Cool Solutions: Stories of climate action from the bottom up
Stories about climate action from the bottom up.
- Update frequency
- every 27 days
- Average duration
- 27 minutes
- Episodes
- 62
- Years Active
- 2018 - 2023
When in Vermont, Watch Where You Throw Your Apple Core
In Vermont it's now illegal to throw your apple core in the trash. Vermont's Universal Recycling Law aka "the landfill ban" went into effect last year. It cuts landfill methane by diverting food to f…
Kiss Your Gas Goodbye
An innovative community energy center, cities with natural gas bans, and a crusading HVAC contractor are all on a mission to electrify our homes. To be zero carbon by 2050, we have to start now and…
Is Your Money Fueling Wildfires?
There's a movement to close accounts at big Wall Street banks and move money to smaller banks with better values.
Playing For Answers
Most folks don't want to get down and nerdy about climate solutions, but what if we could make it fun? Co host Wendy Ring decides to make a game. She talks with a climate scientist, a professional ga…
You Don't Have to be Rich to Drive Electric
Sliding scale electric car shares and rising numbers of used EVs are making them more accessible. A startup is answering the question: How good is that used EV battery?
When Barricades Don't Spell Safety
Slow Streets barricades triggered trauma in Black East Oakland. Activists get city to address dangerous intersections instead.
Brytanee Brown, Marquita Price, Warren Logan
Saving COVID's Car Free Streets
Personal stories from 3 activists fighting to preserve slow and car free streets in San Francisco. A little known federal manual is keeping streets car-centric while pedestrians and cyclists die in r…
Funding Cool Communities
3 stories about the power of community to raise and multiply funding for climate action. A town taxes itself for free transit. Communities crowdfund for composting (and more). A Green Bank spurs 40…
Land for New Farmers
This Is My Home
Meet the women defending their Texas and Louisiana communities from petrochemical pollution; in the courtroom, on the water, and in the streets.
Stories from the Great NJ Plastic Ban
When Teaneck NJ Girl Scouts saw pictures of birds tangled in plastic bags, they got to work and sparked a movement that led to the strongest state plastic ban in the US.
This is an engaging story abo…
Re-Localizing Food: Transforming US Agriculture, Part 2
Food hubs are not just for foodies. These homegrown networks provide markets for farmers moving beyond corn,soy, and CAFOs to regenerative modes of farming. This past spring, when supply chains faile…
Healthy Soils for a Healthy Planet
How do we turn farming from climate pollution to climate solution? In Part 1 of this mini-series we learn how changes in farming and ranching could remove gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere. A c…
Vampires Shut Down Power Plant
You don't need solar panels to be part of greening the grid. Our refrigerators, hot water heaters, and air conditioners can shift energy use to when the sun is shining and decrease the need for fossi…
Campaign Giving for Climate Action
Climate and science super PACs are a donor's best bet for getting climate leaders elected to public office. While 50% of direct progressive campaign contributions go to waste, these super PACs focus …
Dear Non-Voting Environmentalist
There are millions of Americans who care deeply about climate change but rarely cast their ballots. A home-based army of volunteers is changing that.
The Environmental Voter Project and Vote Forward…
Small Forests, Big Carbon
The best way to store more carbon in forests is to stop cutting down big trees. Families own more US forest land than timber companies or the government. A new program pays them not to log their big…
Join the Fight Against Voter Suppression
Reclaim Our Vote volunteers are sending millions of postcards to people purged from voting rolls in recent years, often in error and without their knowledge. NextGen America's young organizers look f…
Bringing Back the Tide
Salt marshes absorb carbon and blunt climate impacts but we must heal them before they can protect us. Local governments, non profits, and volunteers are racing sea level rise to get it done.
The Garbage Gourmets
Climate conscious cooks turn discards into delicacies.