained in search and rescue techniques, arrived in Davenport at midnight.Though the team returned to Cedar Rapids soon afterward, it was called back to assist in the search for and then recovery of bodies this past weekend, according to Rick Halleran, a Cedar Rapids firefighter and battalion chief of the Cedar Rapids task force.The building's collapse was “such a horrible, tragic event,” he said. “On the backside of it, it (the task force) operated as designed. There are always things to improve upon and do different next time, but the amount of cooperation on multiple levels with different agencies, groups and people at different levels, was really good.”Have a good weekend, everyone.

WGLT's The Leadoff is everything you need to know to start your day for Friday, June 2, 2023. You'll hear about Reps. Darin LaHood and Eric Sorensen's votes on the debt limit bill. Plus, a preview of Heartland Theatre's 10-Play Festival with WGLT's Lauren Warnecke.

Andrew Rogers and Damon Benning are joined by Brian Christopherson of Husker247.com, KETV sports director Andy Kendeigh, Sean McIndoe from The Athletic, and Eric Sorensen with D1Baseball.com Tune into Coffee & Cream from 7-10 am AM 590 ESPN Omaha each week day. You can also catch the final hour of the show in Lincoln on 101.5fm and 1280am. Save money on your subscription to Hail Varsity: https://hailvarsity.com/save/ Hail Varsity Radio is brought to you by http://GoCurrency.com Follow Andrew on social: Twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewrogerscc Instagram: http://instagram.com/arog_sports Follow Damon on twitter: http://twitter.com/damonbenning Follow Hurrdat Sports on social: Twitter: http://twitter.com/hurrdatsports Instagram: http://instagram.com/hurrdatsports Tiktok: http://tiktok.com/hurrdatsports Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HurrdatSports About Coffee & Cream: Wake up with Andrew Rogers and Damon Benning on Hail Varsity Radio. Every morning from 7-10 a.m. on AM Radio Omaha on AM 590 ESPNCoffee and Cream stirs up the best news in Nebraska sports. Whether you're in the car, at the office, or on the sofa enjoying your favorite cup of joe, make sure you're listening to Coffee and Cream on Hail Varsity Radio. Hurrdat Sports is a digital production platform dedicated to the new wave of sports media. From podcasting to video interviews along with live events and entertainment, we're here to change how you consume sports. Find us online at Hurrdatsports.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WGLT's The Leadoff is everything you need to know to start your day for Tuesday, May 9, 2023. You'll hear about the return to school in Olympia, where a fire damaged a building. Plus, an interview with Democratic U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen during a recent Twin City visit.

On today's episode, U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen visits downtown Bloomington and Uptown Normal with their respective mayors, climate change pushes armadillos further north and causing concern for central Illinois farmers, the jury foreman in the ComEd bribery trial explains how jurors arrived at four guilty verdicts, plus WGLT begins the first in its series profiling this year's McLean County history makers.

Another explosive revelation regarding China's alleged interference in Canada erupted last week. Conservative MP Michael Chong was informed he and his family were allegedly targeted by a Chinese diplomat in Toronto, and he says the federal government failed to act. ‘The West Block' guest host Eric Sorensen sits down with Michael Chong to discuss how this situation has affected him personally, and where the government should go from here. Plus, Sorensen speaks with Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, about how he plans to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.  

With more than 100,000 federal workers are on strike across the country, Canadians are facing major disruptions to accessing services on everything from tax returns to passports. ‘The West Block' guest host Eric Sorensen speaks with Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould about the impact of the strike. Plus, new information from the Pentagon highly-classified intelligence leak is raising concerns about Canada's military spending. The Washington Post reports that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told NATO officials privately that Canada will “never meet” NATO's defence spending target of two per cent of GDP. The latest report comes just days after an open letter from former top defence and national security officials urged the government to take this issue more seriously. Sorensen speaks with Retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, former Canadian army commander, and Retired Gen. Raymond Henault, former chief of the defence staff, about what's at stake for Canada if we don't address military shortfalls.

Opposition parties are urging the federal government to call a public inquiry into foreign interference in light of a series of reports about China meddling in Canada's democracy. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he won't commit to an inquiry until a special rapporteur evaluates the situation. With new interference allegations arising seemingly every week, ‘The West Block' guest host Eric Sorensen sat down with Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to discuss what the government's path forward may look like. Plus, Sorensen speaks with Andrew Wallace, an Australian MP who is the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, about what Canada could learn from down under to fight foreign interference.

Thursday March 9, 2023 – Did you hear about H.R. 25, the Fair Tax Act of 2023. This bill was introduced in House of Representatives in January 2023, right after the Republicans took over. Supporters claim the bill will simplify the current tax code and reduce federal spending. The act would replace the existing income, payroll, estate and gift taxes with a 23% national sales tax on consumable goods and services. The Family Consumption Allowance would ensure that low-income and middle-class families are not unfairly burdened by the sales tax. Additionally, it would reduce federal spending by over $71 billion in 2023 and eliminate the need for the Internal Revenue Service completely. Democratic Reps. Wiley Nickel of North Carolina, Eric Sorensen of Illinois and Brittany Pettersen of Colorado called the measure “extremist.” Yesterday Nickel said he “was dismayed to hear about an extremist plan by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that calls for a 30% national sales tax for working families,” He continued “[a] 30% sales tax would be a disaster for working families and individuals in North Carolina and around the country who are already dealing with high gas prices, exorbitant housing costs and the rising costs of goods and everyday services.” Attorney Steven A. Leahy said “I find the proposal interesting and worth investigating. Anything is better than the current system. Isn't it?” Catch his analysis on Today's Tax Talk. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/25 https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2023/02/07/how-the-fair-tax-act-of-2023-might-work/?sh=2e4220e252ba https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/08/taxes-house-democrats-push-back-on-gop-bill-to-abolish-irs-impose-national-sales-tax.html https://fairtax.org/active-legislation/h-r-25-the-fairtax-act-of-2023 --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/steven-leahy1/message

In today's deep dive, we’ll hear from new Illinois congressman Eric Sorensen, who will talk about the chances of getting a new farm bill passed by September.

WGLT's The Leadoff is everything you need to know to start your day for Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. You'll hear from U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen about ag policy in the new Congress. Plus, an interview with the new chair of the Yes for Unit 5 pro-referendum campaign.

