50 Shades of Green: A Climate Group Podcast

In this episode of 50 Shades of Green, hosts Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran sit down with two leaders at the heart of America’s subnational climate movement: Kate Wright, Executive Director of Climate Mayors, and Casey Katims, Executive Director of the U.S. Climate Alliance.With midterms approaching and national headlines focused on federal rollbacks, the conversation explores a quieter but powerful reality: much of the real climate progress in the United States is happening at the state and city level. Climate Mayors works with more than 350 mayors across 48 states, representing roughly 70 million Americans in cities large and small, red and blue. The U.S. Climate Alliance is a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors that formed after the 2017 withdrawal from the Paris Agreement; those states collectively represent about 60 percent of the U.S. economy and 55 percent of the population.Kate and Casey explain why governors and mayors have outsized authority. The U.S. Constitution reserves significant power to the states, particularly over the two highest-emitting sectors—electricity and transportation. Governors can run carbon markets, set clean-energy standards, expand EV charging, and drive industrial and land-use strategies. Mayors, sitting closest to the impacts of extreme heat, flooding, and air pollution, can act on buildings, fleets, permitting, and local resilience. When the two levels collaborate, state policy ambition meets on-the-ground implementation.The guests share concrete examples of continued progress even without strong federal support: the linking of carbon markets in California, Washington, and Quebec; Virginia’s return to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative; rapid spread of plug-in (balcony) solar legislation; new state EV rebates replacing federal ones; and major heat-pump deployment. They also discuss how mayors and governors are adapting their communications in a fragmented media landscape—leaning into direct-to-camera videos, local storytelling, and “kitchen-table” framing around affordability, insurance costs, and resilience rather than abstract emissions targets.For international listeners, the episode offers a clear-eyed look at why the United States cannot be viewed as a monolith. While federal leadership has shifted, a durable network of governors and mayors continues to send market signals, scale solutions, and deliver cleaner energy and lower costs. The result is a practical reminder that climate action in the U.S. has not stopped—it has simply moved closer to home. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of 50 Shades of Green, hosts Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran dive into resilient building as extreme weather intensifies and communities face the hard questions of rebuilding after disaster. Katie speaks with Ken Calligar, CEO and founder of RSG-3D, about their structural panel system designed for noncombustible, disaster-resistant construction that has shipped to 20 countries.Ken argues that conventional U.S. wood-frame building has long relied on the wrong technology, creating complex, code-minimum assemblies vulnerable to fire, wind, flood, hail, and seismic events. He makes the case for resilience as a first principle: if a home can shake apart, burn, or blow away, little has been accomplished. The RSG-3D system focuses on the building envelope—walls and roof—creating a strong environmental separator that keeps threats out while delivering architectural freedom, including curved and organic forms, rather than concrete bunkers.The conversation covers real-world performance: Habitat for Humanity homes that survived Hurricane Andrew intact, a Northern California house that was the sole survivor of the 2015 Valley Fire, and schools in Mexico that withstood major earthquakes. Ken highlights that first costs are comparable to wood-frame construction, while total cost of ownership is dramatically lower through roughly 50–60% energy savings, near-elimination of maintenance issues, and a new partnership with Marsh for appropriately risk-priced insurance. With zero disaster damage across 35 years, the system challenges the notion that resilience is only for the wealthy.The hosts and Ken also address the practical realities of post-disaster rebuilding—such as in California wildfire zones where many homes are being reconstructed in the same vulnerable way—and the broader economic and social costs of inaction, including insurance market instability and community displacement. Ken’s closing message is direct: resilient construction is available, immediately cost-effective, and will pay dividends for generations. At some point, building inferiorly will no longer be a viable choice.Listeners will leave with a clearer picture of why the building envelope matters, how smarter construction can protect both people and finances, and why “you can’t afford not to” may be the most important idea in the built environment today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam Lake returns from Mexico City Climate Week and sits down with Katie Lanegran to unpack what sticks after the stage lights go off. Fresh from a panel with leaders