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PODCAST

A Climate Change with Matt Matern

A Climate Change with Matt Matern is a weekly show featuring influential guests from government, business, activism, academia, and culture. The show serves to inform its audience with a focus on environmental and climate issues. Join us as we commit to making "a climate change." Similar to these great podcasts: TED Climate, Reversing Climate Change, Climate One, My Climate Journey, Volts, America Adapts, & A Matter Of Degrees.

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All Episodes

47:24

263. Buildings Cause 40% of Global Emissions and...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/10/01

Today, Matt speaks with Drew Shula, trained architect and Founder and CEO of Verdical Group, about the part of the climate problem hiding in plain sight: the buildings we live and work in, which account for roughly 40% of global carbon emissions. He breaks down the two halves of a building's carbon footprint, the energy it burns and the materials it's made of, and makes the case that we already know how to build net zero today - almost nothing requires it, which is why net zero is still less than

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39:32

262. EPA's New Water Rule Could Strip Protections...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/09/24

Today, Matt Matern speaks with Jim Murphy, Associate Vice President of Legal Advocacy at the National Wildlife Federation, about EPA's proposal to rewrite which streams and wetlands the Clean Water Act actually protects.Jim explains what the rule would do - by his estimate, removing federal protection from up to 60% of the nation's stream miles and well over 90% of historically protected wetlands - and why streams that don't flow year-round still carry pollution downstream. He and Matt trace how we

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58:28

261. The Forest That Stopped Storing Carbon and...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/09/17

Today, Matt Matern speaks with Rob Mullen - artist, author, and Director of the Wilderness River Expedition Art Fellowship - about the boreal forest, the largest land ecosystem on Earth and one most people have never heard of. Rob explains how a forest three times the size of the Amazon holds roughly 80% of the world's liquid fresh surface water, why bigger and more frequent fires have flipped it from a carbon sink into a carbon source, and how conservation funding passed it over for decades because

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50:58

260. Leah Qusba on Why Republicans Still Support Solar

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/09/10

Today, Matt Matern speaks with Leah Qusba, CEO of GoodPower, a nonprofit working to win public support for the clean energy transition. They talk about moving the energy conversation away from sacrifice and toward abundance, where clean energy means more jobs, lower bills, and an economy that works for everyone. Leah shares GoodPower's polling with NORC at the University of Chicago, which found about half of Republicans still support large-scale solar, rising to roughly 70% when it's tied to lower

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30:31

259. California Just Passed Balcony Solar - Now It's...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/09/03

Today, Matt is joined again by Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver. One year after first joining us on the show, a lot has changed. When she was last on, plug-in solar was legal in exactly one state and nobody in the country was selling it. Since then, 35 states plus DC have introduced legislation, nine have signed it into law, and Bright Saver has started shipping kits nationwide at exactly what they cost: $285.30, no markup. Here in California, SB 868 - the Plug and Play Solar Act - just

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47:24

258. The AI Beehive Fighting Colony Collapse w/ Saar...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/08/27

Today, Matt is joined by Saar Safra, co-founder and CEO of Beewise, to talk about one of the quietest threats to our food supply - the collapse of the world's bee colonies. Saar shares how he teamed up with a commercial beekeeper to build the BeeHome: a solar-powered, AI-driven robotic hive that monitors bees around the clock and treats problems automatically, without chemicals. They dig into why bees pollinate roughly 75% of the crops we eat, how monoculture and pesticides have turned farmland into

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41:33

Building the “Apple of EV Charging,” w/ Zak Winnick

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/08/20

Today, Matt Matern speaks with Zak Winnick, founder and CEO of Rangeway Energy, about building America’s first hospitality-forward EV charging network. Zak shares how a career running hotels - and years of frustration as an EV owner - led him to treat charging as an experience rather than just a piece of infrastructure. They discuss why so many public chargers feel unreliable and impersonal, and how Rangeway is targeting the scenic, underserved highways the big networks skip. Zak also explains why

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53:04

256. Why the Ocean Always Wins with Bren Smith

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/08/14

Today, Matt speaks with Bren Smith, co-founder and co-executive director of GreenWave, about his journey from commercial fisherman to pioneer of regenerative ocean farming. Bren shares how a cod collapse in his native Newfoundland and two hurricanes that destroyed his farm led him to a model that grows seaweed and shellfish with no water, fertilizer, feed, or land - while rebuilding ocean ecosystems. They also discuss GreenWave’s new State of the Kelp Industry report and how kelp is shifting from a

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42:33

255. What If We Could Store Carbon the Way the Ocean...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/08/06

Today, Matt is joined by Dr. Garrett Boudinot, founder and CEO of Vycarb, to talk about a new approach to carbon capture and storage that works with water instead of pipelines and underground wells. Garrett explains how Vycarb's reactor turns CO2 into bicarbonate and stores it safely in the ocean for tens of thousands of years. He shares why traditional carbon capture has been so expensive and hard to site, and how Vycarb bypasses the costly steps to target costs as low as $50 a ton. He also