Today's guests: - Congressman elect, Eric Sorensen,17th District - Elizabeth Lynch, Save Nile's Library - Darrel Rowland, Politics/investigative reporter for WSYX-TV,ABC affiliated in Columbus - David Witter, Author of "Distilled in Chicago"

Former TV weatherman Eric Sorensen will pick up the seat vacated by retiring Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) come January. The first openly gay member from his state, he joins Chuck to talk about the impact the weaponizing of LGBTQ issues, classroom curricula and climate change will have on how he tackles his upcoming mandate.

Tim Persico, the Executive Director of the DCCC, provides a post-election debrief with his thoughts on all things 2022 House races. He gets under the hood as to how House Democrats beat the odds to exceed pundit expectations...and weighs in on the winning blend of messaging for candidates, the leadership provided by Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney and Speaker Pelosi, specific seats that helped Democrats buck the midterm trends, the tools and tactics the DCCC utlized this cycle, & much more with one of the key architects of House Democrats' impressive 2022 cycle.IN THIS EPISODE…The latest post-election math about control of the House…How previous DCCC post-mortems helped prep Tim run the organization…Tim's macro view of how House Democrats overperformed expectations…Tim recounts the critical decision by DCCC Chair Maloney to take a risk and go for the majority instead of taking a more cautious approach to hold losses to a minimum…Tim's take on whether Democrats won these races late or always had the advantage….Tim on what messaging worked well for Democratic candidates…Tim talks leadership lessons learned from Nancy Pelosi…A few seats Tim was confident Dems could win despite pundit skepticism…Tim's initial thoughts on why New York was a tough state for House Dems…The DCCC's approach to digital communications…Lessons learned from digesting hundreds of internal campaign polls…How Tim handled getting advice from a 220+ member Democratic Caucus…Tim evangelizes on why a finance background is a good path to rising up the ladder in politics…Tim compliments some of the strategies utilized by the NRCC…What Tim is most proud of from this cycle running the DCCC…AND American treasures, asymmetrical disadvantages, Michael Bennet, big thinking thoughts, building runways, Cheri Bustos, canaries in coal mines, Yadira Caraveo, cookie-cutter stuff, Karen Defilippi, Dirtbags, Isaac Fitzgerald, fully-formed human beings, Tommy Garcia, graybeards, the Hudson Valley, hybrid ads, late movers, left-handed Methodists, Elaine Luria, massive things, moon suits, Patrick Murphy, Wiley Nickel, noisy data, non-linear benefits, pet peeves, pipe bombs, a Pittsburgh Republican, pivot points, pre post-mortems, Christie Roberts, Chuck Schumer, sheer chaos, Eric Sorensen, sour electorates, Abigail Spanberger, special masters, Emilia Sykes, Tony Vargas, walkabouts, Jennifer Wextons, whisper quiet & more!

On today's episode, a conversation with Bloomington-Normal-area U.S. Rep.-elect Eric Sorensen, a new memorial honors fallen soldiers in Bloomington, local craft brewers can't get a key ingredient locally, plus the Festival of Trees returns to Bloomington next weekend.

Sorensen, a former television meteorologist in Rockford and the Quad Cities, defeated Republican Esther Joy King by about four points in the district.

In today's episode, you'll hear from Congressman-elect Eric Sorensen about his victory and what's next. And 46th District State Senator Dave Koehler will be returning to the Illinois State Senate and gives his take on the boundary changes to his district. Plus, former Chief of Staff to Congressman Ray LaHood weighs in on why there was no "red wave" during this year's midterms.

Democrat Candidate for Congress in the 17th District, Eric Sorensen is making a final campaign push ahead of Tuesday's election. Sorensen, well known as a weather forecaster in the Quad Cities for 20 years, talked to Wake Up Tri-Counties on Friday about the latest from the campaign trail, whether or not he'd be a rubber stamp for the Democrat agenda in Congress, and his dedication to working on Climate Change via new technology and job creation if elected to Congress.

Candidate Eric Sorensen speaking with WRAM's and WMOI's Vanessa Wetterling

WGLT's The Leadoff is everything you need to know for Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022. You'll hear about Gov. JB Pritzker campaigning for Democratic congressional candidate Eric Sorensen. Plus, a look at the race for Illinois attorney general.

On Midwest Week, residents of northwest and central Illinois will help determine who controls the US House - with their votes for Esther Joy King or Eric Sorensen.

The Greg and Dan Show welcomes Eric Sorensen, Illinois' 17th Congressional District Democratic nominee to talk about his journey in becoming a meteorologist and his decision to run for Congress, how to return to and maintain democracy, protecting reproductive rights, and preserving a sustainable infrastructure in Central Illinois.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Candidate Eric Sorensen speaking with Vanessa Wetterling on WRAM.

WCBU's On Deck has everything you need to know to start your day for Monday, August 15th. You'll hear about the latest Safety Network meeting, plus 17th Congressional District Democratic candidate Eric Sorensen sits down with Tim Shelley to talk about what he believes will give him an edge in the partisan fight for control of a narrowly-divided House of Representatives. On Deck is produced by Holden Kellogg.

Shane chats CWS with Eric Sorensen, answers the first round of the All-State Twitter Question tournament, gives the headlines and goes over the breaking news of the Royals trading Carlos Santana and calling up Vinnie Pasquantino  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eric Sorensen joined Mike Weaver on WRAM to let listeners know more about him and why he is running for a seat in Congress. He will be on the Democratic ballot in the primary election on June 28, 2022.

In our ongoing series profiling the candidates in the 17th Congressional District in Illinois, we caught up with Eric Sorensen. Eric is a former WQAD Meteorologist, familiar to many homes for a number of years. Now, Eric Sorensen wants to represent Illinois in Congress. WKEI talked to Eric Sorensen about Climate Change, Inflation, Education and farming in a far ranging conversation. Eric Sorensen was our guest on Monday's Wake Up Tri-Counties.

