Claim OwnershipBridging the Carbon Gap
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© 2025 Bridging the Carbon Gap
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Join students at Hunter College High School and Stuyvesant, two schools in New York City, on their journey to gain knowledge about climate change, a topic that is not taught enough to young students across the U.S. We interview climate activists, experts, and researchers about their work and experiences, and use our knowledge to think about how a climate change themed high school education can be created. This podcast is created in collaboration with newyork.thecityatlas.org.
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Eugene Kirpichov, a former software engineer at Google, describes why he and his colleague Cassandra Xia left their positions at Google to create Work on Climate, a rapidly growing nonprofit aimed at mobilizing the talent that can build a regenerative green economy. Kirpichov calls for redesigning the economy so that all activities will contribute to the health of the entire system. For those seeking ways to join the effort, Kirpichov explains that opportunities don't only come from com...
Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Every week his climate column sends a stark, realistic viewpoint on the urgency of climate change action through the world’s 355,000 Bloomberg Terminals, the principal trading tool for people working in finance. New York City high school seniors Helena Rambler, Pierce Siegel, and Giulia Di Vincenzo interviewed Mark at Hunter ...
Georgia Silvera Seamans, an urban forester, and Giulia Di Vincenzo, a high school student, explore the treescape of Washington Square Park, a public park in New York City that has been famous as a cultural center and gathering place for over a century. Georgia gives Giulia a tour of the trees, giving insights on ecological and social benefits of nature in cities. For this episode, video clips for the following trees are available at the link below: Ginkgo Osage, Northern Catalpa, Bald Cypress...
Dr. Sam Stephenson has just completed his PhD in Energy, Climate, and Net Zero Policy in the Department of Engineering, Cambridge University. In this episode, Sam describes a benchmark report from the UK government-funded research group he worked with at Cambridge, known as UK FIRES. The report, Absolute Zero, and others from UK FIRES can be downloaded here: https://ukfires.org/impact/publications/reports/ Absolute Zero has been downloaded 178,000 times since it was published in 2019, and was...
Pete Sikora is the Climate & Inequality Campaigns Director at New York Communities for Change (NYCC). Before a big mayoral election in New York City, Pete sat down to talk with high school students Helena Rambler, David Case, and Pierce Siegel in Cobble Hill Park on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Pete explains NYCC's endorsement of mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, based on Mamdani's platform for working class New Yorkers and his help in a successful campaign to stop a fracked gas powe...
Ellie Johnston is the Director of Programs at Climate Interactive, an organization that builds online simulators to let anyone test out the most effective strategies to limit climate change. Johnston also happens to live in Asheville, North Carolina, a city that bore the full brunt of flooding from Hurricane Helene in late September, 2024. In our interview, which took place two months after the storm, she describes her first hand experience with the most destructive hurricane to strike the US...
Helena Rambler, a high school junior, and Adam Aron, a professor of psychology at the University of California San Diego, discuss the emotional challenges of addressing climate change. Adam shares his journey from his rise in the field of cognitive neuroscience, to his growing concern about climate change, and then to his surprising career switch to learn, and teach, what makes movements effective. He emphasizes the importance of collective action, social obligation, and the need for hi...
Gail Whiteman is a Professor of Sustainability at the University of Exeter Business School, and a social science expert on how decision-makers make sense of systemic global risks from climate change and other environmental threats. Since 2012, Whiteman is the Professor-in-Residence at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and is actively involved in building science-based targets for collective business action. She is a past member of the World Economic Forum’s Global A...
Mariana is an organizer with Climáximo, a climate justice direct action group in Portugal. Cindy Ye and Adeline Sauberli, seniors at Stuyvesant High School, and Helena Rambler, a junior at Hunter College High School, spoke to Mariana on November 17, 2024: after the US election which brought Trump back into the White House, and before the fires in Los Angeles. Mariana describes the anxiety about climate change among young people in Portugal, the short window of time for phasing out fossi...
Carolyn McGrath and Kate Schapira co-authored An Educator's Guide to Climate Emotions, a project from the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America. "The human-driven processes and impacts of climate change are disrupting young people’s lives and are putting their homes, institutions, and physical and mental health at risk. While young people may not always talk about these experiences in school or act outwardly distressed, their feelings about climate change are still making their way in...
