Sometimes, climate change IS a laughing matter. Every week, The Sweaty Penguin cuts through the noise and the doom-and-gloom of the climate conversation with late-night-comedy-style monologues and in-depth conversations with leading global experts on a variety of environmental issues. Through a nonpartisan approach, The Sweaty Penguin makes environmental issues less overwhelming and politicized and more accessible and fun. In partnership with Peril and Promise, a PBS/WNET public media initiative on climate change, The Sweaty Penguin invites you to join the hottest conversation in town.
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Gesamtlänge aller Episoden: 5 days 21 hours 6 minutes
Tip of the Iceberg E31: Why weren’t we prepared?
September has seen a long list of historic extreme weather events, from a record-breaking heat wave in the American west to a storm surge in coastal Alaska to Hurricane Fiona in the Caribbean. While each of these events was a different weather phenomenon affecting different regions, they did share some things in common, chiefly a strain on power grids and an overall lack of preparedness...
Tip of the Iceberg E32: Climate change did affect Hurricane Ian
Hurricane Ian proved to be a catastrophe, causing several dozen casualties, millions of power outages, and billions of dollars in damage. Based on wind speed, it was one of the five most powerful hurricanes in recorded history to hit the United States. And though there seemed to be some confusion on this point stemming from a viral CNN clip from September 27th, climate change did play a role...
Tip of the Iceberg E33: Sackett v. EPA
Next Tuesday, October 18th marks the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act. What’s its anniversary present? A 15 year long legal battle that is now being decided in the Supreme Court. The case in question is called Sackett v. EPA, and it concerns whether or not Chantell and Michael Sackett were allowed to build a home on a wetland in Idaho, or if they first needed a permit under the Clean Water Act...
Tip of the Iceberg E34: How bad can it get?
The latest natural disasters in an unrelenting few months of climate catastrophes include Hurricane Julia in Central and South America and deadly floods in Nigeria and Australia. After all this damage, it’s challenging to envision how climate change gets any worse from here. But scientists have started imagining worst case scenarios, and in September, published a study on climate “tipping points” that brought both good news and bad news...
Tip of the Iceberg E35: The big banks got subpoenaed… for going too green
Last Wednesday, nineteen states announced that they had subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, asking for documents relating to the companies’ involvement with the UN Net-Zero Banking Alliance. These states felt it was against their best interests for these banks to blackball the fossil fuel industry, going so far as to call the banks “corporate activists...
Tip of the Iceberg E36: It’s a tough time to be a painting
There have been a string of stunts recently with climate activists targeting artwork, from Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting to Monet’s “Grainstacks” painting to Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” painting last week. These protests have reinvigorated conversations about the “3.5% rule,” which suggests a movement needs only 3.5% of the population involved to be successful. Or, at least that’s what some climate activists have claimed. Ethan argues why the 3...
Tip of the Iceberg E37: COP27 begins
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP27, kicked off on Sunday in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, bringing 198 countries together to negotiate the next batch of global climate agreements. And in setting the stage for the conference, one word has stood out among the rest: implementation. Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Convention Simon Stiell opened the conference saying, “Today a new era begins — and we begin to do things differently. Paris gave us the agreement...
Tip of the Iceberg E38: No, the 1.5°C climate target is not dead
The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP27, wrapped up in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt on Sunday, and the outcome contained good news and bad news. To start, we look at the bad news: India’s proposal to include a phase down of fossil fuels in the final agreement, which was backed by much of the world including the EU, UK, and US, ultimately failed to make the final agreement...
Tip of the Iceberg E39: The new loss and damage fund is a win for the United States too
And now for the good news from the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP27: the creation of a loss and damage fund to support developing countries recover from the unavoidable impacts of climate change. Many proponents of the fund have treated it as a purely moral issue, but there’s actually a lot more to it. Ethan breaks down why, purely from an American perspective, the loss and damage fund is beneficial and exciting in this week’s “Tip of the Iceberg...
Tip of the Iceberg E40: The notable absence at the UN Biodiversity Conference
World leaders are currently gathered in Montreal for the fifteenth UN Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, working toward a global treaty to help stave off mass extinctions, mitigate climate change, and conserve economically important natural resources for decades to come. But there’s one notable absence from this effort: the United States. Though not invisible at COP15, the U.S...