Guest host Eric Sorensen speaks to Sean Fraser, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship about the latest efforts to bring Ukrainian refugees to Canada. Former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page discusses inflation and the Bank of Canada. Former Conservative cabinet ministers Lisa Raitt and Monte Solberg weigh-in on the Conservative leadership debate. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We begin with a look at this week's edition of “The West Block”. We catch up with Guest Host Eric Sorenson, National Affairs Correspondent for Global News. Eric brings us the latest on Federal Conservative Leadership Race including details on his discussion surrounding the race with former Conservative Cabinet Minister, Peter MacKay. Next we look at the sky-high price at the pumps we're currently seeing, specifically, the inflated price of Diesel. We speak with Professor Dimitry Anastakis from the ‘Rotman School of Management' about the broad impact high diesel prices have from filling up, to groceries and the entire consumer supply chain. As fourth doses of COVID vaccine roll out, doctors are noticing that the ‘uptake' from Seniors is quite low. We speak with a Calgary Physician and Trauma Therapist to find out why our elderly aren't so eager to ‘roll up their sleeves' for the booster. And finally, it's our regular segment with “The Travel Lady” Lesley Keyter. This time out, Lesley explains why the long waits at airports are happening for travelers across the country and what you need to know if you're planning a trip in the near future. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guest host Eric Sorensen speaks to Karina Gould, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, about improving access to abortion in Canada. Former Conservative cabinet minister Peter MacKay discusses the first unofficial leadership debate. Two Queen's Park journalists weigh-in on the start of the Ontario election campaign. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We begin with a recap of the latest episode of “The West Block”.  This week we speak with Eric Sorensen, Guest Host and Senior National Correspondent with Global News. Eric brings us details of his conversation with Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker and a breakdown of last week's new ‘agreement' between the Federal Liberal party and the NDP. Are you aware of the ‘connection' between hearing loss and dementia? We speak with an audiologist and researcher who explains the connection and offers up some tips to help prevent hearing loss into our ‘golden years'. Then, it's our regular ‘catch up' with “The Travel Lady,” Lesley Keyter. Lesley gives us an update on the current travel restrictions and changes coming our way, as of April 1st.  Finally, what shapes Calgary and our community? Our Dave McIvor brings us another installment in our “Where We Live” series - this time out Dave pays a visit to historic Chinatown. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guest host Eric Sorensen speaks to former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker about NATO's response to Russia's war in Ukraine. Canada's Ambassador to the UN Bob Rae discusses the diplomatic efforts underway to hold Russia to account for its invasion of Ukraine. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh explains how the agreement he reached with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to keep the minority Liberals in power until 2025 is going to work. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on 'The West Block' Mercedes Stephenson reports from Latvia with an exclusive interview with Latvian President Egils Levits. Guest host Eric Sorensen speaks to Canada's ambassador to Ukraine, Larisa Galadza, about the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. Conservative strategist Tim Powers discusses potential candidates in the Conservative Party leadership race. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The West Block, Eric Sorensen speaks to Transport Minister Omar Alghabra about vaccine mandates for truckers and the protests against pandemic restrictions in Ottawa. Former Ukrainian Ambassador to Canada, Andriy Shevchenko discusses Canada's response to the crisis in Ukraine. Former Conservative MP James Cumming reveals highlights of his report from the last federal election.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guest host Eric Sorensen speaks to Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc about Ottawa's priorities as a new federal cabinet is sworn in. Former federal cabinet ministers Lisa Raitt and Anne McLellan discuss the importance of women at the cabinet table. Canadian climate change activist Tzeporah Berman says the Trudeau government doesn't have the best record heading to COP26 in Glasgow. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This month, meteorologist and climate communicator Eric Sorensen joins host Ann Garton for a discussion about how climate change is affecting our health.HOST: Ann Garton, DNP, RN, FPCC, CNE, Director of the Institute for Person-Centered Care at St. Ambrose UniversityABOUT: www.sau.edu/ann-gartonGUEST: Eric Sorensen, MeteorologistABOUT: Eric Sorensen is a Meteorologist and Climate Communicator whose work on local television has spanned 20 years. Originally from Rockford, Illinois he just completed a seven-year stint as the Senior Meteorologist at WQAD-TV in the Quad Cities.Eric is a fellow of the Society of Environmental Journalists and is three-ti

Eric Sorensen's home bakery business may be small, but that doesn't mean it's insignificant! Eric lives in Pullman, WA and sells homemade bread, bagels, and pretzels with his cottage food business, Clumsy Crow Baking. Unlike most bakers, Eric doesn't sell throughout the year, or even throughout the summer. Instead, he takes frequent sailing trips for a month at a time, and only boots up the baking business when he's back home. And when he returns, his customers are ready! He started selling his bread back in 2017, and grew his customer base by selling at winter markets. But when the pandemic hit in 2020, he switched to selling solely from his driveway, and he hasn't looked back. He simply puts the bread on his driveway for customers to pickup, and then heads back inside to take a nap! In addition to being an avid baker, Eric is also an avid learner. In this episode he shares many resources for learning about home baking, and also shares many cost-saving hacks for running a home bakery without going into debt. He is also an advocate for local grain economies, and shares what he is doing to help get great, sustainable bread into more people's hands.Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/41

Every day we get closer to the weekend and the start of regional play in Starkville and Oxford, so every show is loaded with college baseball. The guys talk with Eric Sorensen of D1Baseball and Ben Mintz of Barstool Sports about the upcoming games.

Chapter 1: More uncertainty over Pfizer vaccine deliveries to Canada, even as the federal government is trying to clarify exactly how many doses we’re slated to receive. Eric Sorensen is covering this story for Global News. Chapter 2: There’s a sort of general perception that Canada, and B-C in particular, has done a pretty good job of responding to the pandemic.  It’s easy to use the U-S as our only comparison for obvious reasons, but a new global ranking of COVID responses has been a real wake-up call.  Guest: Scott Gilmore, Macleans Editor-at-large. Chapter 3: We spoke with federal Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday morning, but let’s find out how their pre-budget consultation with local stakeholders went.  Guest: Anita Huberman, Surrey Board of Trade CEO. Chapter 4: Listen up if you’re heading for the great outdoors this weekend, Avalanche Canada has issued a warning because of snow conditions, which includes the North Shore Mountains.  Guest:  Mike Danks, Northshore Rescue Team Leader. Chapter 5: A Universal Basic Income may not be the silver bullet for inequality advocates say it is.  That’s what a comprehensive report released yesterday found, and it also presented a series of recommendations on how to create a more just society.  Guest: David Green,  professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at UBC. Chapter 6: Some investigative work from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation we need to talk about this morning.  Translink has once again found themselves in a bad place when it comes to management salaries.  Guest: Kris Sims, BC director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Chapter 7: There’s a new priority for renters in Vancouver, and it’s not just the price.  Guest: Frances Bula, Globe and Mail writer, local journalist. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thank you for joining us. This is an excerpt from our worship on Sunday, July 12, 2020. Scriptures: Exodus 20:8-11 (read by Eric Sorensen) and Exodus 16:13-27. Sermon: Thank God It's Sunday by Rev. Ken Onstot