of Climate Weeks in Mexico City and Toronto, Adam argues that these gatherings only matter if cities share lessons and build something larger than any single calendar week. Mexico City’s second-year event, held at a children’s museum with a strong youth focus, is flagged for a full episode soon.The centerpiece is a Climate Week NYC conversation with Doreen Harris, president and CEO of NYSERDA, recorded at The Hub Live. Climate Week has grown to about 1,500 events, up 50 percent from last year’s record. Harris explains NYSERDA’s role as New York’s energy agency, created in 1975 during the energy crisis: statewide energy planning, policy, and roughly $3 billion a year in programs, including about $100 million for innovation. She points to a thriving ecosystem from Brooklyn’s New Lab to upstate incubators, universities, and accelerators that turn research into companies as well as cleaner power.Community partnership is the through-line. NYSERDA’s 13 regional clean energy hubs work through trusted local organizations, and a dedicated siting team helps host communities plan solar, wind, and batteries. Harris ties clean energy to health: the Champlain-Hudson Power Express, nicknamed “Chippy,” (CHPE) is already improving air quality in Astoria’s “asthma alley,” and building decarbonization can cut indoor pollution from gas appliances. She prefers plain language—reducing pollution—over jargon. On housing, she notes Governor Hochul’s statewide building push and alignment with the mayor’s office, with a warning that speed only works if projects are built with communities, not around them.Back in the studio, Adam and Katie connect those points to multi-family buildings, where heat pumps, induction cooking, better windows, and insulation can cut costs and emissions for hundreds of families at once. They also mark CHPE as newly energized hydro power from Quebec, a project Adam remembers being announced on a Climate Week stage and now delivering real electrons and cleaner air. The episode closes on the Climate Week movement itself: NYC as the Super Bowl or Burning Man of the circuit, smaller city weeks as places where relationships form faster, and the real work living in the months between the celebrations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

50 Shades of Green comes to you with a special episode from Mexico City where they are about to launch Mexico Climate Week. Adam Lake speaks with Erica Valencia to find out what is in store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One week after Climate Week, hosts Adam Lake and Katie Lanegran drop their second live episode, recorded on stage with three sharp voices reshaping how climate stories actually reach people: comedian and content creator Evan Lazarus, veteran journalist-turned-independent producer Tracy Wolf (WereWHOLF Media, formerly of CBS and ABC News climate units), and activist-consultant Jerome Foster, a former Biden environmental justice advisor.The conversation starts with Evan’s viral TikTok theory that the escalating chaos on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City might be linked to the evaporating Great Salt Lake releasing heavy metals into the air. The clip is funny, specific, and unexpectedly serious. It reached a PhD student who began researching the psychological effects of those emissions. That moment becomes the episode’s thesis: climate content that clicks often doesn’t look like climate content at all. It sneaks in through reality TV, restaurant recaps, comedy, and the platforms people already scroll.Tracy describes leaving shrinking network newsrooms that treat climate as “service journalism” they can cut when ad dollars tighten. She argues the old 6 p.m. news model no longer owns the conversation; audiences now control what they watch, when they watch it, and who they trust. Independent creators can sometimes move the needle faster and cheaper than a $20,000 network package that airs once.Jerome focuses on turning awareness into action. Most people already know the crisis exists. The job is making them feel they belong in the story—small, concrete next steps (vote, plant, show up, follow the money) instead of another lecture. Authenticity consistently beats polished messaging. Entertainment is not a betrayal of the science; it is often the only way exhausted audiences stay in the room.The panel covers the death of the press-release-to-journalist pipeline, the ethics of brand deals versus audience-funded work, why newsrooms keep slashing climate desks, and the messy personal paths that brought each of them here—middle-school Earth Day light-offs, python hunts in the Everglades, Friday school strikes that grew into policy wins. A rapid-fire round bans words like “ambition” and “net zero,” debates hope versus urgency, and lands on the same practical advice: be concise, stop pretending every story is good news, and let people hear a real voice.The episode is both a dispatch from the front lines of climate communications and a how-to for anyone trying to make the issue land with people who are not already living and breathing it. Content that clicks does not shout “climate.” It meets people where they already are and gives them a reason to stay. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.