Podcasts about goldman prize

Since its creation under President Richard Nixon in 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has worked to reduce pollution and toxic exposures to ensure that Americans have clean air, clean water and clean soil. The EPA has also sought to reduce emissions to address climate change. Now that the Trump administration is in power, the EPA is being threatened with a 65% reduction in their budget.  In addition to EPA cuts, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is making cuts left and right in an effort to trim $1 trillion from the federal budget. The combination of DOGE and Trump's executive orders — plus the threatened cuts to the EPA and the federal spending freezes — have put thousands of jobs, and clean energy and climate related projects, in limbo. This could have a devastating impact on the national public health and safety standards we now take for granted, and will undermine our ability to address the climate crisis. How far do these cuts go? What is real and what is bluster? What would a country with a severely limited EPA look like?  Guests: Gina McCarthy, Former Administrator, EPA Umair Irfan, Reporter, Vox This episode also includes a news feature reported by April Ehrlich of Oregon Public Broadcasting. Next week, Climate One is hosting a series of live conversations as part of SF Climate Week 2025! Tickets for all four of our events, featuring leaders such as Jenny Odell, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Rep. Jared Huffman, Abby Reyes, Margaret Gordon and two of this year's Goldman Prize winners are on sale now through the official SF Climate Week event calendar. Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you'll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today. For show notes and related links, visit our website. Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Living on Earth is celebrating 55 years of Earth Day with a solution-based broadcast. Grammy nominated singer and Earth Day ambassador Antonique Smith uses the art of storytelling and music to promote environmental justice and climate action in communities of faith and color. Nalleli Cobo is a young activist who was awarded the 2022 Goldman Prize for North America after fighting an oil company whose wells were making her community sick. Also, how shallow geothermal energy networks are presenting signs of hope for the climate crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since its creation under President Richard Nixon in 1970, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has worked to reduce pollution and toxic exposures to ensure that Americans have clean air, clean water and clean soil. The EPA has also sought to reduce emissions to address climate change. Now that the Trump administration is in power, the EPA is being threatened with a 65% reduction in their budget.  In addition to EPA cuts, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is making cuts left and right in an effort to trim $1 trillion from the federal budget. The combination of DOGE and Trump's executive orders — plus the threatened cuts to the EPA and the federal spending freezes — have put thousands of jobs, and clean energy and climate related projects, in limbo. This could have a devastating impact on the national public health and safety standards we now take for granted, and will undermine our ability to address the climate crisis. How far do these cuts go? What is real and what is bluster? What would a country with a severely limited EPA look like?  Guests: Gina McCarthy, Former Administrator, EPA Umair Irfan, Reporter, Vox  This episode also includes a news feature reported by April Ehrlich of Oregon Public Broadcasting. Next week, Climate One is hosting a series of live conversations as part of SF Climate Week 2025! Tickets for all four of our events, featuring leaders such as Jenny Odell, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Rep. Jared Huffman, Abby Reyes, Margaret Gordon and two of this year's Goldman Prize winners are on sale now through the official SF Climate Week event calendar. Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you'll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today. For show notes and related links, visit our website. Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 3 billion people rely on seafood as a primary source of animal protein. But waters are warming, and fish are moving. Are those fish, and the communities that have relied on them for centuries, in trouble? We go around the world, from the rocky shores of New England to the picturesque island of Niue, to investigate how three popular fish are doing. Along the way, we meet people who are protecting and regrowing these fish populations in different ways and learn about their challenges and successes. This episode features reporting by Barbara Moran at WBUR, which was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center's StoryReach U.S. Fellowship. Columbia University's Duy Linh Tu contributed to the reporting.   Guests:  Tessa M. Hill, Oceanographer and Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences, UC Davis Mona Ainu'u, Minister for the Ministry of Natural Resources, Niue Jenn Caselle, Research Biologist, Marine Science Institute, UC Santa Barbara Climate One is hosting a series of live conversations as part of SF Climate Week 2025! Tickets for all four of our events, featuring leaders such as Jenny Odell, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Rep. Jared Huffman, Abby Reyes, Margaret Gordon and two of this year's Goldman Prize winners are on sale now through the official SF Climate Week event calendar. Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you'll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today. For show notes and related links, visit our website. Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 3 billion people rely on seafood as a primary source of animal protein. But waters are warming, and fish are moving. Are those fish, and the communities that have relied on them for centuries, in trouble? We go around the world, from the rocky shores of New England to the picturesque island of Niue, to investigate how three popular fish are doing. Along the way, we meet people who are protecting and regrowing these fish populations in different ways and learn about their challenges and successes. This episode features reporting by Barbara Moran at WBUR, which was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center's StoryReach U.S. Fellowship. Columbia University's Duy Linh Tu contributed to the reporting.   Guests:  Tessa M. Hill, Oceanographer and Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences, UC Davis Mona Ainu'u, Minister for the Ministry of Natural Resources, Niue Jenn Caselle, Research Biologist, Marine Science Institute, UC Santa Barbara Climate One is hosting a series of live conversations as part of SF Climate Week 2025! Tickets for all four of our events, featuring leaders such as Jenny Odell, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Rep. Jared Huffman, Abby Reyes, Margaret Gordon and two of this year's Goldman Prize winners are on sale now through the official SF Climate Week event calendar. Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you'll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today. Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a previous Climate One episode, we discussed the good, the bad, and the ugly impacts of artificial intelligence. But AI isn't going away. Humans rarely give up a nifty new tool unless something better comes along. AI's share of energy consumption is enormous, and the Department of Energy estimates that data center energy demands will double or even triple in just the next three years. Demand on fresh water is at least as big and isn't talked about nearly enough. So, what can we do to reduce AI's impact?  Plenty of researchers have ideas — from site selection to energy efficiency to using zero-carbon sources of energy. But what will incentivize the AI corporations to take any of those actions? This episode is supported by Climate One Steward Noel Perry and Next 10. Episode Guests: KeShaun Pearson, Executive Director, Memphis Community Against Pollution Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability Officer, Google Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University Climate One is once again hosting a series of live conversations as part of SF Climate Week 2025! Tickets for all four of our events, featuring leaders such as Jenny Odell, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Rep. Jared Huffman, Abby Reyes, Margaret Gordon and two of this year's Goldman Prize winners are on sale now through the official SF Climate Week event calendar. Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you'll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today. For show notes and related links, visit our website. Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a previous Climate One episode, we discussed the good, the bad, and the ugly impacts of artificial intelligence. But AI isn't going away. Humans rarely give up a nifty new tool unless something better comes along. AI's share of energy consumption is enormous, and the Department of Energy estimates that data center energy demands will double or even triple in just the next three years. Demand on fresh water is at least as big and isn't talked about nearly enough. So, what can we do to reduce AI's impact?  Plenty of researchers have ideas — from site selection to energy efficiency to using zero-carbon sources of energy. But what will incentivize the AI corporations to take any of those actions? This episode is supported by Climate One Steward Noel Perry and Next 10. Episode Guests: KeShaun Pearson, Executive Director, Memphis Community Against Pollution Kate Brandt, Chief Sustainability Officer, Google Irina Raicu, Director of the Internet Ethics Program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University Climate One is once again hosting a series of live conversations as part of SF Climate Week 2025! Tickets for all four of our events, featuring leaders such as Jenny Odell, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Rep. Jared Huffman, Abby Reyes, Margaret Gordon and two of this year's Goldman Prize winners are on sale now through the official SF Climate Week event calendar. Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you'll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today. For show notes and related links, visit our website. Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's no secret that President Trump is not a fan of wind energy. As a matter of fact, he signed an executive order on his first day back in office that paused leasing for any new or renewed offshore wind energy projects and required the re-evaluation of all wind projects. This has thrown uncertainty into the entire industry, which already had supply chain and local opposition issues even before the new administration took office.  Meanwhile, wind projects — especially offshore — have seen a decade-long boom in Europe, where the U.S. is already 15 years behind. Will the hostile policy from the Trump administration end the wind industry in this country?  This episode features reporting from Ben Berke of The Public's Radio. Guests:  Clare Fieseler, Reporter, Canary Media Jed Welder, Owner, Trinity Farms  Barbara Kates-Garnick, Professor of Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University Climate One is once again hosting a series of live conversations as part of SF Climate Week 2025!  Tickets for all four of our events, featuring leaders such as Jenny Odell, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Rep. Jared Huffman, Abby Reyes, Margaret Gordon and two of this year's Goldman Prize winners are on sale now through the official SF Climate Week event calendar. Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you'll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today. For show notes and related links, visit our website. Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's no secret that President Trump is not a fan of wind energy. As a matter of fact, he signed an executive order on his first day back in office that paused leasing for any new or renewed offshore wind energy projects and required the re-evaluation of all wind projects. This has thrown uncertainty into the entire industry, which already had supply chain and local opposition issues even before the new administration took office.  Meanwhile, wind projects — especially offshore — have seen a decade-long boom in Europe, where the U.S. is already 15 years behind. Will the hostile policy from the Trump administration end the wind industry in this country?  This episode features reporting from Ben Berke of The Public's Radio. Guests:  Clare Fieseler, Reporter, Canary Media Jed Welder, Owner, Trinity Farms  Barbara Kates-Garnick, Professor of Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University Climate One is once again hosting a series of live conversations as part of SF Climate Week 2025!  Tickets for all four of our events, featuring leaders such as Jenny Odell, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, Rep. Jared Huffman, Abby Reyes, Margaret Gordon and two of this year's Goldman Prize winners are on sale now through the official SF Climate Week event calendar. Support Climate One by going ad-free! By subscribing to Climate One on Patreon, you'll receive exclusive access to all future episodes free of ads, opportunities to connect with fellow Climate One listeners, and access to the Climate One Discord. Sign up today. For show notes and related links, visit our website. Ad sales by Multitude. Contact them for ad inquiries at multitude.productions/ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Von Hernandez, Global Coordinator of Break Free From Plastic dives into the escalating plastic pollution crisis, its impact on marine ecosystems and human health, and the pressing need for innovative solutions. Hernandez shares his journey from environmental activism to leading a global movement against plastic waste, offering a compelling vision for a sustainable future. 00:39- About Von Hernandez Von is a global coordinator for Break Free From Plastic.  He received the Goldman Prize for leading a campaign in the Philippines that secured the world's first national ban on incinerators. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tbcy/support