A Conversation In light of the murder of of George Floyd - Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery South Georgia, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church massacre in Charleston SC.  The protests, the riots, and the list goes on and on. As difficult as it has become, as Christians we must speak truth about race, racism in America, and how the Church can no longer be silent, sit on the sidelines, believe that there is not a problem, say that is not my problem, say I didn’t cause this problem etc… As people of God, each of us has a mandate on our lives by God. Matthew 25:31-46 reminds us all, The Son of Man will judge the nations. Each of us, individually, and collectively will have to answer to our response to the clarion call. Siblings, there is much kingdom work to be done. Who's in? Contact Dr. Stephanie Moore Hand, shand@wnccumc.org OUR GUEST: Dr. Elaine Heath's interdisciplinary scholarly work is focused on, integrating pastoral, biblical, and spiritual theology, bridging the gap between academy, church, and world. Healing trauma, emergent forms of Christianity, and alternative forms of theological education for the church. Heath served as Dean of the Duke University Divinity School, McCreless Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology, and Southern Methodist University. She is a pioneer and co-founder of the Missional Wisdom Foundation, Neighborhood Seminary, a contextualized model of missional theological education for laity. Heath is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and served in pastoral ministry prior to her academic ministry.   Rev. Dr. Fatimah S. Salleh was born in Brooklyn, NY to a Puerto-Rican and Malaysian mother and an African American father. She is the eldest of seven. Dr. Salleh received her Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She  earned a Master’s degree from Syracuse University in Public Communication and a second Master’s in Divinity from Duke University. She also served on the staff of Duke University. She is married to Eric Sorensen and they have four children: Micah, Xavier, Ronin and Zora Grace.  She is the founder of A Certain Work, an organization dedicated to educating on issues of faith, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Resources: "Stamped from the Beginning" by Ibram Kendi "The People's History" by Howard Zinn "Sisters in the Wilderness" by Delores Williams "Freedom's Daughters" by Lynne Olsen “The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear” by William Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove “White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,” by Robin DeAngelo, Racial Equity Institute - https://www.racialequityinstitute.com/ Music: Lucas Britt

This week we cover all local sports still going on. We preview this springs baseball programs from Cle Elum, Kittitas, and Ellensburg. Colby Sherrill head coach from Cle Elum, Eric Sorensen Kittitas head coach, and Ellensburg head coach Todd Gibson. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/eric-sorensen/message

Eric Sorensen, Global National's Senior National Affairs Correspondent joined John  Oakley. 

My guest this week is Eric Sorensen, the CEO of Panagora asset management, which manages more than $46B for clients across a variety of strategies. Eric began his career serving in the Air Force as both a pilot and instructor in high-performance jet aircraft. He then accumulated 40 years of quantitative research and investment experience, with a Ph.D. along the way. Please enjoy our conversation on the changing landscape of quantitative investment strategies. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 1:15 - (First Question) – His background in the Air Force             1:23 – Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War 3:18 – Training people on high-performance machines 4:47 – Traits that made for better pilots 5:51 – The evolution of quantitative equity research and its stages 7:56 – How his research led to becoming a practitioner 9:10 - The early feature sets in his research 10:44 – Tradeoffs in the spectrum of interpretability 12:08 – Early days of his practitioner career 13:24 – Risk Premia and the 5 C’s 14:28 – Quantitative Equity Portfolio Management: Modern Techniques and Applications 17:13 – Applying the 5 C’s to value investing 18:38 – Knowing when a strategy/signal is broken 21:24 – What does this strategy plan mean for his firm today 24:56 – Mixing expert systems and portfolio construction 30:07 – Natural language processing 32:00 – The cultivating the power and creativity to ask good questions 35:13 – The concept of a research graveyard 37:45 – State of risk premia today 40:04 – Active equity process 46:37 – Frontiers of research that he’s excited about 48:53 – Safe havens for non-quantitative investors 52:16– Advice for young quants 54:36 – Quants on the buy-side that he admires 55:41 – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

Alan has a packed show today, filled with great guests and lots of sports talk! He starts off with the serious delays for Air Canada with Sean O'Shea, Global's reporter covering the story. Alan keeps Global Morning show host Jamie Tawil company, talking Raptors as he waits between Media appearances at the Raptors Media Day. Dr. Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert, Director of the division of Rheumatology at the University of Alberta, joins to discuss implications behind a suspension of certain breast implants because of correlations to certain cancers. Global's Eric Sorensen comes on to talk about his three-part investigation into nuclear waste. And journalist Naomi Parness sympathizes with Alan's parental user guilt on devices.

Robert Kraft was charged with a serious crime - Hoops talk with Richard Williams - A look at the upcoming baseball slate - Eric Sorensen and Aaron Fitt of D1 Baseball join

Alex speaks with The West Block host Eric Sorensen about various parliamentary topics he'll be talking about on the upcoming episode of the show. 

Eric Sorensen, Senior National Affairs Correspondent with Global News, takes a dynamic look at the scope of gun violence in the U.S., the reality that the magnitude of the violence this weekend is the result of the "guns situation" and the type of guns Americans can own and access - and what it'll take for anything to change, if it ever will.

A look inside the streamlined, award-winning Minneapolis advertising and branding agency. Also, some perspective on finding a job and thinking about thought.