Dr. Christopher Shaw is an independent climate communications expert. Chris was previously Head of Research at Climate Outreach, where among the reports he worked on is the IPCC handbook for climate scientists on how to communicate effectively. Chris is also author of the book Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change. (London: Routledge 2023) From the publisher's website: "In this book Christopher Shaw analyses how liberalism has shaped our understanding of climate change and how libe...
Dr. Gianluca Grimalda was fired by his employer, a German research institute, after refusing to travel by plane for his return from Papua New Guinea, where he was conducting research on the social impacts of climate change. To reduce his own carbon footprint Dr. Grimalda instead chose to make his way back to Germany by ferry and then overland, a trip that took 72 days, but saved 9/10ths of the emissions that he would have been responsible for by using air travel. In his journey he crossed ma...
With Troy Vettese, Drew Pendergrass is the co-author of the book Half-Earth Socialism, which comes with a free online video game, play.half.earth. Pendergrass graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 2020 with a BA in Physics and Mathematics and a minor in English, and is now doing his Ph.D in Environmental Science and Engineering at Harvard's Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. His research in atmospheric physics includes work on real time satellite tracking of pollutants. ...
While working at the consulting firm KPMG, the econometrician Gaya Herrington undertook an update of the social and environmental projections in the 1972 MIT report "Limits to Growth." Her research formed her thesis for her Masters in Sustainability at Harvard, and then gained attention in the press after being published in 2020. In this episode, Gaya describes her path to studying sustainability and the solutions proposed in her free book, "Five Insights for Avoiding Global Collapse: Wha...
Alice Hu works with New York Communities for Change and has participated in several of their most visible actions, including storming the Hamptons with plastic pitchforks to call attention to the enormous carbon footprints and destructive investments of the billionaires that vacation there. Hu also joined with fellow protestors to visit a live broadcast of the morning show The View and interrupt Ted Cruz, to spotlight the lack of coverage of climate change on ABC. In this episode, Alice desc...
Julien Dossier is an expert in climate policy and the co-author of the 2017 carbon neutrality plan for Paris. He founded Quattrolibri, a consulting firm that designs low carbon transition strategies for clients. His current project is a book and a program, Renaissance Ecologique, for which he created a modern version of a 14th century Italian fresco to give us a view of what an ecological Renaissance might look like. Nicolas Wu, Daniel Schneider, and Ajani Stella spoke to Julien on May ...
Rebecca Willis is a Professor in Energy & Climate Governance at Lancaster Environment Centre, where she leads the Climate Citizens project. In 2020 she was an Expert Lead for Climate Assembly UK, the Citizens’ Assembly established by the UK Parliament. Rebecca is a Trustee of the New Economics Foundation and an adviser to the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund. She features on the Woman’s Hour Our Planet Power List which highlights 30 women making an impact by helping to protect...
In the first episode of the second season, Daniel Shneider and Ajani Stella, students at Hunter College High School in NYC, talk to Dr. Stuart Capstick, Deputy Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST Centre). Dr. Capstick researches public understanding of climate change, and the ways in which citizens’ involvement can lead to action. He co-leads a research theme with the CAST Centre focussed on real-world trials to inform low-carbon transformations; this wo...
In this episode, we speak with Rosemary Randall, a British psychotherapist who researches how people respond emotionally to information about climate change. With Andy Brown, Randall developed the award winning Carbon Conversations project which uses a psychological, small-group approach to helping people reduce carbon emissions. Gabriel, Kevin, and Adam talk about their personal feelings about the climate crisis, and Ro explains how they may not have reached their “epiphany moment,” in which...
In this episode, we speak with David Bookbinder of the Niskanen Center, who as Sierra Club's Chief Climate Counsel initiated Massachusetts v. EPA, the foundational climate law in the United States. We talk about how a climate change-focused high school curriculum could be built, shifting our attention away from specific degree targets, and instead thinking about how education can help change our carbon-intensive lifestyles and prepare students to adapt to a less stable climate. We also discus...
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