Israel's government raided Al Jazeera's office in Jerusalem this weekend and shut down the outlet's broadcasting within the country. Al Jazeera's Mohamed Moawad joins us. And, National Guardsmen fatally shot Jeffrey Miller at Kent State during an anti-Vietnam War protest in 1970. Russ Miller joins us to remember his brother and the violence at Kent State. Then, Sinegugu Zukulu and Nonhle Mbuthuma are two of this year's Goldman Prize winners. They're from South Africa's indigenous Wild Coast community and banded together to defeat an offshore drilling effort.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In recognition of her leadership and advocacy, Indigenous Wirdi woman Murrawah Maroochy Johnson has been awarded the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize.    She joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss a landmark victory for First Nations rights in Australia, led by her organization Youth Verdict against Waratah Coal, which resulted in the Land Court of Queensland recommending a rejection of a mining lease in the Galilee Basin that would have added 1.58 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over its lifespan.   The court case set multiple precedents in Australia, including being the first successful case to link the impacts of climate change with human rights, and the first to include on-Country evidence from First Nations witnesses.    If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!   See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage, mongabay.com, or follow Mongabay on any of the social media platforms for updates.   Image credit: 2024 Goldman Prize winner Murrawah Maroochy Johnson. Photo courtesy of Goldman Environmental Prize.   --- Timecodes    (00:00) Introduction (02:51) An unprecedented victory (05:33) Including on-Country evidence (16:17) Future legal implications (20:34) Challenges of navigating the legal system (26:14) Looking to the future (28:16) Credits

Encampment at Formosa ditch day 10 Caroline welcomes rapid return of Diane Wilson, in reciprocal blessing for her effective dedication…and protection…at this time when the dead are eager to speak and intervene…. indefatigable ally in perpetuity Diane Wilson, “Hey Caroline , I'm on Hungerstrike in ditch front of formosa plastics texas. Come and levitate the plant. Seriously. I have fought formosa on a material, a physical, and a legal level. Now I am fighting on a spiritual level.” “Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation shrimper, boat captain, mother of five, author, and an environmental, peace, and social justice advocate. During the last 30 years, she has launched legislative campaigns, demonstrations, hunger strikes, sunk boats, and even climbed chemical towers in her fight to protect her Gulf Coast bay…….” Won Multi-million $ settlement against Formosa Plastics, Goldman Prize winner etc… https://dianewilsonactivist.org/about/ “On October 31, 2023, Diane Wilson began her fourth hunger strike, this time to bring justice to the victims from the 2016 Formosa Steel disaster in Vietnam.” Click here to learn more and support the Hunger Strike   Support The Visionary Activist Show on Patreon for weekly Chart & Themes ($4/month) and more… *Woof*Woof*Wanna*Play?!?* The post The Visionary Activist Show – Hungerstrike: Clean Water at Home and Beyond appeared first on KPFA.

  All Souls – back-channels opening – for us all, to call in that which is more powerfully wise than our rogue species… Three Librans convening with Day of the Dead, All Souls, True Halloween – “A Libra is just an Aries that's been to charm school!” (Jay Jacobs) Caroline hosts fellow politically engaged astrologer, Rachel Lang, elected to Ojai, CA city council. Who writes: “I just found out I've been selected to serve on the Community Services policy committee for the CA League of Cities… helping shape policies for health and human services, arts & culture, and care for the unhoused.” That all metaphysics be applied to supporting Flora Fauna Fungi democracy, or to hell with it… http://rachellangastrologer.com   And indefatigable ally in perpetuity Diane Wilson, “Hey Caroline , I'm on Hungerstrike in ditch front of formosa plastics texas. Come and levitate the plant. Seriously. I have fought formosa on a material, a physical, and a legal level. Now I am fighting on a spiritual level.” We back her up Let's all Have desired blessings lined up for animation…. “Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation shrimper, boat captain, mother of five, author, and an environmental, peace, and social justice advocate. During the last 30 years, she has launched legislative campaigns, demonstrations, hunger strikes, sunk boats, and even climbed chemical towers in her fight to protect her Gulf Coast bay…….” Won Multi-million 4 settlement against Formosa Plastics, Goldman Prize winner etc… https://dianewilsonactivist.org/about/     The post The Visionary Activist Show – All Souls: back-channels opening appeared first on KPFA.

In the world of business, decisions can range from risky to downright shady. The line between the two blurs, especially in industries like oil, gas, petrochemicals, and plastic production. Land acquisition and permits for pollution resulting from the gruesome history of racial segregation and government-sponsored redlining often raise ethical questions. In this episode of 'All Eyes On The Gulf,' the first episode of season four of The People over Plastic podcast, we dive deep into these murky waters. Our environmental reporter Alexis Young, connects with courageous environmental activists across the Gulf region, from Texas to Louisiana, unveiling the shady dealings in the oil and gas industry. Prepare to hear the unfiltered truths from those on the frontlines. We're honored to feature voices like 2023 Goldman Prize Winner, Diane Wilson, who's taken on multi-billion dollar Formosa Plastic. Joining Alexis are also resilient community members, like Dr. Joy Banner, Co-Founder of the Descendants Project, Josette Cruz from Brownsville, Texas, and Shamyra Lavigne of Rise St. James, daughter of the 2022 Goldman Prize Winner, Sharon Lavigne. Tune in for a powerful conversation between co-hosts Alexis Young and Shilpi Chhotray, shedding light on the shady decisions that impact our communities. It's time to unveil the truth behind the corporate smokescreens and the legacy of environmental racism. RESOURCES: Click here to see the “Banking on Climate Chaos” graphic. And for our podcast episode featuring Bernadette Dementieff of the Gwich'in Nation, tune in here. Don't forget to check out our website for Alexis' additional reporting on Dr. Joy Banner, Josette Cruz, Shamyra Lavigne and Diane Wilson and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.

TCD Best of: Goldman Prize winners Chima Wlliams  & Julien Vincent, plus scientists resurrect ancient enzyme to boost photosynthesis!

Since the colonization of the Congo Basin by Europeans, many Indigenous communities have been denied land they once relied on in the name of conservation under a contentious conservation model. The central concept of “fortress conservation” remains popular with some Central African governments, however experts say it is based on a false premise of a "pristine wilderness" devoid of humans. However, Indigenous leaders and conservation experts say it's time for a change. One that includes Indigenous communities and puts them in the drives seat of conservation initiatives. On this episode of Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin, Cameroonian lawyer and Goldman Prize winner Samuel Nguiffo, Congolese academic Vedaste Cituli, and Mongabay features writer Ashoka Mukpo detail the troubling history of fortress conservation in Central Africa, its impact, and ways to address the problems it has created. For more Congo exploration coming soon, find & follow/subscribe to Mongabay Explores via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here. Please also enjoy the first three seasons of Explores, where we dove into the huge biodiversity and conservation challenges in Sumatra, New Guinea, and more.  Episode Artwork: Kahuzi-Biega National Park rangers standing in formation in the park in October 2016, by Thomas Nicolon for Mongabay. Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama. Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!  See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for Mongabay.

The debate about how to best protect the Congo Basin's rainforest increasingly finds experts and Indigenous leaders arguing that it's time for a change, one that brings local and Indigenous people into the conversation. Fortress conservation, a model exported to Africa during the colonial era, typically expels local people from land they once relied on for food, fiber and medicine, but experts argue the concept that this model uses – that of a 'pristine wilderness' untouched by humans – is a flawed construct. Many protected areas in Africa still use this conservation model, though, to the detriment of local people, sometimes resulting in violence.  On this episode of Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin, we interview lawyer and Goldman Prize-winner Samuel Nguiffo, Mongabay features writer Ashoka Mukpo, and conservation and Indigenous relations expert Vedaste Cituli about the legacy of fortress conservation in the Congo Basin, how the militarization of rangers has exacerbated tension with local people, and potential pathways forward to return some conservation control to local and Indigenous populations. Find the first three seasons of Mongabay Explores – where we explored Sumatra, New Guinea, and more – via the podcast provider of your choice, or locate all episodes of the Mongabay Explores podcast on our podcast homepage here.  Episode Artwork: The Indigenous Batwa were evicted from their forest home in Uganda in the early 1990s when Mgahinga Gorilla National Park was established, leaving them landless and poor in a society that saw them as a lower class. Image by USAID Biodiversity & Forestry via Flickr (Public Domain). Sounds heard during the intro and outro: The call of a putty-nosed monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This soundscape was recorded in Ivindo National Park in Gabon by Zuzana Burivalova, Walter Mbamy, Tatiana Satchivi, and Serge Ekazama. Please invite your friends to subscribe to Mongabay Explores wherever they get podcasts.  If you enjoy our podcast content, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!  See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok by searching for @mongabay. Feedback is always welcome: submissions@mongabay.com.    

Nations around the globe are busy evacuating their personnel from embassies in Khartoum, Sudan, amid fighting between rival military commanders. With little diplomatic presence left, what role can the international community play in trying to end the violence? And, the COVID-19 pandemic weakened health care systems around the globe. USAID's Dr. Atul Gawande talks about how global health care systems are getting back on their feet. Also, the Goldman Prize has awarded Zafer Kizilkaya for his decadelong work establishing community-managed marine-protected areas along Turkey's coastline. Kizilkaya is the first winner from Turkey. Plus, Sifan Hassan places first in the women's London Marathon. 

Winners of The Goldman Environmental Prize, the highest award of the year that goes to environmental activists leading grassroots campaigns, were announced on Monday.One of the recipients, Zafer Kizilkaya, is the first winner ever from Turkey.Kizilkaya is a trained civil engineer, marine conservationist and underwater photographer. He is being recognized for his work for more than a decade of creating a community-managed, 300-mile-plus marine-protected area along the Turkish coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Aerial view of Gökova Bay, Turkey Credit: Zafer Kizilkaya In 2007, after returning from maritime work in Indonesia, Kizilkaya saw a problem as he dived into Turkey's Gökova Bay.“I noticed that there was a nuclear war that happened underwater,” Kizilkaya told The World. “There [was] nothing. Rocks [were] bare; there [was] no fish or algae.”What he saw was a result of overfishing, illegal fishing, invasive species, such as the lionfish, and the effects of climate change. The Mediterranean Sea is one of the world's most overfished bodies of water, and it became apparent to Kizilkaya that action needed to be taken to help protect Turkey's degraded ecosystem.This led to him launching his own nonprofit, Akdeniz Koruma Dernği (the Mediterranean Conservation Society), in 2012, with the help of local fishing communities.But it wasn't easy at first for Kizilkaya to win over the entire community.“Nobody believed us,” he said. “The fishing communities are hard people to get, negotiate or even communicate with sometimes.”He explained that the perception was that he was seeking to close some favorite fishing grounds forever. Though income in fishing areas was already collapsing from the degradation, closing even more areas down from fishing could exasperate the problem. Invasive lionfish in coastal rocky habitats Credit: Zafer Kizilkaya “One disadvantage I had, there was no good example in front of me for Turkey,” Kizilkaya said. “Even if I am telling them good examples [of marine protected areas] from other parts of the world, it [didn't] mean anything to them at that time.”Fortunately, other stakeholders, government institutions and certain fishing community members believed what he and his team said. Cleanup of discarded fishing nets, Bozburun MPA, Marmaris, Turkey Credit: Zafer Kizilkaya With their support and negotiations for over a year, the first protected areas in Gökova Bay were officially established in 2012.Fishermen have continued to fish in the protected areas knowingly and unknowingly, and much of Kizilkaya's work has been spent educating local communities on marine-protected areas. He has been able to convert local fishermen and have them work with his organization as marine rangers to help stop fishing in those parts. Zafer Kizilkaya and team on patrol Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize “It is great to establish those areas and immediately start patrolling [them],” Kizilkaya said. “We don't have much time to convince all the stakeholders in the world.” Because of his work, the Turkish government expanded the network in August 2020 by over 150 square miles, with an additional 27 square miles of no-fishing zones, totaling 310 square miles of marine-protected areas along the Turkish coastline, since Kizilkaya began his grassroots endeavor. Diverse sponge species in Gökova Bay restoration area Credit: Zafer Kizilkaya There is currently a worldwide campaign for 30% of all oceans to become protected areas by 2030, and that at least 10% within that campaign should be fully protected areas. Kizilkaya said that less time should be spent on negotiation and more immediate action should happen in order to meet this goal. “On the Mediterranean scale, the total of fully protected areas is 0.04%,” Kizilkaya said. “It's not even 1% yet, and there's too [long of a ways] to go."Related: You can ring this 'fish doorbell' to help marine life in the Netherlands