Eric Sorensen is CEO & Founder of award-winning Carbon Roots International, whose mission is to encourage and enable the adoption of sustainable green charcoal in Haiti & the broader developing world to reduce deforestation, create jobs, & improve lives.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:Method to the madness is next. You're listening to method to the madness. I Biweekly Public Affairs show on k a l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. I'm Lisa Keifer and we're taking a field trip down to Stanford today to interview the clean energy mastermind. Professor Mark Jacobson. What do you do here at Stanford? Speaker 2:Well, I teach and do research and I study clean and renewable energy systems and air pollution [00:00:30] and climate problems and how to solve them through clean and renewable energy. Speaker 3:I read about you recently in the new republic. Bill McKibben has written a really thoughtful article saying that our current climate crisis, what we need to do, he likens it to what we did in World War II to gear up to fight the Nazis and the Japanese. And he mentioned you in the work that you're doing. He talks about the solutions you have that are ready right now for all 50 states in the United States. What is that project? Speaker 2:Well, we do research on developing [00:01:00] plans for states and countries and we've completed plans for all 50 states and also now working on 139 countries around the world using all renewables and yeah, the idea of the plan is to electrify all energy sectors. That's transportation, heating and cooling industry, agriculture, forestry and fishing and provide that electricity with clean and renewable energies such as wind and water and solar power, but combined with some energy storage combined with energy efficiency and some additional transmission. When did you come up [00:01:30] with this plan? Well, our first plan was in 2009 it was really a world plan, just gross numbers to see if it was possible to power the world entirely 100% with wind and water and solar power for all purposes. And it wasn't broken down into countries, but from a on a worldwide scale, if we're just looking at the raw numbers, there was possible because there's enough wind resource, there's enough solar resource and existing water resource. And also we looked at the materials required, we looked at the costs or we looked at the land use required and we found that all these are within reason and [00:02:00] then potentially possible to do. Speaker 3:How many years did it take you to come up with these very specific plans? [inaudible] right. Speaker 2:So then, uh, after that there was in 2009, and then subsequently we started working in 2011 on a state plans specifically for New York state that you got completed in 2013. So that took, why did you choose New York first? Well, I started working with some people, activists in New York, probably people who are fighting against natural gas, fracking. Hydrofracking they had wanted some alternative. What's [00:02:30] their, you know, what else can we do besides natural gas in the state of New York? And in this group was mark refollow, who's, I'm also an actor and a Marco cripples who is, um, he's a business person who lives actually in California and Josh Fox, who is a documentarian. And we kind of brainstormed and thought, well, why don't we take our energy plan for the world and squish it down to a state level answer. That's right. I did with some help with Mark Delucci, who's a doctor researcher at UC Berkeley. Speaker 2:Right. And also eventually got some students involved [00:03:00] and Reese Chris down a plan for New York, got some new data and uh, it took a while to get all the information we needed. But by 2013, we had a New York energy plan from 13 to now you've rolled out the rest of the 50 states plus 127 countries in the world. We're, we will correct the Xero since then. In the middle of completing the New York plan, we started a California energy plan. We thought, well, we have one for New York. Why not apply to another state? So we got more experience improving the plans as we went along. And we did one for Washington state [00:03:30] long at the same time. Uh, I thought, well, why not just do all 50 states? We can not about ties the process simultaneously. So we did that and we completed those plans in 2015 for all 50 states and then at the same time as we were completing that and we started working on thought, well, why not go to the world and go to all individual countries as many as we could. Speaker 2:And so we found data for 139 countries and that's what we're working on right now and try to complete that. Okay. How many people are on this team who had crunching the numbers? Well, going out into [00:04:00] the field since 2009 we've had about 80 scientists and students working on these energy plans, although there's kind of a core group of people who are doing most of the work. The group I talked about initially with Mark Ruffalo and Josh Fox and Marco Cripples, we started a nonprofit together. It's called the solutions project. And the idea of this was, well, why not take these energy plans that were developing these scientific science-based plans, but then we try to take those plans and educate the public and policy makers about them and do outreach [00:04:30] and try to reach communities that might not normally be engaged in the sense to me when I read this article in then new republic, I thought, wow, they probably been working on this for years and yet it took this long to hear about it. Speaker 2:That must be the biggest challenge. Getting this information out to the lay person so that we can make political decisions in our communities to support it. Correct. I mean that's my opinion is that, you know, getting information out to large numbers of people. I mean keep in mind there are 7.3 billion people in [00:05:00] the world and you know, as a scientist I might reach a few hundred to a few thousand at most. And you know, even with a good outreach you might reach 100,000 or something like that. But we really need to reach hundreds of millions of people to have an impact worldwide. And so, so are you capitalizing on some of your successes? Like for instance, what are some states who are doing this right now and how do we find out about that? Yeah, we've actually had some really good success and feedback. So the states [00:05:30] of both New York and California have basically adopted a portion of our plans. We proposed 80% conversion to wind water and solar by 2030 and all energy sectors and 100% by 2050. California in New York have adopted a 50% conversion for the electricity sector, which is only one of those sectors by 2030. And they've also adopted some other energy efficiency goals. But part of that is because we publish these papers for those states. We, uh, talked with the staff members of the governors [00:06:00] and so they are right, they're aware of these plans and that it was possible. And so that enabled them to push the envelope into what policies, Speaker 3:but they're still not pushing it as far as you say they should. Correct. They're not at, what's the downside of that? Speaker 2:There is downside because it means we'll have climate problems that are persist for longer period of time and we'll have air pollution problems that will persist for longer. So we're still trying to inform them about the necessity of getting to 80% by 2030 in all sectors. Uh, so there was, there was a ways to go but um, we are making in roads I should say there is a house resolution [00:06:30] now based on our work, based on our 50 state plans, a house resolution five 40, which is calls for the United States to go to 100% clean renewable energy for all sectors by 2050. So that actually, well it's just a resolution, but if it did pass, if subsequent bills were passed to support it, it would actually get to the end goal that we proposed. I think it has 44 46 co-sponsors, including Nancy Pelosi as one of the co-sponsors. Speaker 2:All three Democratic presidential candidates actually supported a a hundred percent goals by 2050 [00:07:00] and Bernie Sanders had our maps on his website. Hillary Clinton, we have a video tape of her supporting 100% clean renewable energy by 2050 and Martin O'Malley was the first one to go out there with 100% by 2050. There were also three senators I've mentioned they were going to propose 100% renewable energy by 2050. I should also mention that the a hundred percent idea has galvanized lots of nonprofits, dozens and dozens of nonprofits that are no, uh, centered around this goal. And they've actually been also helped to convince cities [00:07:30] in many cities want to go to 100% clean renewable energy, including, you know, several in the United States into southern Canada and companies as well. There are at least 60 to 70 companies, including many of the major ones that want to go to 100% renewable