Aired 11/21/10

JOHN WARNER and Paul Anastas are the founders of green chemistry and co-authors of Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, in which, they establish 12 guiding principles for chemists. In 1996 Warner left a lucrative job at Polaroid to found the nation's first doctoral program in green chemistry, and in 2007 he founded Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, an innovation incubator, in Wilmington, Mass.

Green Chemistry is a revolutionary approach to the way that products are made; it is a science that aims to reduce or eliminate the use and/or generation of hazardous substances in the design phase of materials development. It requires an inventive and interdisciplinary view of material and product design. Green Chemistry follows the principle that it is better to consider waste prevention options during the design and development phase than to dispose or treat waste after a process or material has been developed.

http://www.warnerbabcock.com/

http://www.epa.gov/gcc/

 

Aired 07/25/10

TAD DALEY, author, APOLCALYPSE NEVER: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon Free World

TAD DALEY, J.D., Ph.D., is the Writing Fellow with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the 1985 Nobel Peace Laureate organization. He spent several years as a member of the International Policy Department at RAND, where many of the nuclear theories of the Cold War era originally were forged. He has served as a speechwriter and policy advisor to Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Congresswoman Diane Watson, and the late Senator Alan Cranston -- and once ran for U.S. Congress himself to represent mid-city Los Angeles. The LA WEEKLY said about his campaign: "Tad Daley boasts the most impressive credentials and much the most thoughtful platform of all the 16 candidates in the race .... (His ideas are) as sensible as they are unconventional."

Daley has written for the Los Angeles Times, USA TODAY, the Christian Science Monitor, Tikkun, and frequently in the at HuffingtonPost.com, TruthDig.com, AlterNet.org, TruthOut.org, and CommonDreams.org. His first book, APOLCALYPSE NEVER: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon Free World, has recently been published.

 

Aired 07/25/10

VALERIE PLAME, CIA agent outed by Bush White House Her focus: non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. She's featured in the film 
COUNTDOWN TO ZERO, playing in NY and DC opening in LA July 30th.

http://www.globalzero.org/

How big a threat is North Korea? Will Iran go nuclear? Will Israel attack Iran? Are nukes safe in Pakistan? Are they safe in the former Soviet Union? Will Obama move seriously toward disarmament?

The globalization of the 21st century has produced positive and peaceful exchanges between peoples and nations, and it has given birth to global terrorism. Today a nuclear attack caused by accident, miscalculation or madness is a real possibility. The film COUNTDOWN TO ZERO (playing in NY and Washington and opening July 30th in LA) makes clear the nuclear threat and calls on us to commit to their abolition.

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present, where nine nations possess nuclear weapons capabilities, and others race to join them. The world lives in a delicate balance that could be obliterated by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident.

The film, which includes Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair, was written and directed by Lucy Walker (Devil's Playground, Blindsight), produced by Lawrence Bender (Inglourious Basterds, An Inconvenient Truth) and developed, financed and executive produced by Participant Media, together with World Security Institute.

 

Aired 05/30/10

We're hearing a lot about the trouble Europe is in. The debt crisis in Greece, and perhaps Spain, Portugal, and Italy, is threatening the Euro and the European Union. What's really going on? How did it happen? How bad is it? How will they deal with it? And what does it mean for the rest of the world and for the US in particular?

We'll deal with those issues this Sunday, but that's not all. While the bad news of this Euro crisis makes headlines in the US, a quiet and successful revolution taking place in Europe does not. Europe seems to be finding a way to make capitalism and democracy work for people, not just for corporations. I think this is a critical unreported story in terms of its potential impact. Here's just a few things you may not have heard about.

The European Union, 27 member nations with a half billion people, has become the largest, wealthiest trading bloc in the world, producing nearly a third of the world's economy - nearly as large as the U.S. and China combined. Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than either the US, China or Japan.

European nations are rated by the World Health Organization as having the best health care systems in the world. Yet they spend far less than the United States for universal coverage, even as U.S. health care is ranked 37th.

Europe leads in confronting global climate change with renewable energy technologies like solar and wind power, conservation and "green design," creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the process. Consequently, Europe's ecological "footprint" (the amount of the earth's capacity that a population consumes) is about half that of the United States for the same standard of living.

http://www.europespromise.org/

 

Aired 05/09/10

Could the consequences of the Gulf oil spill end up as catastrophic as Chernobyl?

Just because we have the power, the technological know how, and the financial incentive to tap into a huge and powerful stream of crude oil a mile under the ocean, and pull that oil up through that ocean to the surface - does that in any way mean we should do it? 
How is it that we humans do such things? How is it that this society at this moment is willing to act with such hubris and such arrogance and ultimately so little wisdom.

Here we are engaged in a nearly ten year war in Afghanistan, a nearly eight year war in Iraq, a collapse of our financial systems here and abroad, in which the life's work of millions of families has been wiped out, and where money that could have been used to deal with enormous problems we face around the globe has basically gone to conspicuous consumption of a small rapacious elite and otherwise disappeared.

Thomas Homer Dixon has written a couple of books one entitled THE INGENUITY GAP in which he asks whether we have the ingenuity to solve the problems created by our ingenuity. In that book he basically was hopeful that we do. In his next book THE UPSIDE OF DOWN, he had become a bit more cautious, and predicted that even if we do, we were unlikely to turn things around until we crashed. Are we now witnessing and participating in that crash?

In AMANDA LITTLE'S new book, POWER TRIP, she travels thousands of miles looking at the past and future of energy and she ends up optimistic. I'm going to ask her to share what she's learned and why she feels that way.

http://www.amandalittle.com/