Many assaults on the environment happen slowly and continually, almost invisibly to us: starting a car engine, buying meat at the grocery store, throwing away a plastic straw.Mountaintop removal is different. It is sudden and violent and intentionally, unmistakably destructive. Coal companies will blow off the tops of mountains with explosives in order to more easily and cheaply access the coal seams underneath vast swaths of forest, streams, and wildlife habitat. They destroy massive areas of wild land to produce a dirty energy that heavily pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Their use of explosives also allows them to employ many fewer miners.Mountaintop removal was one of the big environmental stories in the media in the last couple decades. There were massive protests and a lot of bad press for the coal companies.Now coal production is down in the US, and dramatic and shocking stories about mountaintop removal have largely disappeared from the headlines, but mountaintop removal has not gone away. As the easier-to-access coal is mined, the amount of land that must be destroyed by mountain removal to produce the same amount of coal has increased.One report that demonstrates this is from SkyTruth, an environmental advocacy group that uses satellite imagery and remote sensing data to study environmental damage. They published a study showing that the amount of land needed to produce a unit of coal in 2015 was three times more than it had been in 1998.Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk haven't forgotten what's happening in West Virginia and Appalachia, because they live it every day. They both work for Coal River Mountain Watch, the organization previously directed by Judy Bonds, the renowned mountaintop removal activist from West Virginia, who was the daughter of a coal miner and died of cancer in 2011 at age 58.Vernon and Junior's stories are urgent environmental ones, but they are also stories about the media and how we forget and move on.This episode of Chrysalis is the first in the Chrysalis Projects series, which highlights the work of community-based environmental projects.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Vernon HaltomVernon Haltom has a BS in Mechanical Engineering (Aerospace Option) from Oklahoma State University and a BA in English Education from Northwestern Oklahoma State University. He served six years as an officer in the US Air Force, specializing in nuclear weapons safety and security. He then taught high school English for two years and English as a Second Language to college students for four years. He began volunteering for Coal River Mountain Watch in 2004 and has served on the staff since 2005, serving as executive director since 2011. He was involved in founding the regional Mountain Justice movement in 2004, the Alliance for Appalachia in 2006, and the Appalachian Community Health Emergency (ACHE) Campaign in 2012.Junior WalkJunior Walk grew up on Coal River Mountain in Raleigh County, WV, taking part in traditional Appalachian activities such as harvesting ginseng and mushrooms. He worked for a time in a coal preparation plant and then as a security guard on a mountaintop removal site, where he learned firsthand the damage coal harvesting had on the mountains and the communities below.  He began working with Coal River Mountain Watch and other groups in 2009. In 2011 he was awarded the Brower Youth Award. Since that time his work has taken various forms, including lobbying on federal and state levels, gathering data for lawsuits against coal companies, and even getting arrested doing direct action at surface mines and corporate offices. In 2021 he was awarded a fellowship with Public Lab to help support his work monitoring the coal mines in his community via drones. Junior now serves as the outreach coordinator for Coal River Mountain Watch, monitoring coal mines in his community for environmental violations and guiding tours for visiting journalists and student groups.About Coal River Mountain Watch Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) is a grassroots organization founded in 1998 in response to the fear and frustration of people living near or downstream from huge mountaintop removal sites. They began as a small group of volunteers working to organize the residents of southern West Virginia to fight for social, economic, and environmental justice. From their humble beginnings, they have become a major force in opposition to mountaintop removal. Their outreach coordinator, Julia Bonds, was the 2003 Goldman Prize winner for North America. CRMW's efforts figure prominently in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book Crimes against Nature. They have been active in federal court to challenge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permits for valley fills and made regional news with demonstrations against a sludge dam and preparation plant near Marsh Fork Elementary School. Find CRMW online: Website, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.About Judy Bonds“Born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, Julia “Judy” Bonds was a coal miner's daughter and director of Coal River Mountain Watch. Bonds emerged as a formidable community leader against a highly destructive mining practice called mountaintop removal that is steadily ravaging the Appalachian mountain range and forcing many residents, some of whom have lived in the region for generations, to abandon their homes.” - Learn more at The Goldman Environmental Prize Website.Recommended Readings & MediaSee more of Junior's drone work here and other Coal River Mountain flyovers here.TranscriptionIntroJohn FiegeMany assaults on the environment happen slowly and continually, almost invisibly to us: starting a car engine, buying meat at the grocery store, throwing away a plastic straw.Mountaintop removal is different. It is sudden and violent and intentionally, unmistakably destructive. Coal companies will blow off the tops of mountains with dynamite in order to more easily and cheaply access the coal seams underneath vast swaths of forest, streams, and wildlife habitat. They destroy massive areas of wild land to produce a dirty energy that heavily pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Their use of dynamite also allows them to employ many fewer miners.Mountaintop removal was one of the big environmental stories in the media in the last couple decades. There were massive protests and a lot of bad press for the coal companies.Now coal production is down in the US, and dramatic and shocking stories about mountaintop removal have largely disappeared from the headlines, but mountaintop removal has not gone away. As the easier-to-access coal is mined, the amount of land that must be destroyed by mountain removal to produce the same amount of coal has increased.One report that demonstrates this is from SkyTruth, an environmental advocacy group that uses satellite imagery and remote sensing data to study environmental damage. They published a study showing that the amount of land needed to produce a unit of coal in 2015 was three times more than it had been in 1998.Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk haven't forgotten what's happening in West Virginia and Appalachia, because they live it every day. They both work for Coal River Mountain Watch, the organization previously directed by Judy Bonds, the renowned mountaintop removal activist from West Virginia, who was the daughter of a coal miner and died of cancer in 2011 at age 58.Vernon and Junior's stories are urgent environmental ones, but they are also stories about the media and how we forget and move on.I'm John Fiege, and this conversation about Coal River Mountain Watch is part of the Chrysalis Project series. Here are Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk.---ConversationJohn FiegeI was hoping that you all could start by telling me a bit about your backgrounds and how you both came to work for Coal River Mountain Watch.Vernon HaltomMy background is, I was raised in Oklahoma, went to Oklahoma State University, went into the Air Force, went back into education, got my English teaching degree, and taught English for a while in high school, taught English as a second language. Just before I moved to West Virginia, I started learning about mountaintop removal. And while I was there I saw it in person and I met Judy Bonds and began volunteering with Coal River Mountain Watch in 2004. Came on staff at the beginning of 2005, and I've been there since.When I heard Judy Bonds on the radio in 2003, she was the Goldman Environmental Prize winner at the time. She was so inspirational and so motivational that seeing the problem of mountaintop removal and seeing what the coal companies were doing to the communities was unbearable.John FiegeAnd how about you, Junior?Junior WalkYeah, so I graduated high school in 2008. Shortly before I graduated, I realized that in this country you kind of need money to go to college. And so realized I wasn't really going to be able to do that. And so I was stuck here in southern West Virginia. And like many people who are in that situation, I went to work for the coal industry. At 17 years old, I went to work for the Elk Run coal processing plant in Sylvester, West Virginia. I worked there for about six months as I graduated high school and quickly learned that that's not something I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It's dangerous work, it's difficult work, and it doesn't pay enough.And so did some minimum wage work for a while, Dollar Store, Dairy Queen, that sort of thing. And eventually, I was offered a position as a security guard on a surface mine, and I figured sitting on my butt for 12 hours a day making money, I could handle that and so I did that. I did also for about six months, but within the first couple weeks of me working up there, I felt miserable about it. Sitting up there, watching that machinery work and them tearing down the mountains and knowing that the people who live below that mine site were going through the same stuff I went through when I was a kid. Contaminated water, dust, coal trucks rumbling by your house, trains. I felt bad about putting other people through that, continuing that cycle of exploitation.John FiegeWhen you were a kid, how aware were you of that as a problem versus just your reality that you didn't question?Junior WalkWell, we had well water at my house when I was growing up and they were doing coal slurry injection on the hillside above my family's home. And so coal slurry is a byproduct of coal processing. When coal is mined regardless if it's taken from an underground mine or a surface mine, the first stop for that coal is a processing plant. And that's where it's put through a series of chemical washes to be suitable to burn in a power plant to fit within clean air act regulations. And the byproduct of that is that coal slurry. So that's everything in the coal that they're not allowed to burn and put into the atmosphere as well as all the chemical agents that are used to take those impurities out. And they dispose of that in a few different ways, but one such way is by injecting it into old abandoned underground coal mines. And that's what they were doing right above my family's home. And so our water came out of my tap red for years, and I always knew that had something to do with the coal industry.In addition to that, through my entire elementary school career, I attended Marsh Fork Elementary, which at the time, was situated directly next to a coal processing plant and a coal slurry impoundment, which is the other way that the industry disposes of this coal waste. They put it into these huge earthen dams. So when you think about a dam, you are usually thinking about concrete and steel and that sort of thing, like the Hoover Dam. But when you're talking about a dam as in a slurry impoundment, you're talking about a bunch of dirt and rubble and trees that are dumped into the face of a valley, used to create a giant berm up to the top of the hilltop almost. And that whole holler back in behind there is back filled with liquid waste. And so that was right directly next to my elementary school.John FiegeWow. And that was one of the projects that you all did in terms of relocating that elementary school?Junior WalkIt was, yeah.John FiegeWere you part of that project?Junior WalkYeah. So essentially, while I was a security guard up there, I decided to come and have a conversation with Judy, who'd I'd known ever since I was a little kid, because I went to school with her grandson. And I think she also worked with my grandma at various times at gas stations and stuff. But from there, I started volunteering with Coal River Mountain Watch while I was a security guard. And a few months down the road, I was offered a position on staff. And I started on staff at Coal River Mountain Watch in January of 2010, and that's what I've been doing ever since.John FiegeWell, could each of you also describe the mountains and forests and waterways and biodiversity in Raleigh County and the area around Coal River Mountain?Junior WalkThe topography is large valleys with a bunch of smaller valleys jutting off from it, which are known as hollers. And then each of those little hollers have hollers branching off from it, just going way back into the mountain and up to the tops. And it can feel very isolated here because it takes so long to get to anywhere else. If you think about it, if you're up in the head of a holler that's in a holler, then you've got to travel out two hollers before you even hit the main road. In a lot of places around here, it's like an hour to your closest McDonald's or Walmart or any of that stuff.John FiegeAnd what are some of your memories from childhood of being within that?Junior WalkGoing hunting with my dad and my uncle, my papa. Traveling way back into the woods either in trucks and then later on, four wheelers caught on, and we'd take those. And just being in the forest and being taught how to bring food back out, why it's important for us to take care of these places where you can do those sorts of things.John FiegeRight. Right. Well, as the production of coal has been plummeting in the United States over the last few years, it's easy to think of American coal mining and mountaintop removal as vestiges of the past, but they're not. Can you all describe what mountaintop removal is, what it's like to witness it, and what's going on right now with coal mining in Raleigh County and in the surrounding areas?Vernon HaltomMountaintop removal is still going on. It's still expanding. They don't stop. There are new permits. The Turkey Foot permit on, it's well over a thousand acres, I want to say 1700 acres, on Coal River Mountain was approved last year. The valley fill permits for that will bury over three miles of streams, and that's just part of the overall 12 square mile complex on Coal River Mountain that includes the 8 billion gallon Brushy Fork sludge dam. So the myth that it's over is just that, a myth. And that's one of the biggest obstacles to our work because it's hard to get somebody to listen about your cause if they think that your cause is over.And our backyard is Cherry Pond Mountain, the Twilight complex there is 12 square miles and the coal company operating there, they have 81 civil penalty delinquency letters since December 14th. And they're still allowed to operate, they're still getting permits renewed.John FiegeYeah, I think that's one of the dirty secrets of our environmental regulations in this country is, industry is constantly violating those regulations and often being even fined for it, if not warned about it, but they keep operating. The money they're making is so much greater than the costs of dealing with those petty violations.Vernon HaltomOne of the permits that was recently renewed, it was actually signed on April 1st, April Fool's Day, the day after the company received a civil penalty delinquency letter. And the same company also had received a show cause notice just before that. It was something that we had requested because they had so many violations within the previous year. But the corrective action is what's called a consent order, where the company agrees to comply with the regulations and the laws, but there's really no teeth involved. They tell them they have to have three consecutive days of no coal removal and they're just going to schedule that in it. It's not going to be punitive.John FiegeAnd then there are no consequences. And the threat is, we might be mad at you.Vernon HaltomNo consequences. Sometimes the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection will wag their finger. On rare occasions, they will slap a wrist, but usually it's just a scowl.John FiegeRight. And if you compare it to the daily profits, it's just nothing.Vernon HaltomAnd one thing that I think it's important too, I always say that mountaintop removal is the cradle of the climate crisis. So many people think that this is just a local problem, but it's not just a local problem. The coal that's extracted from the mountains becomes CO2 and contributes to global heating. The trees, the forests that are destroyed, and it's not just the trees, it's everything in the forest, is demolished. So there's no longer a carbon sink there and the blasting dust that goes into the communities, and Junior has a video, a drone video of a blasting cloud coming from Coal River Mountain drifting down through the communities of McDowell Branch and Workman Creek at least two miles. And that is deadly. Those health consequences that have killed so many of our friends continue unabated.West Virginia DEP will not issue a violation for fugitive dust. They just never do. That is what the main culprit in over 30 health studies now that have been done. It's increasingly apparent that breathing this ultra fine silica that's like very, very fine glass that goes right through your cell membranes is not good for you. It causes cancer and heart disease and birth defects. We've lost Judy Bonds for the cancer. We've lost Joanne Webb to cancer. We've lost Larry Gibson to heart disease. We lost Chuck Nelson to heart disease. We lost Carol Judy to cancer. We lost Vicki Terry to cancer.John FiegeAnd Junior, can you talk about, having grown up in those forests and on those rivers, what is it like for you on an emotional and a visceral level to witness the mountaintop removal and these other side effects of it?Junior WalkWe've lost a lot of friends in the course of fighting against this stuff. And seeing some of these places that I've grown up digging ginseng and hunting and riding four wheelers and hiking, seeing some of these places go from these lush, almost tropical type of forests up on top of these mountains where you're never going to run into another human being, into just a bare rock face, just a vast moonscape. It's like losing a friend.John FiegeYeah. I think one thing that's difficult for a lot of Americans to recognize is that close connection to the land, because so many people in our country have lost that close connection to the land.Junior WalkCan you blame them? Look at the land that they're given. You know what I mean? Most people looks out their window and they see a big old four-lane with stop lights and billboards and gas station signs and all that mess. And it's hard to feel a connection to that. I'm lucky for where I come up at.John FiegeLucky on the one hand, and then feeling the pain of watching it be destroyed on the other. And can you all catalog for me the impacts on ecosystems, on water and air quality, on flood risk, on human health, of mountaintop removal and other coal production in that area?Vernon HaltomWhen I first moved to West Virginia in 2001, the place was flooding. Some of the communities lost several homes, and most of that was in areas near mountaintop removal. Now, there are more valley fills and more mountaintop removal coming so the flood impacts is one of the first things that propelled the formation of Coal River Mountain Watch. So many people concerned about their homes from flooding in 1998 that killed two people in Artie, West Virginia. So that's one of the first concerns. Then you have the blasting, which emits the ultra fine silica dust and other pollutants as well into the lungs of children and elderly and everybody in between in the communities. And blasting also cracks foundations, cracks walls.If you're prone to PTSD and hear these massive explosions every day, that's not helpful for your mental health. The health impacts from mountaintop removal are deadly, so there's that. There's water pollution. The valley fills that are created continue to pollute the water for decades. We don't know yet how long, because the earliest valley fills are still polluting after 30 years or so.John FiegeCan you describe what a valley fill is and how it's done and why it's done?Vernon HaltomOkay, thank you. Because a lot of people get this wrong. So when you take the top off a mountain, you use a lot of explosives and you break the rock up and then you bulldoze it out of the way to get to the coal. Well, that rock and rubble has to go somewhere. So what the coal companies do is they dump it into the creeks and streams and hollows that are the natural contours of the mountains. They compress it, they pack it down. And some of them are miles long, and the miles of streams, over 2000 miles of streams have been impacted by valley fills.John FiegeCovered up, and they're gone?Vernon HaltomThey're covered and they're gone. They're buried. They're completely buried. They're hundreds of feet under this rubble. And so that contributes to the flooding, but you also have that contributing to pollution in the water because all this rock that was segregated from the rain and the sun and the wind for millions of millions of years is now broken up into smaller chunks. If you imagine grinding your coffee and putting it in a basket to make coffee, that's a similar process. So the rain leeches through that and the various minerals and pollutants that were locked up in the rock for all those millennia are now seeping back into the streams. And we don't know how long that will last, but considering the vast scale of these, it'll be forever. You have sediment ponds at the toe of these valley fills where the treatment is done, and that has to be done forever.We've seen coal companies go bankrupt or those obligations not being taken care of, otherwise. The coal companies aren't going to be there forever. When they stop doing that, it's still going to be polluting the streams. So we've lost a large fraction of the species of fish in a lot of the streams and a large fraction of the numbers of fish too, at least a third. So that is a huge impact.John FiegeThe forest itself in the valley is covered in this rubble as well, right?Vernon HaltomIt is.John FiegeSo you have a functioning forest ecosystem in addition to the stream ecosystem that are both completely covered with dirt and destroyed.Vernon HaltomAnd they're all interrelated. The leaves that fall from the trees are processed by the bugs in the streams, and those bugs feed the fish and some of the fish and bugs are eaten by birds. And it's a whole system of overlapping cycles that is part of the beauty of the Appalachian forests.John FiegeWell, and the rest of the country often views folks in West Virginia, and especially folks from coal mining towns and coal mining families as being diehard coal supporters and extremely anti-environmental. And the industries and politicians who profit tremendously from coal production, love to use the West Virginia coal miner as this symbol of American freedom and hard work and that type of thing. The view from the ground is always much more complicated. Can you all talk a bit about the communities in Raleigh County and the views of folks there toward coal mining and mountaintop removal and these coal companies, like Massey Energy, that profits so handsomely from this exploitation and destruction?Vernon HaltomReally quick, just let me point out part of the myth that everybody is for mountaintop removal. Consistently the polls and surveys show that people in West Virginia and elsewhere in Appalachia oppose mountaintop removal two to one. That's not insignificant. And the idea that everybody in West Virginia works for the coal industry is also a myth. Less than 3% of West Virginia's workforce works for the coal industry. Less than half of 1% works in mountaintop removal. Some of that's clustered in specific places. There are a lot more teachers than there are coal miners in West Virginia.Junior WalkThings are always a lot more complicated than they initially seem from the national headlines, at least in most cases. And definitely, there isn't like a homogenous view that everybody in southern West Virginia shares about the coal industry. Opinions and political beliefs and everything else is just as diverse down in here as they are anywhere else. Sure, you've got people who are die hard coal industry supporters that whether they work in the industry or somebody in their family does or not, they're still going to believe whatever the right wing news media shoves down their throat about the coal industry and all that. But then you also have a lot of people who don't feel that way about it.The vast majority of people around here are apathetic about the coal industry because whether that apathy stems from just not thinking about it that much, or whether that apathy stems from a defeatist attitude of, oh, the coal industry, that's the people who have the money and the power and they're going to do whatever they want. That's probably different on a person by person basis. But then you also do have a segment of the population here who are vehemently against stripping the land. Even if they think that the economic benefits of the coal industry and of the past underground mining and stuff like that have been worth it, they'll still draw the line at mountaintop removal or surface mining.John FiegeSo one thing I see over and over again and all across the country, different industries, is this argument that industry tries to make, that the people in the communities where these polluting and destructive activities happen, they want that to go on. They want those jobs, they want the economic activity, they're supportive. The people who are against it are outside agitators or urban environmentalists or professional activists. All these terms you hear thrown around. And I was just wondering if you all could talk about that a little