energy, have committed to go to 100%. For example, Walmart today, apple and Starbucks, Johnson and Johnson, there are many of the top companies Speaker 3:on the ride over here. I was in horrible traffic and I couldn't help but thinking about how are you going to convince consumers to [00:08:00] buy electric cars? How will they afford it? Number one, are we going to have to have subsidy programs along with a national grid or community redundant grids? Where does that all fit into this? Speaker 2:Well, I think electric cars, I mean most people, once I drive an electric car, they never want to go back Speaker 3:of course, but how can they afford it? Like in let's talk about outside of the coast, well Speaker 2:there are many electric car companies now that are selling commodity cars and so and there is a $7,500 tax credit. So that basically [00:08:30] brings the price of an electric car, even a low cost electric car into the same cost as an equivalent gasoline car. So I think that the costs are equivalent and it's actually, it's a lot cheaper to actually drive an electric car because the cost of the fuel is one fourth to one fifth the cost of gasoline per mile driven. So over the life of a car, if you drive a car 15,000 miles per year for 15 years, you will save $20,000 in fuel cost. The main thing that people have been concerned about is range. And so many of these electric cars now [00:09:00] actually have longer range. I mean, of course the Tesla, which is the model s, it's 275 miles a range. Um, but the, you know, even the new lower cost Tesla, which hasn't been public yet, but as people have taken orders for it, it's the thing, it's over 200 mile range. Speaker 2:And then even the, the leaf I think is over a hundred, 125 miles. Right? And so that's the limiting factor for most comedians. 95% of commutes or all the electric cars are within range. And you can charge them in your home if you have just a regular electric plug outlet or, or a special [00:09:30] charger that can be put in your home. So that's an advantage. Another advantage of electric cars is you can charge them in your house or in your garage or just a gasoline car. You can't, you know the disadvantages of course it's, it takes longer to refuel and there when you're, when you're out on the road, there's currently fewer charging stations, but there are a lot of charging stations out there now and there are a lot more coming and there is a plan to roll out many more. Yeah, there really has to, if we want to do this on a large scale, we need a lot more charging stations. But the electric grid is there, is there, it's really a question of hooking up new charging stations to the [00:10:00] grid and these charging stations don't take up much space. Speaker 3:We're doing this planning state by state. Are you also, are you setting up redundant grid systems in each state so that, you know there is a national grid, but are they going to be able to, let's say there's a climate catastrophe in one part of the country, will the other pieces of that grid be able to pick up the difference? Speaker 2:Yeah. Well the grid is interconnected already across the United States. So there the actual flow of electricity is limited by the size of the transmission lines. So we would need, we've got to 100% we will need [00:10:30] to expansion of the transmission grid or at least increasing the capacity of the grid so that you can send more electricity long distances. For example, we will have a lot of wind turbines in the great plains or we already do, but we'd have more and we might want to transfer more of that electricity to the east coast because the electricity is so cheap. The generation is so cheap and the great plains, it's, it's 2 cents a kilowatt hour now with the subsidy and in three and a half without a subsidy and that compares to natural gas, which is five to 6 cents a kilowatt hour as the actual cost of energy. Wind is the cheapest form [00:11:00] of electricity in the U s but a lot of it is in places that are far away and so transmission would be beneficial. Speaker 2:It also helps because if the wind's not blowing in one place, it is usually pulling somewhere else or having a more interconnected transmission system would actually make things more efficient. Same thing with solar. I mean it's not always sunny in some places because you're all in the clouds and the u s there are some long distance where it's called high voltage direct current or HVDC long distance transmission lines going up. I mean there's like what's called the clean power line or it's a company that has [00:11:30] proposals for several long distance corridors across the u s and I think they've had one or two of them already approved in that. They may even be building, but I can't say for sure what stage they're out. Yeah, Speaker 3:kind of controversially have left off nuclear power in your renewables. Can you tell me why you've taken that stance? Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because the other people who are supportive of nuclear power just say, you know, I'm biased against nuclear, but you know, this is all based on a scientific research that while nuclear is, is better than a lot of energy [00:12:00] technologies such as coal, gas and oil. For the most part, it's not as good as clean renewable energy such as wind, water and solar. And that's just a scientific conclusion. I mean, aside from the fact that it, it takes so long to put up a nuclear plant between 10 and 19 years between planning and operation and we don't have the time. It's the same two to five years is typical for a wind or solar farm. So not only do we delay getting that energy, but it also, right now it costs, uh, about four times more than onshore wind. So it's 12 and a half cents a kilowatt hour [00:12:30] for the unsubsidized cost of nuclear versus the unsubsidized costs of onshore wind is three and a half cents a kilowatt hour subsidizes 2 cents. Speaker 2:So we're talking one fourth of the cost. So not only do you have to wait three times longer to get the nuclear up, but you also have to pay four times more for the same power. And that's the only at the beginning. The other problems are, some people say even more severe, I mean there's a meltdown risk. 1.5% of all nuclear reactors ever built up, melted down to some degree. Nuclear weapons proliferation risk. How many intergovernmental panel on climate change says there's, [00:13:00] there's robust evidence. And high agreement that a nuclear energy proliferation leads to nuclear weapons proliferation. And this is because several countries of the world who have developed weapons secretly under the guise of civilian nuclear energy programs, there's waste issues. We haven't figured out what to do with all the waste that accumulates and you have to store it for 300,000 years and that takes a lot of energy. Speaker 2:That's in costs of storing out that don't, aren't even accounted for in the cost of energy today of the nuclear. Yeah, and then there's a, the carbon dioxide emissions, people say that, oh, nuclear is a zero carbon. Well, it's not [00:13:30] zero carbon whatsoever. I mean you have to, when you're using the uranium and you have to mine the uranium that takes fossil fuels, then you have to refine it. It's a very energy intensive process to refine uranium and you have to do that throughout the life of the reactor. Fossil fuel, carbon dioxide emissions, and there are other air pollutant emissions. And the fact that it takes so long to put up a nuclear plant, the difference in the time it takes to put up the nuclear plant versus the wind or solar plant, you're running the irregular electric power grid. And so you have to assign those emissions to the nuclear as well. Speaker 2:And so we're talking when you [00:14:00] actually add everything up, it's between six and 24 times more carbon and air pollution per kilowatt hour compared to wind energy. So no brainer. Yes, it's not just one problem. If you, you can't just solve one problem and say, oh, nuclear is good. You really have to solve instead of 5% idea. I mean, I can remember reading in the 90s that thought that had to be a part of the mix to put a little people in the world. So I met a lot of people, nuclear supporters think that nuclear is necessary because it's uh, it's very high energy density. So you can, you can, you can provide a lot of power [00:14:30] in a small area. But the fact is it has so many side effects that, um, you know, it's just not as good at this point. If nothing else worked, then yeah, maybe try that. Speaker 2:You've, you're up against a massive opponent and that's the carbon industry. I'm surprised they're not pushing back more. I mean, I get more pushback from nuclear people, different philosophy people. They know that they have enough power and control the, you know, they don't have to respond to, you know, studies or other people will think about them. They can just, just keep