The Green Blueprint

Latest Episodes:

Are Biden’s climate ambitions slipping away? Jan 07, 2022

Show notes

President Biden wants to slash America’s carbon emissions by half in a decade. He can’t achieve that goal without passing Build Back Better, a massive social-spending bill that devotes half a trillion dollars to clean energy.

Build Back Better would be the biggest American investment in climate technologies and programs ever. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

But with a slim Democratic majority in the Senate, a single dissenting vote legislator threatens to derail the bill. And right before Christmas, Senator Joe Manchin declared that he will not vote for it.

So are Biden’s climate ambitions dead? Not quite.

There’s still hope that Senator Manchin will come around – even if it means another period of intense negotiations.

This week: an insider gives an optimistic assessment of how we move ahead with America's most ambitious piece of climate legislation.

Guest: Katherine Hamilton, chair of 38 North Solutions.

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

The Carbon Copy is brought to you by Oracle. Oracle unlocks the energy of everyone. With the most comprehensive technology solutions and a deep understanding of human behavior, Oracle is putting people at the center of the energy transition. Learn more about Oracle’s vision of making the distributed, people-centered grid a reality: go.oracle.com/energyofeveryone.

Elon Musk is person of the year. What's his Tesla legacy? Dec 22, 2021

Show notes

Every December, TIME magazine picks an individual or group of people to be the "person of the year."

This year, TIME picked a guy who equally inspires and infuriates: Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk is a culture-shifting CEO who brought the business of climate solutions into the zeitgeist in surprising – and sometimes weird – ways

He became the wealthiest person in the world partly because he sold his mission to make climate-positive technologies a reality – even when incumbents and skeptical investors never thought it could happen.

But Tesla's history is also filled with failed or missing products – or even outright lies.

This week: a brief history of Tesla. Has it lived up to Musk's original vision of building a sustainable energy company to vanquish fossil fuels?

Guest: Eric Wesoff, Editorial Director at Canary Media.

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Your ‘carbon footprint’ is a marketing ruse Dec 15, 2021

Show notes

The term “carbon footprint” is everywhere. But it’s not rooted in the environmental movement. It’s rooted in a two-decade corporate marketing campaign created by an oil giant.

Mashable Reporter Mark Kaufman recently dug into the backstory of the term. He looked at the history of how companies have used advertising to shift the burden of responsibility for industry pollution away from them, and onto us.

And that brought him to BP, which launched a highly successful marketing campaign around “beyond petroleum” -- and put the carbon footprint at the center.

This week: The story of how that campaign is still fooling us about the real solutions to climate change.

Guest: Mark Kaufman, a climate reporter for Mashable. You can read his article about the history behind the carbon footprint here.

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Florida is the latest battleground over fossil-fuel phaseouts Dec 08, 2021

Show notes

At the start of the year, a city councilman in Tampa, Florida crafted a resolution for 100% clean energy by 2030.

The resolution was non-binding and quite common. Nearly 200 cities around America have vowed to get 100% of their electricity from zero-carbon resources.

But it also included language that would set off a political chain reaction in the state: an aspiration to phase out fossil fuels.

It scared the local gas and power utility, Tampa Electric, which used its lobbying power and money to launch a more aggressive counter-strike. And it spawned new Republican legislation that will restrict what cities can do about climate change.

This week: what Florida tells us about the new front in the conflict over climate policy across America.

Guest: Grist Reporter Emily Pontecorvo, who co-authored a story about the gas industry’s influence on Florida’s new laws.

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Ithaca’s novel plan to eliminate carbon from buildings Nov 30, 2021

Show notes

In 2019, the Green New Deal became a mobilizing force. Even without federal action, organizers started pushing cities across America to craft their own versions.

One of those cities was Ithaca, New York. Ithaca is making a bold promise: to eliminate all emissions from buildings by 2030.

To make the program a reality, the city needs to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Ithaca's budget is $80 million.

In stepped Luis Aguirre-Torres, the director of sustainability for Ithaca. He found a way to tap private dollars in an unprecedented way to overhaul buildings.

This week: where the money is coming from, and how it could make the Green New Deal a reality in cities across the country.

Guests: Ithaca Climate Czar Luis Aguirre-Torres; 38 North Solutions Chair Katherine Hamilton.

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

How the Glasgow climate deal nearly collapsed Nov 19, 2021

Show notes

COP26 ended in Glasgow, Scotland last week with a final deal. It established a framework for reporting emissions and trading carbon credits, called on countries to step up their targets next year, and included a mention of fossil fuels for the first time.

That mention of a “phase out” of fossil fuels almost killed the deal altogether.

In the final moments of the conference, India lobbied to weaken the phrase. Behind the scenes, China and the US supported the change. That created a showdown over the final language that could have prevented passage of the final agreement.

This week: what the conflict says about how power is wielded in global climate talks.

Guest: Akshat Rathi, a London-based reporter for Bloomberg News. He has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford, and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai.

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Our oil addiction is worse than ever Nov 12, 2021

Show notes

When the pandemic shut down the global economy in March of 2020, demand for oil and gas collapsed. It raised questions about whether we'd hit peak demand for petroleum.

But things look very different at the end of 2021. Oil and gas prices are now at multi-year highs.

And as world leaders gathered for climate talks in Scotland to discuss lowering fossil fuel use, there were calls to increase oil production to stabilize prices -- including from President Joe Biden.

This week: why oil is complicating global climate goals and threatening the pandemic recovery.

Guest: Deborah Gordon, a senior principal in the Climate Intelligence Program at RMI. Deborah’s new book is “No Standard Oil: Managing Abundant Petroleum in a Warming World.

The Carbon Copy is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Introducing: The Carbon Copy Nov 02, 2021

Show notes

Climate change is not a distant science story. It's a story about how everything in our carbon-based economy works -- and how it's getting re-worked.

The Carbon Copy is a weekly news analysis show that explains the changing planet through the lens of current events. In each episode, we talk to a journalist, executive, subject expert, practitioner or newsmaker to understand what their story tells us about how the planet is transforming.

The show is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.