bit and this image that industry often tries to paint of the division between people from the community who are supportive and people from outside the community who are in opposition.Junior WalkFor sure. And I'll say that around here, the vast majority of the good paying coal mining jobs do not go to people who live directly around those coal mines. These people drive in an hour down into here to work, and when they get done working, they get to go back home and turn on their tap water and it comes out clean. They get to send their kids to school somewhere that ain't in danger from being too close to coal operations. They get to drive on roads in their little cul-de-sacs and middle class subdivisions and not have to be worried about getting flattened like a pancake by a coal truck.Those are the people who benefit from the coal industry. It ain't the people who lives in the trailer park right below the big strip mine who are now dealing with a bunch of runoff water and a bunch of dust and everything else.John FiegeAnd those micro differences of different communities is completely lost in the national conversation about these things, I think.Junior WalkAbsolutely.Vernon HaltomOne of the things in West Virginia is you have so much of the industry propaganda infiltrating the schools, even on Earth Day, Alpha Metallurgical Resources hosted kids from Clear Fork Elementary School onto their mountaintop removal site. They had big banners, their trucks. All that's really fun and cool if you're a kid, but Clear Fork Elementary is also within a mile of three mountaintop removal sites and a fourth one if Alpha gets their permit for that one. So there's that support, sometimes locally, but I think the people who are often opposed to it are intimidated, either intimidated by violence or intimidated by opinions of somebody's cousin's nephew's brother-in-law who happens to work for the industry.John FiegeAnd coal supporters often claim that shutting down coal production will destroy communities that grew up around coal and the economies that support them. What do you all make of those claims?Junior WalkI think if the coal industry brought prosperity and economic vitality for southern West Virginia, we wouldn't be some of the poorest counties in the entire nation. And I think that's the only argument that needs to be made about that.John FiegeRight. Well, y'all have mentioned Judy Bonds already, but she's such a big figure. She's the founder and director of Coal River Mountain Watch. She won the 2003 Goldman Environmental Prize. Her unofficial title is The Godmother of the Anti Mountaintop Removal Movement. I know you both knew her and worked with her. Can you tell me a little bit more about her and just her personality and what role she played in bringing these issues to the national stage?Vernon HaltomI first met Judy in 2004. I first heard her voice on the radio in 2003 after she won the Goldman Environmental Prize. She was not tall. What she lacked in stature, she made up with in heart and passion. She was brave. There's a story of her chasing a bear off because it was intimidating her dog. She used her grandson's track shoes to throw at the bear. She was from a coal mining family. I was one of the people who helped carry Judy's casket to her grave in her backyard. She was the last person out of Marfork Hollow in the community of Packsville, that used to be there before the coal industry made it unbearable to live there.She cared deeply about her family. That's what got her into activism, seeing her grandson standing in a stream holding dead fish. I traveled some with Judy. Driving her car, you had to remove the pillow and scoot the seat back so that you could actually get behind the steering wheel. She loved her community, she cared about her community, even the people that wished her ill. And one of my sons middle names is Jude, and that's for Judy. She had such a huge impact on thousands and thousands of people that her shoes were hard to fill and nobody's tried to fill them and nobody can. But her loss from cancer from breathing mountaintop removal dust for all those years is a huge loss.Junior WalkI was real lucky to know her when I was a kid. My mom actually volunteered with Coal River Mountain Watch in 1998 right after everything was started up. She didn't do it for very long or anything, but I can remember going in there as a kid and they had big pieces of butcher block paper, essentially, on a easel, and she'd let me draw on them and stuff. And it's one of the first places I ever messed with a computer at, was at the old Coal River Mountain Watch office there. The one story that really sticks in my mind about Judy and me is, so when I was about eight years old, this is around '98, there was a community meeting at the old Pettus School, which doesn't exist anymore. Now, it's a parking lot for coal mines. I went there, my mom brought me there when I was a little kid, and I remember standing up and asking Judy if they want to blow up the mountains, why don't we all just hold hands around the mountains and they can't? I was a little kid.And then years later, you fast forward and I started working for Coal River Mountain Watch and all that. And there's this one point in time Judy looks at me and she said, "Junior, do you know you're the first person to ever bring up direct action to me?" Referencing all the way back to that. And that ain't something I talk about an awful lot because that's kinda unbelievable. When I first started working for Mountain Watch and stuff, the actions and all that had been going on for quite a few years-John FiegeReally?Junior Walk... from when I was a teenager and stuff. And I wasn't involved in any of that, so it's crazy to think.John FiegeWow, that's amazing. And Judy's known for doing this non-violent direct action. And at this point, I know you all are doing a lot of monitoring work on foot with GPS and with small planes and drones. Can you talk about the various strategies that Coal River Mountain Watch uses and how they relate to the work the organization has done historically?Junior WalkYeah, you pretty well hit the nail on the head there as far as our current strategy, which is the monitoring work, either going up in flights with one of our partner organizations, South Wings, in small aircraft to monitor these mines or with drones or on foot and just hiking around in the mountains and trying not to get seen by security guards. And yeah, I'd say over the years, Coal River Mountain Watch has employed a lot of different tactics, and we've had a lot of different campaigns to the ends of trying to be a nemesis to the coal industry. That's always been our main goal is to be as much of a pain to the coal industry as humanly possible. And so whatever projects we can figure out to work on to meet that goal, that's what we do.And over the years, we've done everything from lobbying in the state capital in Charleston, in Washington, DC, gathering scientific data from lawsuits, traveling around and telling the story of how coal mining has affected our community at various universities or events and things like that, to doing direct action work, getting arrested, doing tree sits and blockades and things of that nature.John FiegeAnd what has changed? I know you were doing more direct action before. What has changed? Has the political environment changed? Do you feel like other tactics are more successful now? What's the thinking there about the shifts in emphasis?Vernon HaltomA lot of the shift in emphasis is the myth that the coal industry is over. In 2015, it was in pretty much every major media outlet that King Coal was dead when Alpha Natural Resources, at the time, requested bankruptcy relief. That was taken as a sign that it was over. And we had allies who said it was essentially over. That's the quotation from their fundraising letter. And some of the minor victories, I call them minor victories, in lawsuits were over-hyped, I think. So a lot of the energy from direct action campaigns went to other related issues, pipelines, fracking and things like that.John FiegeAnd Junior, you went to Marsh Fork Elementary School. What was it like, one, to be there? What did you notice about going to school there? And then secondly, what was it like to then witness this fight as you got older and became an adult and then started working with Coal River Mountain Watch that was doing all this work with Judy around relocation?Junior WalkYeah. So I went to Marsh Fork Elementary from kindergarten through sixth grade, and that would've been from 95 until 2001. And yeah, I can remember dust in the playground, just like when you'd be let out for recess, if you was the first one over to the slides and stuff, there'd be a layer of dust just laying on everything.John FiegeAnd that was silica dust?Junior WalkIt was coal dust.John FiegeIt was coal dust.Junior WalkFrom the processing plant.John FiegeBut the ultra fine silica, that would be more in the air then-Junior WalkIt would be. And that's more from-John FiegeOh, that's from the mountaintop removal.Junior WalkBlasting. Yeah, exactly. Which there is a mountaintop removal site directly behind the processing plant beside the old school, but it wasn't active yet at the time I went there.John FiegeGotcha. So this was straight coal dust?Junior WalkYeah, it was just coal dust. So it got worse after I left, essentially. And I do remember the first silo that they built there, right directly behind the school. It's the only one that they actually built, but it was there when I was a kid, and I can remember the noise of them loading train cars. So imagine a train pulling through a tunnel in the bottom of a massive silo and then just a bunch of coal dropping into each one of those cars every few seconds. It was difficult to concentrate on anything.John FiegeWell, I'm sure that Joe Manchin's kids had to deal with the same stuff in their school-Junior WalkOh yeah.John FiegeDon't you think?Junior WalkGuarantee you that. Is that his daughter's the one that hiked up the price of EpiPens a while back? Yeah, no, I bet she's breathed all kind of coal dust in her life, huh? So from the time I got out of elementary school until I graduated high school, there was two kids that I went to elementary school with that had had cancer by the time we graduated high school, and one of them passed away. And I've had other people that I went to elementary school with who since then until now have passed away. I don't even know how many, but more than a couple. There was a girl that was in my grade that just died, I think last year-John FiegeWhoa.Junior Walk... from cancer. And I solidly blame the coal operations that we were going to school next to.John FiegeWow. And what's it like to see the school moved later and then to begin working for the organization that was responsible for that?Junior WalkTo know that the kids that would be going to school there now have a safe, clean school that they can go to just a few miles up the road from that one. It's amazing. That, to me, even though I was only involved a little bit right at the very end, that's still one of the proudest things I've ever been involved in in my life.John FiegeWell, and just makes it so much more powerful having gone to that school yourself. That's really an incredible story.Vernon HaltomYeah, I guess the sad thing is the new school is two miles from the Eagle 2 mountaintop removal permit. So when they get around to that portion of it, there's kids going to be endangered from that too, if the wind's blowing from the correct direction.John FiegeRight. And I think when people think of coal mining, they think of that, you dig a tunnel in the mountain and you go down there and the coal is there and you knock it off and you put it in rail cars and you send it out. Can you talk just a bit more about why they're doing this mountaintop removal? I know you mentioned it's cheap, but why is it cheap and why are they having to go for these thin sections of coal in the mountain now?Vernon HaltomIt's cheaper because it takes fewer people. If you go and watch a mountaintop removal site, you may see just a handful of people. There will be a guy driving that truck, a guy driving that truck, a guy driving that bulldozer, a guy driving that bulldozer, a security guy and a few people operating the explosives. So the energy and work that used to be done by miners is now done by explosives. And the explosive equivalent of 20 Tomahawk missiles is pretty substantial even though the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection calls that a small blast. It does a lot of damage and it breaks up the rock, and then you just scoop it up, push it down the valley, or push it onto another section of the mountaintop removal site and then scoop up the coal. It's fast and efficient. It's the low hanging fruit of getting to the coal.And if they want to come back later, they just spray some of those grass seed and fertilizer over it and call it good until they want to come back to it. The companies get a variance. They have all these variances, all these regulations and laws that they get the approval to violate, essentially, and they're not able to comply with the regulations. They can't even maintain a ditch. Right now they have a very bad open violation on Coal River Mountain because their ditch failed. The ditch that's supposed to catch the runoff and the sediment, and it's just too steep. And the laws of physics still apply in West Virginia regardless of what the coal industry and the DEP think.John FiegeAnd what's the danger of company abandonment and bankruptcies and all of that, thinking about these issues?Vernon HaltomA lot of the companies had what was called self-bonding, where they themselves guaranteed the money to fix up any reclamation if they were to abandon it. And that's not a good idea. And there are also other companies, insurance companies or what have you, that a company can get their reclamation bond through. But so much of mountaintop removal is subject to failure with too many bankruptcies or too many companies abandoning their obligations, that there is a real potential that the actual cleanup costs could fall on the taxpayer. And frankly, West Virginia taxpayers can't afford it. The state budget already gives more to the coal industry than they get from it.John FiegeWell, in the context of all this, Judy Bonds had to deal with continual threats of violence toward her, as have so many other people who've worked to stop mountaintop removal, like Larry Gibson, well-known activist who was working right near there. How much do you still encounter violence or threats of violence in this work?Junior WalkI'll say, when I first come on staff at Coal River Mountain Watch in 2010, before Judy would start her car, she'd have me go around and look at the underside of it with a mirror to make sure that there wasn't nothing going to surprise her when she started her car. And I think that since then, between the coal industry just generally not employing as many people as they did in 2010, as well as the shift of attitude of a lot of the local people after the Upper Big Branch mine explosion and the drop off of attention from the national news media about surface mining here in West Virginia as an issue. Also, something that's went away with all that has been a lot of the real visceral threats of violence and stuff from the other side, from the coal industry supporters. And that's not to say that it don't still happen, because it most certainly does. And I'm real careful anytime I leave the house just to remember that there are people around here that would rather see me dead. But in recent years, it hasn't been as bad as what it was at the height of the resistance to surface mining here.John FiegeAnd how about you, Vernon? What have you seen?Vernon HaltomBack in 2009, in June of 2009 when we had the big rally at Marsh Fork Elementary School and the protest and the march down to the preparation plant, pretty much everybody had their lives threatened then. My life was threatened, my wife's life was threatened. Judy Bonds was sucker punched. It leaves an impression that regardless of where you are, am I safe here? When is it coming? You're always looking over your shoulder. And some people get treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. Well, when that trauma and that stress is ongoing, there's that concern, that anxiety, that it could happen. And there's also the concern and anxiety for ongoing mountaintop removal. It's a violent process. It kills people.John FiegeWell, what is y'all's vision of what a future Raleigh County or a future West Virginia could look like and how the communities there could find themselves in a much better place than what they have to endure currently?Junior WalkI do not care. It's not my problem what the future is going to look like around here. It's not my problem how a coal miner is going to make their truck payment that they went out and financed some ridiculous big old truck. You know what I mean? That's not my responsibility to come up with what a future's going to look like here. Just because I'm the one that's standing here saying that what's going on now is a problem and it needs to stop, that don't put the burden on my shoulders to tell these people what they're going to do next.John FiegeAnd Junior, is there a world that you want to live in there? For example, do you imagine, hope for, dream of a world without the coal industry operating? Or do you have a vision, not to speak for everybody there or the coal miners or anything like that, but for yourself? What would you like to see there that would be better for you?Junior WalkThe only thing I could see to make this area a better and more livable place is to do away with the coal industry, to stop them from operating completely like 10 years ago, and we haven't done that. They still get to do what they want, and it still makes this place miserable to live for most people or for a whole lot of people. And yeah, I would love to see what this area would look like without the exploitation of the coal industry. I'm sure we would be just fine. The vast majority of the people that live in these communities around here are all retired or disabled. The coal industry dissolving overnight isn't going to affect them. It's going to affect the people, like I said, driving in an hour every day. And whatever happens to them and their cul-de-sac and gated communities, I could care less.John FiegeRight. And why have you stayed?Junior WalkWell, I've stayed here because this is where my family is. Like I was talking about, I've traveled all over the country. I've been to almost every single one of the lower 48, and I've never found anywhere else that I'd rather live. This is a beautiful place. I'm lucky to be from here.John FiegeWhat keeps you going through this difficult work?Junior WalkWell, for me, personally, I'll say that I still feel like I owe it to the people who took me under their wings when I was first starting out in this stuff. Judy Bonds and Larry Gibson, Chuck Nelson, Sid Moye. There's many people that really put a lot of faith into me and put a lot of effort into molding me into who I am today. And I'll be eternally grateful for that. And I still owe it to them and to their memories to keep doing this work until it's done, until there is no more coal industry in southern West Virginia, because that's what they asked of me. And so that's what I'm going to keep doing.And then on top of all that, you can't live around here and see the way that people are exploited and the things they're expected to live through and live with and be okay with and not stand up and say something about it. If you can sit there on your hands and keep your mouth shut just to protect your paycheck from seeing some of the things I've seen, then you're not a good person, and I try to be a good person.Vernon HaltomThe persistence, I think, is something that Coal River Mountain Watch is known for since we started so long ago. We tend to be stubborn and we tend to be bulldogs in the sense of hanging on and sticking to it. I think our passion is seeing it through and not walking away from it. And that's something we do for the love of friends and family that aren't able maybe to take that stand or who would like to, but for whatever reason are intimidated by the threats of violence. But when you have family members who have died from it and you see it, or you stand in it, or you breathe it, or you feel the dust in your teeth, it's gritty. You become a part of it and it's more infused into you. And it's very much a battle, not just for the community, but for the sake of the planet. What happens in West Virginia affects people in the low-lying islands in the Pacific. It affects people impacted by hurricanes.John FiegeAnd you hinted at this idea earlier of, if we can't stop mountaintop removal, what hope do we have of dealing with these big global issues of climate change? It feels like such low hanging fruit and so obvious that if you're going to start somewhere, let's start with that.Vernon HaltomExactly. There's no better low hanging fruit in the climate crisis battle than mountaintop removal.John FiegeNot only do we not need coal anymore, but we don't need to destroy mountains to get to it.Vernon HaltomWe don't need to destroy mountains and kill people to profit a few coal barons who control the state legislatures and much of the government itself. That wealth has power, and the people who breathe air and drink water have very little power in comparison. But eventually, there are more of us than there are of them, and we'll eventually outlast them. We've gone through how many iterations of Alpha Natural Resources, Alpha Metallurgical Resources, and whatever company name they're going to pick next year, that we'll eventually wait them out.John FiegeWell, what do you all hope that listeners can take from this conversation and your stories, and how can they get involved and support some of the work that you're doing at Coal River Mountain Watch?Junior WalkIf there's some big problem in your community that you feel passionate about, do something about it. First and foremost, do whatever you can, devote your life to it. But don't just let injustice stand because when you're quiet about it, everybody else is going to be too. It only takes one person to stand up and raise hell about it for other people to get brave. And then the second part that I'd like for people to take away from this is that these issues that we deal with down here in southern West Virginia related to the coal industry, they are just one issue in a sea of similar problems that goes on around this nation and around the world when poor people get exploited by wealthy people. And that's really the root issue that we're dealing with here, is the exploitation of this land and the people who live on it by wealthy interests that live elsewhere.And this issue here, it's not the capitalist system that we live under gone wrong by any means. It's the capitalist system that we live under going directly 100% according to plan. This is their plan. We live on a planet of only a set amount of resources. And the capitalist system that we live in is based upon this concept of exponential growth of more and more and more and more, consume, consume, consume, consume. And those two facts are going to eventually come to a head. Both of those can't coexist, and that's what they're trying to make happen right now, globally. And that's just not how that works.Vernon HaltomI'd like to echo what Junior said about tackling the challenges in your own backyard. There's something everywhere that people can be plugged into and have that local voice. If somebody wants to help, if they want to help our organization specifically, it's CRMW.net. We're always underfunded. There's more work to do than we have time to do.John FiegeJunior, one more thing I wanted to ask you. Could you talk a little bit more about the drone work you've been doing and more about what it is you're filming and what impacts either you're hoping it's going to have or that you actually seen it have already?Junior WalkFor sure. So I've been using drones to film and document these mine sites since about 2016. And generally, the idea is you fly the drone, you find something that they shouldn't be doing or that's messed up on their site that they're going to have to fix. You take that information to the DEP, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, and then you make them make the coal company fix whatever it is that you found. And so generally, the fines and stuff that they get are just a slap on the wrist. They're factored into the cost of doing business. But what really hurts them is when we find stuff that they then have to take workers and equipment away from actively mining coal to then go to a different section of the site and repair, and that's what really hurts them economically. And in our hope, that is what will make it less economically feasible for them to keep their operations open.John FiegeGreat. And have you seen results from that?Junior WalkTo some extent, for sure. We've definitely had to force, or we've been able to force coal companies to have to go back to sections of their site that they're pretty far away from and fix crumbling high walls or dig stuff out of a sediment ditch. And I don't think I'm wrong in assuming that, yeah, we've been able to cost them a pretty penny.John FiegeWell, Vernon, Junior, thank you so much for joining me today, and thank you for all this amazingly difficult, but important and vital work that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you for keeping at it.Vernon HaltomThank you, John, for providing us a platform to tell the story and let people know.Junior WalkYeah, I appreciate you. It was great talking to you.---OutroJohn FiegeThank you so much to Vernon Haltom and Junior Walk. Go to our website at chrysalispodcast.org where you can find out more about Coal River Mountain Watch and the legacy of Judy Bonds. Plus, see some of Junior's drone footage of recent mountaintop removal operations.This episode was researched by Lydia Montgomery and edited by Brodie Mutschler and Sofia Chang. Music is by Daniel Rodríguez Vivas. Mixing is by Juan Garcia. If you enjoyed my conversation with Vernon and Junior, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Contact me anytime at chrysalispodcast.org, where you can also support the project, subscribe to our newsletter and join the conversation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.chrysalispodcast.org