doing what they're doing. And they, you know, they find that they don't really need to respond. [00:15:00] But if we get a congress that will pass this plan, well yeah, no, our plans would have them completely phased out and they would be eliminated. So they should be worried. But you know, on the other hand, there's, most of the energy is still produced by fossil fuels by far most of the energy worldwide. And so it's such a, such a large penetration still the, you know, they haven't felt any risk it of, of disappearing. Speaker 2:But you know the writing is on the wall and they will eventually disappears. It's a question of time. I was reading that Washington [00:15:30] State is actually the farthest along in terms of percentage of renewables toward that goal of 100% in 2050 it is, but it's because of hydroelectric power that's existing hydroelectric in the states. You won't be building more dams. You're going to make present dams more efficient. Right. Our plans call for no new conventional hydroelectric dams and just making existing dams more efficient. I should point out that there are, in the United States there are 80,000 dams and only I think 10,000 produce electricity. [00:16:00] So there most of the dams in the U s are non power dams and so in theory you could power some of those without actually creating a new dam just to create power from them. And you could also like, cause a lot of people want to remove dams and so there are literally 70,000 dams available to remove without reading moving. Speaker 2:For example, the powering dams. The reason hydroelectric power is so useful in the solution is that a hydroelectric reservoirs basically a big battery and when you need like the windows and all this blow in the centers and all the shine. [00:16:30] And so when, when you, let's say you have no way to know sunlight texted, very valuable to have hydroelectric power cause you can, you can basically turn it off and on instantaneously. Uh, and then allowing it to provide the power when you need it to fill in gaps and supply. What's your plan for say Louisiana? We just experienced horrible rains like the thousand year rains and flooding. What would a state like that look like with your plan? The South in general, it was pretty a very weak winds except off shore. Um, but they have good solar radiation, [00:17:00] although it's not as good as the south west, which has more clear skies because there are more cloudy skies in the southeast, but there's a lot of sunlight in Louisiana. Speaker 2:So solar is a major part. Then they have offshore wind as well. So those are offshore platforms? Yeah, they've offshore platforms, but offshore wind and solar are the two major sources there might be advantageous Tulsa to have transmission into the state from other states that have much greater wind to the west. What is the most challenging state or country that you've had to come [00:17:30] up with a plan for so far? I would say Singapore basically it's a very small country that is very high population density so it's population really covers most of the land so there's not a lot of room to put clean renewable energy. You have rooftops and the rooftops aren't sufficient enough but there is offshore wind as well. Um, so we might have to go to off shore floating solar. In fact, I should point out though that that's only if we decided the Singapore had to be powered entirely with its own energy. Speaker 2:It could actually just transmit energy [00:18:00] from nearby. There is a solution to that problem too, just from transmitting from outside of it. But if you're just wanting to have it provided its own energy, these kinds of, some of these smaller countries like Gibraltar has a similar issue, but there is a solution to everything. If you add transmission, people complained that the sun isn't shining, but if you do have batteries you can then provide more reliable electricity either either back to the greater for your own use in your home. So basically if you have batteries and solar on your roof, you know you're a power plant and you can provide, uh, you have the ability to [00:18:30] smooth out like the rest of the grid. Tesla bought solar city and so they want to really, Tulsa wants to become a battery storage company as well as a motor company. Speaker 2:And so the idea is to take the solar panels on the roof and then use batteries to store that electricity. So integrate the batteries with the solar panels on the roof a lot more and even make roofing material that has solar panels in them, which is a great thing to do to integrate batteries with rooftop solar. But are there technologies on the horizon that wouldn't [00:19:00] be called batteries that they're a whole different kind of, yeah, actually. Well we look when we developed plans for all 50 states a, we did a study where we said can we keep the grid reliable over the continental United States? It's 48 states and we found that we can, if we combine generation of wind and solar, which are what are called intermittent or does wind, does nose blow and the sun doesn't always shine with low cost heat and cold storage and electricity storage. Speaker 2:I should point out that first of all, if you electrify all sectors, if you electrify heating, cooling [00:19:30] industry transportation, you make it easier to match power demand on the grid because there are a lot more low, what are call loads of energy require more energy requirements that are what are called flexible. You don't have to hook a wind turbine up to your car to drive the car, your battery. So you can charge the car anytime of day or night by electrifying all sectors. And then you use low cost heat and cold storage. So, for example, ice, you can have an ice cube under a building in fact at Stanford has had an ice cube in our building since 1998 and during the night when electricity [00:20:00] prices low, it produced the ice. And then during the day instead of using high cost electricity for air conditioning during the day, you would run the water through the ice. Speaker 2:And so you basically, by using cold storage in ice, you eliminate electricity use in the afternoon and during the peak. And you can do the same thing with hot water and cold water. Uh, you can store, yeah, you can store heat and uh, in water and store cold and water as well. But then there's another, I mean there's a community in Canada, Oca, Tokes Canada, which is an hour south of Calgary that [00:20:30] they have 52 homes that have 'em on there. The garage roofs have the solar collectors that collect sunlight in the summer in a glycol solution, that glycol solution gets transferred through pipes to a building where it passes by water, heats the water, the water then gets piped underground to heat rocks that stored underground. The rocks got heated up to 80 degrees Celsius until wintertime. They're insulated around them and in winter the whole thing is run in reverse and provides 100% of our winter time heating when snow is on the ground and you can't even tell this facility's [00:21:00] there because the rocks are under a park. Speaker 2:Well, yes, it's a, yeah, it's called seasonal heat storage, so it's a way you can actually store heat over the season and it's so inexpensive. I made a battery. Battery. Electricity is $300 a kilowatt hour. Rock energy is $1 a kilowatt hour, so it's cheaper in fact that the ice is $30 a kilowatt hour, $38 a kilowatt hour. Same with hot and cold water. They're all like one 10th the cost of batteries. There's also what's called pumped hydro electric power. When [00:21:30] you, you have two reservoirs, a and when you have excess electricity, you pump water up the hill. When you need electricity, you let the water drain down the hill. And so you basically, you don't lose water that way. And it's not a dam necessarily, but a reservoir. And it could, one of the reservoirs could be the ocean or a lake. And then, uh, there's concentrated solar power where you in the deserts where, because normally with photovoltaic tags, unless you have batteries, it's hard to store the electricity. Speaker 2:But if you have what's called concentrated solar power, you focus light off of mirrors onto the central tower, the tower as a fluid, molten nitrate [00:22:00] salt for example, that heats up and that fluid can be stored and used at night to generate electricity. By the past, the hot fluid by water creates steam from the water. The steam runs a steam turbine to generate electricity. So that's called concentrated solar power storage. And if you do this on a large scale, that's a lot of solar energy that can be stored batteries. Yeah. And you can use it at night or with when it's cloudy. And that's also one 10th the cost of batteries for electricity storage. It sounds like there's going to be a lot of potential solutions in the [00:22:30] future that you could incorporate into these 50 plans. Yeah, well these are all existing solutions but they're