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46:03

254. How Fossil Fuel Companies Are Quietly Buying...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/07/30

Today, Matt is joined by David Fenton - veteran progressive communications strategist and host of The Fenton Forecast - for a conversation about the climate movement’s biggest failure: how it talks, or doesn’t talk, about the crisis. David explains “blanket of pollution” metaphor, and why framing climate action as sacrifice backfires, the soaring insurance costs hitting Americans’ wallets, and the fossil fuel industry’s push for legal immunity as climate lawsuits close in. Check out The Fenton

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40:06

253. He Helped Build Waymo. Now Tom Chi Builds Robots...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/07/23

Today, Matt speaks with Tom Chi, founding partner of At One Ventures and a founding member of the Google X team behind Waymo, about using deep tech to restore ecosystems instead of just slowing the damage. They talk about the drone companies replanting mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass beds, and how the cost of restoration keeps falling by half. Tom explains that a park ranger in 1926 had a Jeep, a map, binoculars, and a clicker, and today the tools are mostly the same. He also shares his

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55:26

252: Why Only 1% of US Farmland Is Organic with...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/07/16

Today, Matt speaks with Dr. Linley Dixon, Co-Director of the Real Organic Project and cohost of the Real Organic Podcast, about why how we grow food may be the climate lever we're ignoring. Linley explains that synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer alone accounts for 1-2% of the global carbon footprint. They also dig into what's gone wrong with the label people trust. Only about 1% of US farmland is certified organic while roughly 80% of our organic blueberries are imported, fraudulent "organic" grain

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44:27

251. Why 40% of Americans Can't Charge an EV at Home...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/07/09

Today, Matt speaks with Jeffrey Prosserman, CEO and co-founder of Voltpost, about a simple idea with big potential: turning the lampposts and utility poles cities already have into electric vehicle chargers. Jeffrey shares his path from leading product development at Samsung to founding Voltpost, and explains why more than 40% of Americans, those without a private garage or driveway, still can't conveniently charge an EV at home. Learn more about Voltpost at https://voltpost.com Subscribe now on

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16:08

250. The Founders Loved the Land - and Left One Thing...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/07/03

In this milestone 250th episode, Matt Matern goes solo for the final installment of our “250 for 250” series - tracing what the people who founded the country actually believed about land, soil, and stewardship. From Thomas Jefferson’s near-daily weather diary and George Washington’s soil-saving crop rotations, to the myth of endless abundance baked into the American character, Matt lays out what the founders left us: a genuine love of the land, and a dangerous belief that it could never run

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47:37

249. He Watched January 6 Happen - Then Wrote This...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/06/30

Today, Matt speaks with New York Times bestselling biographer Brian Jay Jones, author of Becoming Dr. Seuss and the new book The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building. Brian traces Theodor Geisel’s unlikely path - from advertising man to the most beloved children’s author in America. They dig into the making of The Lorax: the cookie-cutter condos eating up La Jolla’s coastline that made Seuss furious, the nine months of writer’s block, and the Kenya trip where he drafted the

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28:50

248. Why The Lorax Matters More Now Than Ever with...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/06/25

Today, Matt speaks with Philip Nel, University Distinguished Professor of English at Kansas State University and one of the world's leading Dr. Seuss scholars, about The Lorax and its place in the environmental movement. They trace the book's origins, from the coastal construction in La Jolla that made Seuss angry, to the trip to Kenya that finally unlocked the story he scribbled on a hotel laundry list. They also dig into the logging industry's counter-book Truax, why The Lorax keeps landing on

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12:14

247. America’s Best Idea: How the U.S. Invented the...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/06/24

Today, no guest - just Matt, with the story of what one writer called “the best idea America ever had”: the national park. In 1872, in a country built on private property, the United States set aside Yellowstone as land that could never be owned by anyone - and then handed the idea to the world. Matt traces how it happened: the writer John Muir and President Theodore Roosevelt, whose 1903 campfire in Yosemite helped put 230 million acres under protection; the birth of the National Park Service in

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62:10

246. How FEMA Became the Most Hated Agency in America...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/06/18

Today, Matt speaks with Micah Loewinger, co-host of WNYC’s On the Media and the reporter behind the new four-part series American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA, about how the agency built to respond to America’s worst disasters became one of its least trusted institutions. Micah explains how he came to FEMA through years of covering far-right militias, why the “FEMA camps” conspiracy theory traces back to the Cold War, and how it disturbingly echoes in today’s migrant detention programs. They

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18:18

245. How 20 Million Americans Got a Republican...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/06/16

Today, no guest - just Matt, telling one of the strangest and most hopeful stories in American politics. It's the story of the first Earth Day, when 20 million Americans - about one in ten of the entire country - took to the streets on a single day in April 1970, and changed the course of the nation in just two years.Matt traces how that one day produced the EPA, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act - and uncovers the part most people have forgotten: nearly all of it happened with

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37:26

He Left SpaceX After 13 Years to Solve the Water...

A Climate Change with Matt Matern ·

2026/06/11

Today, Matt speaks with Jonathan Criss, CEO and co-founder of Vital Lyfe, about reinventing how the world gets clean drinking water. After 13 years at SpaceX working on the Starlink and Dragon programs, Jonathan set out to apply the same first-principles engineering to desalination - starting with a unit he built in his garage that cleaned ocean water. They talk about why the water crisis is really an infrastructure problem rather than a scarcity one, how Vital Lyfe’s portable “Access” device makes

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