Sometimes when you're creating an opportunity to showcase amazing women every week, and then... @forbeswomen does it every year, giving you a 'better late than never' nudge to learn more about and highlight magnificently dynamic women you never would have known about inside your little life bubble. So thank you x infinity to Maggie McGrath, for writing about women who run companies, currencies and countries. You're really helping this babe out this week, so I can't wait to see the 2022 list! Cheers to Mia Mottley- first female prime minister for Barbados, Najla Bouden Romdhane- Tunisia's first-ever female prime minister, Lynn Martin- president of the NYSE, Angela Williams- the first Black female president and CEO of Easterseals, Canva cofounder Melanie Perkins, Tala founder Shivani Siroya, Bumble cofounder Whitney Wolfe Herd, and Clear Secure cofounder Caryn Seidman-Becker. Also to Kathy Hochul- The 57th governor of New York is the first woman in history to run the state, Nemonte Nenquimo-indigenous Waorani woman activist (a Goldman Prize and a “Champion of the Earth” honor from the U.N. Environmental Programme in December 2020) , Chinese standup comedian Yang Li, French-Malian pop-star (and Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe honoree) Aya Nakamura,Minyoung Kim, Netflix's vice president of content for Asia-Pacific, and last but certainly not least, “I Will Destroy You” creator Michaela Coel. I appreciate all that you do in your industries to create and collaborate in order to make change happen for all types of people in your native countries, states and counties around the world. You truly make this floating rock a better place and I cannot wait to continue to find inspiration in your words, your wisdom and your way of including others. Big thanks again to Maggie McGrath of @Forbes, see the full article here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2021/12/07/power-rising-these-are-the-women-to-watch-in-2022/?sh=58835fdb2225

