A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for A Sustainable Future
A practical, bipartisan call to action from the world’s leading thinkers on the environment and sustainability
Agriculture and Land Use
Pathways to a Sustainable Future: Lessons from "A Better Planet"
Thursday, December 24, 2020
As the nation shifts from a focus on politics to efforts to develop policy, Center Director Dan Esty explores options for new initiatives and progress across the country related to energy, environment, conservation, land use, and other sustainability issues. The discussion built on ideas from the edited book, A Better Planet: 40 Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future.
Farm Food Facts with Dan Esty
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Center Director Dan Esty spoke with Phil Lempert of the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance on their podcast Farm Food Facts. They discuss A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future which brings together the insights of 40 of the biggest and best ideas in sustainability and the environment that are grounded in sound science, specifically focusing on the agricultural sector.
To listen to the podcast, click here or click on the link below:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/282590/2537773-dan-esty-a-better-planet-author-and-yale-professor
#40: Jennifer McIvor
Jennifer McIvor, Vice President of Environmental at MidAmerican Energy speaks with Becky Gallagher of the Yale School of Forestry and the Yale School of Management about the various environmental issues that energy companies face. While climate change dominates the conversation, companies like MidAmerican are also working to clean up water, protect endangered species, and otherwise coordinate energy production with environmental protection.
#29: Glenn Hurowitz
In this episode Glenn Hurowitz speaks on his pathbreaking work in eliminating both environmental and social injustices that pervade the world’s biggest, most entrenched agricultural supply chains. Glenn is the managing director of Climate Advisors where he has taken the international lead on ending deforestation for commodity agriculture. In the last year, Glenn has played a major role in getting the world’s biggest agribusinesses, like Cargill, Wilmar International, and Kellogg, to adopt policies that will eliminate deforestation in their entire global supply chain.
#24: Peter Lehner
In this podcast Peter Lehner, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), discusses agriculture – both NRDC’s work on the issue and his own experiences as a coffee and sugar cane grower in Costa Rica – high-impact climate litigation, and career planning.
#23: Jed Kaplan
The start date for what scientists call the Anthropocene - the era in which human activities begin to have a significant global impact on Earth’s ecosystems - varies widely. Some researchers point to the industrial revolution, others look much further back. In this podcast Jed Kaplan, of the Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, discusses his research, focused on the role of the Earth’s land surface in the climate system – and what it reveals about how humans were transforming ecosystem more than 3,000 years ago.
#21: Whendee Silver
In this podcast, Whendee Silver, Yale F&ES ‘97 (PhD) and professor of ecosystem ecology at U.C. Berkeley, outlines how the use of composted organic material (agricultural and green waste) on rangeland soils can increase carbon storage and decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
#20: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
In this podcast Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies and founding president of the Central Park Conservancy, discusses her work as a landscape design historian and a writer examining the cultural meaning of place.
#15: Dan Simberloff
From battered Asian carp to wild boar bacon, fighting invasive species at the dinner table has become an increasingly popular trend, even catching the attention of NPR commentator Bonny Wolf. While invasivory might make for some interesting recipes — lionfish nachos anyone? —is it an effective strategy for control? In this podcast University of Tennessee Professor Dan Simberloff and Yale postdoc and invasion biologist Sara Kuebbing discuss their concerns with the tactic.
