Three Climate Podcasts Return for Earth Day Week

 

Drilled and Damages from Critical Frequency and Hot Take from Crooked Media all begin new runs

It's Earth Week 2022. It's a call to action to preserve our planet, its natural resources, and its wildlife. 

Danger is all around us. Fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce as droughts infect the planet. Temperatures climb every year, and that makes you wonder if Dune is science fiction or science future. Birds are dying by millions. Even creepy, crawly insects are dying off, and some of them are the bedrock for key industries. 

On a recent trip to the Albuquerque Zoo, I discovered that 40 percent of the animals there are endangered in the wild. Lake Mead looks more and more like that community swimming pool that's been partially drained for the off-season.

Luckily for podcast fans, we have Amy Westervelt. 

Amy Westervelt is the founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network, and an award-winning print and audio journalist. 

Founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network, and an award-winning print and audio journalist Amy Westervelt

 This week, independent investigative climate journalist Amy Westervelt is bringing back not one, but three of her climate podcasts: Drilled, Damages, and Hot Take. Drilled launches April 19, Damages on April 21, and Hot Take on Friday, Earth Day.

Drilled’s new batch of episodes, part two of its season about the gas industry which began last fall, focuses on the industry's role as the "New Climate Villains." For decades, gas was accepted as a part of the solution on climate, a "bridge fuel," but in recent years advocates and policymakers have remembered that gas is also a fossil fuel and that its primary emission, methane, is a potent greenhouse gas. 

It's a new role for gas--part of the problem--and the companies that stand to lose as gas becomes less preferable are not taking it lying down. The series takes an investigative look at the largest gas utility in the country, SoCal Gas, and the lengths it has gone to try to maintain gas's grip on the energy industry, from hiring actors to protest at city council meetings to threatening to deliberately cause Covid superspreader events.

Damages, Westervelt’s new podcast about climate lawsuits, digs into some of the big legal ideas shaking up climate action in Season two, from the new international crime of “ecocide” to the secret tribunals corporations use to try to block environmental laws. 

Additional topics explored in this season’s six episodes include: What can the United Nations actually do to force climate action; the legal right to a healthy environment; and why, outside the U.S., most climate cases focus on holding governments accountable, while in America they mostly go after private companies.

Hot Take, which Westervelt co-hosts with Mary Annaïse Heglar, returns for the first time since its acquisition by Crooked Media in February. Episode One, “The Real Fuckbois of Fossil Fuel” rages against the fossil fuel machine and advocates getting Earth Day back to its Civil Rights-inspired roots. 

Forthcoming episodes also explore the fall of democracy and how it intersects with climate change with Adam Serwer (The Atlantic), toxic masculinity and climate with Rebecca Solnit (The Guardian), and looking at the Covid-climate intersections two years later with David Wallace-Wells (New York Times).

All three podcasts are available on all podcast platforms.

"The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth." Chief Seattle.