CLIMATE ACTION RADIO SHOW  SEPTEMBER 12th 2022Produced by Vivien Langford THE DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT GREEN OPTIMISM I was alerted to the new gold rush for critical minerals by Gavin Mudd, Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering at RMIT University. We must not make the transition to renewable energy and electrifying everything without putting far more regulation on global mining. As Carlos Zorilla says from Ecuador"The voices calling for careful considerations of the impacts of a transition to ‘clean' energy are drowned by the misplaced optimism of a green future. Few are asking commonsense questions that, if not answered now could easily create a worse environmental disaster later – and even compound the climate crisis. The elephant in the room few want to acknowledge is the destruction of people and the environment that will result from the hunger for so-called green energy minerals – mainly copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium."In Chile Lithium is called the "white gold" Lithium Mining Is Leaving Chile's Indigenous Communities High and Dry (Literally) | NRDCand in Ecuador   our own Gina Rinehart is determined to extract copper from a fragile mountainous cloud forest.Rinehart's Roadblock in Ecuador - Friends of the Earth Australia (foe.org.au)Meanwhile the Climate Campaigners focussed on  stopping  new coal exports from Australia are very grateful to the Wangan and Jagalingou people.The Adani Carmichael mine is 9 months into operation with a huge slag heap rising up off their land and underground water already being sucked out to wash the coal. But they are not lying down on the rail tracks. Their dignified year long Waddanangu Ceremony is attracting indigenous and other visitors from all over the country.W&J have shown their intent to continue the ceremony and take their land back - you can sign up as a monthly donor to keep the sacred fire burning here. Moving news from EcuadorCarlos Zorilla won the Equator prize for  the protection, restoration and sustainable management of ecosystems that help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. He speaks to us from the Cloud Forest in Ecuador where  they are protecting  a wonderland of biodiversity.They have made two foreign mining companies back down but now are defending their land against the ravenous appetite for critical minerals used in electric vehicles and all the machinery of the renewables transition we have to make.One of the companies HANRINE is connected to Australian Gina Rinehart. Carlos Zorrilla | The EcologistThe dirty truth about clean energy by Carlos Zorrilla — Local Futures | by Local Futures | Local Futures — Economics of Happiness | Medium Thrilling news from Colombia: New anti extractivist Government promises strong climate action.The Vice President  Francia Marquez is already a veteran environmental warrior. She was awarded the "Green Nobel" Goldman Prize in 2018.Green Left Latin America expert Federico Fuentes puts a bit of a brake on Vivien's enthusiasm by explaining how difficult it is going to be. But what new energy has been released with so many women, indigenous and Afro Colombian people in power?Latin America's Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First Century Socialism by Federico Fuentes and  Roger Burbach | Goodreads  Historic Year for Climate Movement and  Wangan and Jagalingou people : Waddanangu Ceremony near the  Adani coal mine in Qld completes its first full yearPlus :Coedie Mc Avoy is awarded the Environmentalist of the year  prize by Bob Brown (20+) Facebook Live | FacebookCoral Wynter tells us about  Aboriginal people from all over Australia coming to participate in this ceremony and week of listening to each others news. It sounded like a summit.Mining extracts gigalitres of water, leaved horrendous slag heaps and black voids. If the land rights laws lack teeth to prevent this, Coedie Mc Avoy and the Wangan and Jagalingou people are using the Human rights laws to occupy parts of their land for ceremony. Coral also talks about what she learned about the sacredness of this land. Trees where a person's placenta was buried become that person's responsibility. Imagine if all Australians were initiated into this level of care!On the eve of the anniversary a special First Nations panel was held on Wangan and Jagalingou Country to discuss the theme of resilience and reoccupation with some incredible speakers: Gwenda Stanley Gomeroi Cultural Ambassador - Tent Embassy, Josie Alec, Kuruma Marthudhunera Custodian, Burrup peninsula, DK- Fresh Water Yuggera man, Deebing creek (who have been reoccupying their homelands for 1000 days) and Wangan and Jagalingou Tribal elder Adrian Burragubba. If you missed it you can watch the livestream here. 