not on a large scale so we just need to scale them up to huge scale. Speaker 2:I read about your organization that you actually give grants out the solutions project. It's a nonprofit that um, I mean the goal is to take energy plans and educate the public and policymakers about them and try to engage the public. But part of their mission right now is to give out small grants to groups that mostly non profits [00:23:00] that have creative ideas of how to get information out better, how to make more effective change. I wanted to ask you about how this idea came into fruition. Yeah. Well, I mean, my whole career I've been, I started at Stanford as a professor in 1994 but you know, it was way back when I was a teenager and my goal was to try to solve, understand and solve air pollution problems and soon after climate problems. This was back in the 19 early 1980s in Los Altos. [00:23:30] So I've always had that goal and passion to try to understand and solve large scale pollution and climate problems. Speaker 2:But when I first started doing research at Stanford, I focused on the problems and understanding them, but I then did a lot of inner comparisons of energy technologies and their impacts on health and climate. Late 1990 started looking at wind energy in particular as a potential solution to some of these problems. And so did studies on the analysis of wind energy was with students as well. But then in around 2008 [00:24:00] I decided I had enough information, I wanted to start comparing different proposed energy solutions to climate and air pollution. So I did an inter comparison study value of what are the best technologies and that's when I came up with the conclusion that it was wind and water and solar power that were the best on nuclear and coal. With carbon capture, we're kind of more mediocre and then things like, you know, natural gas and biofuels were the worst in terms of health and climate and water supply and and land use and catastrophic risk and things like that. Speaker 2:But then the [00:24:30] next question was, well, if you have wind and water and solar is the best of technologies, can you actually then power the world with all the, with these technologies given, you know, resource limitations, land use limitations. And we did a study, that's why I started partnering with Mark Delucci at UC Berkeley and we concluded that it is possible. It's technically and economically possible, but there are social and political barriers. And we said, well, it's even technically possible by 2030 but for social and political reasons it's unlikely we can get to 100% until 2015 that really once we did a paper on that, [00:25:00] that was a global paper that's, you know, nobody controls the whole globe. So we eventually had to go down to state levels and country levels to see if it was possible to do a practical plan. Do you really think based on what's happened so far that will reach the goal of 100% by 2050 based on what you've done already? Speaker 2:I think there is a, there's a growing, I mean we're a lot further now than even two years ago. I mean I think people's mindset any more people are talking about getting to 100% so that in itself is growing exponentially in terms of how people were talking and thinking [00:25:30] about that catastrophic weather that's pushing this kind of attitude. Yeah, well it's a combination of problems are getting worse. The climate problems are getting worse and more people are saying we need to solve the problem. The insurance companies are saying it's an Oh my God issue. Yeah. So are there more people on board? But it's also fortunate that the costs of especially wind and solar and batteries, even batteries and in electric cars are coming down, especially the, when the electric power sector, people are suddenly thinking, wow, we could actually, we could have a high penetration of wind and solar because it's [00:26:00] so cheap that we can really ramp it up. Speaker 2:So it's kind of a combination of more people being aware of it and wanting to solve the problem. And simultaneously costs have come down and there've been technology improvements and existing technologies that are needed. So all the problems. So a lot of things are coming together, but there's still also growth, especially in many countries like you know, even though China for example, is putting in a lot of renewable energy, it's also putting in a lot of coal still. And that's troubling. And, but there are other countries in the world also growing and the pollution, the [00:26:30] emissions are still going up and a lot of places, although they're coming down and some other places, but you do see trends in several countries in Europe. So you can see their admissions are going down already. Uh, but not as fast as we need them to. We are going to experience some pretty wild weather. Speaker 2:Even we were on a hundred percent renewables today. By definition, I mean climate is the average of all weather events and so weather is very variable in the first place. But we do get more extreme weather with higher average temperatures. Yeah. On average, I mean this'll probably be one of the warmers if not the warmest year on record and an individual months [00:27:00] as well. But climate, again, you have to average over a long period look at the trends relevant, the actual value in a given year. It's really the trend that matters. Definitely the trend. It is everything is warming up and there were temperatures are over one degree Celsius higher than, uh, in the 18 hundreds. And you know, that's, that's significant on the rate of change. The temperature today is faster than any time, even since deglaciation from the last ice age. So the Paris agreement that, you know, there, they agreed to try to avoid two degrees Celsius, but it's really [00:27:30] one and a half degrees that a lot of people wanted, um, to avoid. And we're already at one degree, so we're only half a degree away from that. How many parts per million are we had already? We want, we should be at three 50 and where are we? Where are we today for a little over 400 parts per million. Yeah. Speaker 3:And so this is significant. I mean, I think sometimes we don't scare the public enough about what's coming down yet Speaker 2:in 50 years and oh yeah, no, the problem is actually much worse than most people think because half of the warming in the atmosphere is being [00:28:00] hidden by pollution and air pollution particles because they're both reflective in general and the enhanced cloudiness. So if you actually just cleaned up air pollution particles, which you want to do because they'd cause 90% of the air pollution health problems, which killed four to 7 million people every year as you clean up that air pollution, you actually make the warming worse because of the masking that's going on. And so that is another reason it's so urgent to not only eliminate the particles from a health point of view, but also the greenhouse [00:28:30] gases from a climate point of view simultaneously. And the only way you can simultaneously eliminate greenhouse gases and the particles is by changing the energy infrastructure by electrifying everything and producing that electricity from clean and renewable wind, water and solar power. There is a solution to this problem and that's changing the energy infrastructure of cities, states, countries in the world change your own home to the extent you can by electrifying everything. And if you can put solar on the roof, then you can provide that electricity from your own power. You can even add some batteries to [00:29:00] store it so you don't have to pay for the remaining power that you do use. If you do use it, you know, try to select policymakers who are more supportive of clean and renewable. Speaker 3:And here we are coming up on an election cycle and that's to me is extremely important and especially a congress that will pass something like this. Do you have a website that people can go to if they want to find out more about this project solutions project? Speaker 2:There's two websites that solutions project.org [00:29:30] that's one word. Then one hundred.org the number one hundred.org so that's a subgroup of the solutions project, which is basically the idea is to bring 100% clean and renewable energy to 100% of the people 100% Speaker 1:of the time. I really appreciate you being on method to the madness, so thank you very much. I thank you for having me on. Speaker 4:Okay. Speaker 1:You've been listening to method to the madness by weekly public fair show. Katie l x Berkeley Celebrating Bay area innovators. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Eric Sorensen, Executive Director, Carbon Roots International, speaks with Diane Horn about the work of Carbon Roots International, a Seattle non-profit that produces green charcoal and biochar to reduce deforestation, increase agricultural productivity, and alleviate poverty in Haiti.