Nalleli Cobo became a climate activist at the age of 9 when she learned that the toxic oil-drilling site across the street from her home in Los Angeles was responsible for making her sick. Now in her early twenties, Nalleli's activism continues. Her fight against urban oil extraction has led to a unanimous vote by the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to ban new oil exploration, and to phase out existing oil drilling sites in LA, the largest urban oil field in the United States. Nalleli shares her inspiring story.  Nalleli Cobo is the co-founder of People Not Pozos, the co-founder of South Central Youth Leadership Coalition, and a 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize winner. For show notes visit: https://www.swapsociety.co/pages/podcast

How do we mainstream the story about plastic, climate, and environmental justice? SHACK15 hosted the People Over Plastic BIPOC Storytelling Collective's first story salon with leading voices in the fight for a more just and equitable future. With 99% of plastic coming from fossil fuels, People Over Plastic believes conversations about the climate crisis AND the plastic crisis must center people of color and indigenous voices who are most impacted from it. At a recent panel discussion, we listened to stories from renowned environmental attorney and thought leader Patrice Simms, river protector and Trump border wall plaintiff Tricia Cortez, and a community organizer defeating big oil, Goldman Prize winner Sharon Lavigne. The conversation was moderated by globally recognized communicator and plastic pollution expert Shilpi Chhotray.

2022 Goldman Prize winners, Chima Wlliams of Nigeria & Julien Vincent of Australia, plus scientists resurrect ancient enzyme to boost photosynthesis, and listeners' call to action!

Meet Goldman Environmental Foundation founders--Richard & Rhoda, plus 2022 Goldman Prize winner--Niwat Roykaew.  Ekilstuna—Sweden's world capital of recycling!

In the past decade, the EPA has received over 98,000 reports of harm and over 2500 reports of pet deaths connected to the Seresto brand of pesticide-containing flea collars. But the EPA has never issued any warnings or recalls of these collars. Also, the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient for Africa is Chima Williams, an environmental lawyer who worked with two communities to hold Royal Dutch Shell accountable for disastrous oil spills in Nigeria. We talk about why Chima and his colleagues brought the case all the way to the Hague in the Netherlands to pursue justice. And in the coming weeks we'll feature more stories of this year's intrepid Goldman Prize winners. And after dozens of missions to Mars over nearly five decades, NASA has finally captured the first ever audio recorded on the surface of the red planet, and we listen in. -- Support for Living on Earth comes from the I Am Bio podcast, with powerful stories of biotech breakthroughs, the people they help, and the global problems they solve.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new documentary "We Feed People" showcases the work of World Central Kitchen, which gets meals to people in crisis situations around the world. Chef José Andrés and "We Feed People" director Ron Howard join us. And, Nalleli Cobo grew up just 30 feet from an oil well in Los Angeles. Her health complications pushed her to become an anti-drilling activist.

An 18-year-old gunman opened fire on an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, killing at least 19 children and two adults. Sergio Martinez-Beltran, Texas Capital reporter for NPR's the Texas Newsroom, joins us from Austin. And, Julien Vincent sought to defund coal in Australia by directly going after banks that fund coal. The Goldman Prize winner joins us.

Join Lashanti the Siren as she discusses all things plastic with Kristal 'Ocean' Ambrose, founder of Bahamas Plastic Movement and 2020 Goldman Prize recipient (Islands and Island Nations).

* Climate Activists Decry Lack of Progress at Glasgow's UN Climate Summit; Reynard Loki, Editor/Chief Correspondent with Earth/ Food/ Life at the Independent Media Institute; Producer: Scott Harris. * Residents Rise Up to Oppose Construction of a Plastics Plant in Louisiana's ‘Cancer Alley;' Sharon Lavigne, founder of RISE St. James, a winner of the 2021 Goldman Prize; Producer: Melinda Tuhus * Progressives Reject Blame for Democrats' Election Losses; Joseph Geevarghese, Executive Director of Our Revolution; Producer: Scott Harris.

Hurricane Ida left people in the Louisiana region known as ‘Cancer Alley' with destroyed homes, no electricity, and polluted water. That's on top of the toxic air they breathe every day because of some 150 petrochemical plants in the area. We hear from grassroots activist Sharon Lavigne, a 2021 Goldman Prize recipient, about what it's like living through these disasters and what drives her to keep fighting yet another plastics plant.  Also, hummingbirds are truly superlative creatures -- relative to their size, they are both the world's fastest avians and have some of the longest migratory journeys of any animal. Sy Montgomery focuses on these incredible birds in her latest book, The Hummingbirds' Gift, where she looks back on her harrowing but rewarding time raising two orphaned baby hummingbirds alongside an artist and hummingbird rehabilitator. And join us on September 23 for our first Living on Earth Book Club event of the season! Richard Powers, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory, will join Host Steve Curwood to talk about his new book Bewilderment. Register at loe.org/events

First up: We'll break down what Britney Spears told a court about her conservatorship this week, plus two more big SCOTUS decisions on college athletes and Snapchat free speech. Next: No matter where you live, you've probably heard about an increase in “violent crime” lately. We'll ask an expert why we're seeing these trends and if President Biden's new plan to combat crime could help. Then: Big Tech rules the world. But Congress is trying to change that. A bipartisan group of legislators introduced five antitrust bills this month to make Big Tech … a lot less big. We'll break down both sides of the debate about whether to rein them in.  Plus: Earlier this year, President Biden promised to prioritize LGBTQ+ rights in America's dealings abroad, via diplomacy, trade and immigration policy. We'll investigate how well the U.S. is living up to that promise. ICYMI: A few days ago, the Goldman Prize gave us this year's real-life superheroes — six people whose environmental work is saving the planet. We'll speak to one winner about how she got the plastic industry to back down in her home country. On this episode, you'll hear from:  Louisa Aviles, director, Group Violence Intervention, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO, GLAAD Jessica Stern, executive director, OutRight Action International Gloria Majiga-Kamoto, winner, Goldman Environmental Prize Want more Skimm?  Sign up for our free daily newsletter Email us your questions about what's going on in the news right now  Subscribe and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts Skimm'd by Alex Carr and Luke Vargas. Engineered by Andrew Callaway. With additional support from Ciara Long. TheSkimm's head of audio is Graelyn Brashear. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Centrales à charbon, plateformes pétrolières off-shore, fracturation hydraulique... Les industriels ont besoin des banques et assurances pour financer leurs installations énergétiques. D'où cette question, la finance est-elle en partie responsable du réchauffement climatique ?  Pour y répondre, nous recevons Lucie Pinson, fondatrice de l'ONG Reclaim Finance, et lauréate du prix Goldman pour l'environnement, une récompense souvent présentée comme le prix Nobel de l'écologie. 

Vaccine Rollout, Goldman Prize, Q/U: Elliot Page, Organist Buys Nova Scotia Church, SCOTUS Chocolate Child Labour, Scotch Eggs and more.

This week we're going to cover the case of Berta Caceres, a Honduran Lenca activist. In April of 2013, Berta and the Rio Blanco Lenca community began their fight against Desa, Sinohydro, and the proposed dam that would've meant the end for their sacred Gualcarque river. Amidst threats, violence, and persecution, the Lenca won. Berta was awarded the Goldman Prize for her endurance and leadership. Less than a year later, she was ASSASSINATED. Government corruption, political influence, anti indigeneity, a powerful and loving woman killed. Listen now to find out if justice prevails! Citations & Sources: Lakhani, Nina. Who Killed Berta Cáceres?: Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender's Battle for the Planet. Verso Books, 2020.Hammer Museum. “Berta Vive: Berta Cáceres and the Fight for Indigenous Water Rights.” Youtube. 29 Oct. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7kbg3W_n9Y.

Protecting the environment sometimes requires us to stand up and be counted. This week I talk with Linda Garcia and Alfred Brownell - two winners of the 2019 Goldman Prize, which for 30 years has celebrated the bravery of environmental activists.

Dans son rapport de 2014, la FAO rapportait également que près de 90% des stocks* étaient pleinement exploités ou surexploités. C’est une catastrophe écologique, socio-économique et sanitaire sans précédent qui se profile. L’association BLOOM refuse cette fatalité et s’est donné pour mission de prouver que la mobilisation peut retourner ce qui arrive et changer les choses durablement. Clair Nouvian est parmi nous le 11 octobre dès 19h pour un grand dialogue sur les enjeux majeurs posés par notre humanité. Elle a reçu en 2018 le « Goldman Prize », souvent décrit comme le « Prix Nobel de l’environnement ». « Et si l’on mesure notre attachement aux valeurs en fonction des sacrifices que l’on est prêts à faire pour les défendre, la question qui se pose est celle-ci : est-on sûrs que l’adhésion actuelle aux valeurs écologiques n’est pas qu’intellectuelle, pour ne pas dire « cosmétique » ? » Claire Nouvian – extrait de sonDiscours de clôture du colloque « Biodiversité 2010, et après ? » Avec la participation d’Agathe Clerc de la Surfrider Foundation Europe.

In 1978, Lois Gibbs was a young mother with a child in a school that was found to be built over a toxic chemical waste dump site. Lois gained international attention and incredible momentum in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s as she led the fight for environmental justice for children and families affected by the environmental disaster identified with the neighborhood where it occurred, Love Canal.   “I was waiting on someone to knock on my door and tell me what to do, to explain how I could help,” says Lois of the early days of revelations about the infamous Love Canal dump.   “But no one ever came to my door. So I did something on my own.”   Her persistent activism led to passage of the “Superfund” toxic waste site cleanup legislation. Lois went on to found the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, which has helped more than 10,000 grassroots organizations with technical, organizational or environmental education.   She appears in the 2018 HBO movie Atomic Homeland and was named a “top environmentalist of the past century” by Newsweek magazine. She has been honored with a Heinz Award and the Goldman Prize for her groundbreaking environmental work.   On this 40th anniversary of the Love Canal tragedy, Lois shares how she dealt with being called “a hysterical mother with a sickly child," shares the moment she most clearly saw democracy at its best and the key to success for today’s environmental activists.   "Average people and the average community can change the world,” Lois says.   Hear how she did it - and how you can, too - on this episode of “We Can Be.”   “We Can Be” is hosted by The Heinz Endowments’ Grant Oliphant and produced by the Endowments and Treehouse Media. Theme music is composed by John Dziuban, with incidental music by Josh Slifkin.

T.J. O'Hara is joined by Associate Dean Sandra Sperino from University of Cincinnati College of Law. The two discuss sexual harassment within the context of our current socio-political environment, and within the context of Title VII, as well as the article she recently published. Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor Sperino teaches in the areas of civil procedure, torts, and employment law. In 2013 and 2017, she received the Goldman Prize for Excellence in Teaching, at University of Cincinnati College of Law. Professor Sperino’s scholarship focuses on employment discrimination, and her recent work focuses on the intersection of tort and discrimination law. She is the author of several books, articles and publications. Professor Sperino received her J.D. from the University of Illinois College of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Law Review, and a M.S. in Journalism from the University of Illinois.

Silvio Carrillo is an Oakland-based freelance multimedia journalist, director of the website BertaCaceres.org and nephew of Berta Cáceres, a Honduran activist who was assassinated there in March 2016 after being awarded the Goldman Prize for her environmental activism. Carrillo just wrote the New York Times op-ed "America's Blind Eye to Honduras's Tyrant." He can be found at Twitter.com/JusticeforBerta or Facebook.com/justiceforberta Help pass the Berta Caceres Act.

It is one of the most prestigious honors Miami University has to offer, and it's among the largest undergraduate awards in the nation.

mark! Lopez, Executive Director of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, joins us to talk about the environmental challenges decision makers often ignore, running a flat organization, and gaining global recognition as a leader in the environmental justice movement. For more information on East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, and to support their work, please visit: http://eycej.org/ To check out his Goldman Prize speech, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdgTXj0_NEI Also, this episode includes a special intro for LURN's end-of-year donor drive. If you want to support our work, please visit: http://lurnetwork.org/lurn-donate/ Music for this segment, courtesy of: "Samba Isobel" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In this episode we discuss new science on the impacts on birds and amphibians of drilling for natural gas in the tropics with a Smithsonian researcher, and a Goldman Prize winner discusses her ongoing campaign to rid mercury contamination from the environment, which is (still) having alarming human health effects. Plus we round up the top environmental news. Please help us improve the Mongabay Newscast by leaving a review on its page at Android, Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you subscribe to it. And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend about this podcast!

Berta Caceres acceptance speech, 2015 Goldman Prize ceremony by METABOLIC STUDIO

Today's podcast begins with our story, first broadcast this past May, on Destiny Watford. She's a winner of the 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize for her work with Free Your Voice , a grassroots organization that opposed construction of an incinerator in Curtis Bay. The Goldman Prize is awarded to one person on each of the six inhabited continents. Ms. Watford, at age 20, is this year’s winner for all of North America. She joins Tom to talk about lighting a fire for justice in South Baltimore. (See our full Destiny Watford web article for a statement from the incinerator's intended builder.) Then: Yesterday marked the 53 rd anniversary of the March on Washington, the peaceful demonstration that brought more than 200,000 protesters to the Lincoln Memorial to demand racial and employment equality. In a conversion she had with Tom this past January, Helena Hicks recalls her role in the 1955 sit-in at the then-racially segregated Read's Drug Store, which took place eight years before Dr.

Today on KPFA's women's magazine, we explore the intersections of the environment and gender justice. Across the world, women are at the forefront of grassroots environmental movements, resisting land grabs and displacement from the state/extractive industries to fighting the wrath of environmental toxins impacting the health and well being of their communities. We talk to two inspiring women activists from the global south. First, Preeti Mangala Shekar talked to Honduran environmental activist and indigenous leader, the late Berta Caceres, when she was in the bay area to accept the Goldman Prize in 2015 for her incredible activism fighting her community's displacement from the world's largest dam builder. The Honduran indigenous and environmental rights campaigner, Berta Caceres was murdered by the right wing Honduran government, barely a week after she was threatened for opposing a hydroelectric project. Since Honduras's right wing coup, it has become one of the most violent places in the world. Later in the show, we talk to Dipti Bhatnagar, an Indian organizer with Friends of the Earth International based in Mozambique, who discusses how both grassroots mobilizing and strategically using international spaces like the UN Climate Forum / Conference of Parties (COP) are strategic feminist approaches in the fight for environmental justice. The post Feminist Environmental Justice: Exploring Intersections appeared first on KPFA.

Norma Kassi is co-founder and Director of Indigenous Collaboration at the Arctic Institute of Community-Based Research. Over the last 30 years, she has worked on issues related to contaminants, food security, climate change, wildlife protection, youth engagement and building community capacity. Kassi is Vuntut Gwitchin, which means People of the Lakes. Her understanding of traditional, scientific and ecological knowledge, passed on from Elders, has fostered a deep connection to the land and made her an advocate for the Gwitchin people. From 1985-1992, she served as a Member for Vuntut Gwitchin in Yukon's Legislative Assembly and was selected by the Elders to be a spokesperson for the preservation of the Porcupine Caribou Herd. She has received many awards including the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation and Achievement Award in 1991 and the Goldman Prize for conservation in 2002.

Norma Kassi is co-founder and Director of Indigenous Collaboration at the Arctic Institute of Community-Based Research. Over the last 30 years, she has worked on issues related to contaminants, food security, climate change, wildlife protection, youth engagement and building community capacity. Kassi is Vuntut Gwitchin, which means People of the Lakes. Her understanding of traditional, scientific and ecological knowledge, passed on from Elders, has fostered a deep connection to the land and made her an advocate for the Gwitchin people. From 1985-1992, she served as a Member for Vuntut Gwitchin in Yukon's Legislative Assembly and was selected by the Elders to be a spokesperson for the preservation of the Porcupine Caribou Herd. She has received many awards including the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation and Achievement Award in 1991 and the Goldman Prize for conservation in 2002.

This week on CounterSpin: The killing of two Western hostages by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan led some US media to re- engage debate over US drone policy. But media's discussion is over how and where drones should be used—not whether they should be. We'll talk to law professor Marjorie Cohn, author of, most recently, Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. Also on the show: Sometimes called the Green Nobel, the Goldman Environmental Prize is given to grassroots environmental activists from each of six world regions. This year's winners, including Honduran indigenous rights leader Berta Caceres and the group COPINH, are fighting not just governments but some of the world's most powerful corporations to protect their land and livelihood. That's why Caceres and her colleagues face death threats and repression. And it surely has something to do with why you can read all of the US media coverage of Caceres and the Goldman Prize in the time of an elevator ride. We'll hear from Beverly Bell of the group Other Worlds about this story. The post CounterSpin – May 1, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

Since 1989, The Goldman Environmental Prize has honored more than 150 grassroots heroes who are fighting on the front lines to deliver clean water, clean air and preserve the world’s ecosystems. Brothers John and Douglas Goldman are carrying on the work of their parents, environmental activists Richard and Rhoda Goldman, who founded the prize. “My mom was a recycler before the term was ever coined,” remembers John. “She was far ahead of her time.” The most important impact of the award, says Douglas, is its role in spotlighting the often unrewarding work of environmental activism. John adds that there’s a common thread among the past winners: “[These are] individuals whose force of nature really made a difference, their impact was significant, and they may have had significant personal risk.” One of those people is Maria Gunnoe, who received the prize in 2009. Beginning with her successful effort to stop the coal industry from devastating the hollows of her native Appalachia, she has become a leading voice in the push to expose the environmental hazards of coal production. But, she says, she didn’t start out to be an activist. “I didn't really get into fighting the industry; the industry took me on,” she laughs. “They challenged me and my love for my property.” Kimberly Wasserman’s battle to close toxin-spewing coal-fired power plants in southwest Chicago was an equally personal one. “Feeling the impacts that countless parents in our community feel, of having children with asthma, just triggered that voice in me to…want to do something about it,” says Wasserman, adding, “there is no greater threat than a mom who's mad!” She was awarded the prize in 2013. Both women have continued to fight for clean air and water, and have even linked their causes together, stressing that, no matter which end of the coal conveyer belt your family is on, we’re all in this together. “Environmental impact doesn't just happen to any singular community,” says Wasserman. “It's happening across the board to low-income people, and we need to be united and be coming together to fight this.” John Goldman, President, Goldman Environmental Foundation Douglas Goldman, Vice President, Goldman Environmental Foundation Maria Gunnoe, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Goldman Environmental Prize Winner, 2009 Kimberly Wasserman, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Goldman Environmental Prize Winner, 2013 This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club of California on March 6, 2014