Climate Migration

In the coming decades, the scale of climate migration could be dizzying. In one projection, four million people in the United States could find themselves “living at the fringe,” outside ideal conditions for human life.

In collaboration with By Degrees, NHPR’s climate change reporting initiative, we’re devoting the entire episode to answering one question: if you’re worried about climate, where should you live? And how should places prepare for the wave of climate migrants just around the corner?

Featuring Bess Samuel, Jesse Jaime, Aurelia Jaime Ramirez, Kate McCarthy, Elena Mihaly, Jola Ajibade, Nadege Green, Suzi Patterson, Alex Whittemore, and Mike Hass.

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Links

“Locals Bristle As Out-of-Towners Fleeing Virus Hunker Down In New Hampshire Homes” by Annie Ropeik for New Hampshire Public Radio

Yayoi Kusama’s “Fireflies on the Water” (2002) by maurizio mucciola on Flickr.

Yayoi Kusama’s “Fireflies on the Water” (2002) by maurizio mucciola on Flickr.

Nadege Green’s reporting on climate gentrification in season 3 of There Goes the Neighborhood, a collaboration between WNYC and WLRN.

“Why climate migration is not managed retreat: Six justifications” (2020), coauthored by Idowu (Jola) Ajibade and published in Global Environmental Change.

ProPublica’s Climate Migration project

The EPA’s Climate Resiliency Screening Index (2017). Scroll to page 79 for their list of the top 150 most resilient counties in the United States.

The quote from Charles Simic comes from Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss (The New Press, 1999).

“Immigration, exile, being uprooted and made a pariah may be the most effective way yet devised to impress on an individual the arbitrary nature of his or her own existence. Who needed a shrink or a guru when everyone we met asked us who we were the moment we opened our mouths and they heard the accent?

The truth is, we had no simple answers. Being rattled around in freight trains, open trucks, and ratty ocean-liners, we ended up being a puzzle even to ourselves. At first, that was hard to take; then we got used to the idea. We began to savor it, to enjoy it. Being nobody struck me personally as being far more interesting than being somebody. The streets were full of these "somebodys" putting on confident airs. Half the time I envied them; half the time I looked down on them with pity. I knew something they didn't, something hard to come by unless history gives you a good kick in the ass: how superfluous and insignificant in any grand scheme mere individuals are. And how pitiless are those who have no understanding that this could be their fate too.”

Credits

Outside/In was produced this week by Justine Paradis, Annie Ropeik, Taylor Quimby, and Sam Evans-Brown with support from Cori Princell and Tat Bellamy-Walker.

Erika Janik is our executive producer.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Additional music by Massimo Ruberti.

Special thanks to Anna Marandi, Chris Campany, Lauren Gaudette, and Garrett Neff. 

Thank you also to everyone who responded to the survey and to those we spoke with for this episode: Alex Whittemore, Daniel Mitchell, Mark Nystrom, Meaghan Kelly, Alex Texeira, Jesse Jaime, Aurelia Jaime Ramirez, Jenny Stowe, Mike Hass, Suzi Patterson, Mike Thiel, Allyshia Dycus, and of course, Bess Samuel

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

The Forest for the Carbon

A carbon offset is a simple premise: if you take a cross-country flight and are responsible for a half ton of carbon emissions, spend a few dollars to fund the growth of a half ton worth of carbon in the form of a forest. A fossil fuel company can do the same: buy offsets to write off emissions and call it green. But is this just another form of greenwashing? Do carbon offsets bring us closer to carbon-neutrality?

Featuring Kaarsten Turner Dalby, Heather Furman, Charlie Stabolepszy, Barbara Haya, Jim Shallow, and Adeniyi Asiyanbi.

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Just one part of the methodology of carbon accounting with the Nature Conservancy in Vermont. Photo credit Sam Evans-Brown.

Just one part of the methodology of carbon accounting with the Nature Conservancy in Vermont. Photo credit Sam Evans-Brown.

Credits

Outside/In was produced this week by Sam Evans-Brown with Taylor Quimby and Justine Paradis.

Erika Janik is our executive producer.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Special thanks to Dave Publicover, Karin Bothwell, Stuart Hale, Mark Ducey, John Gunn, Charles Levesque, Mindy Crandell, Bill Keeton, Erik Kingsley, Tom Pugh, Mariko Yamasake, Fiona Jevon and Lauren Gifford. 

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

Fortress Conservation

Throughout the 20th century, conservationists and environmentalists have looked to protect wildlife and biodiversity through the creation of parks and other forms of exclusionary wildlife zones. Zones that seek to preserve spaces devoid of human impact - or to create them, by displacing indigenous and poor people who already live there. Today, some academics call this strategy by a pejorative name: Fortress conservation.

In this episode, we look at medieval forest law, the early days of Yellowstone National Park, and spreading concern over how conservation efforts are enacted and enforced around the world.

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10x10: Pine Barren

Another year… another record-breaking wildfire season. Thanks to climate change the fire season now starts sooner and ends later.  Scientists also say climate change will make lightning more frequent, and winds more powerful. Basically, the world is a tinderbox.

But maybe the problem with these big, out-of-control fires is actually *not enough* fire.

Featuring Luke Romance, John Bailey, Mike Crawford, Jeff Lougee, Paul Gagnon, Tony Harwood, Steve Pyne and Adele Fenwick.

This episode originally aired in 2018. For more pictures and material, visit the original episode post.

pine barren.JPG

Credits

Outside/In was produced this week by Sam Evans-Brown, and Taylor Quimby, with help from Hannah McCarthy, Justine Paradis, Nick Capodice, and Jimmy Gutierrez. Erika Janik is our Executive Producer.

Thanks this week to Melissa Thomas-Van Gundy and Greg Nowacki of the Forest Service, William Patterson of UMass Amherst and the many folks at the Nature Conservancy who helped us figure this story out.

Music in this episode by Franco Luzzi,  Blue Dot Sessions, Jason Leonard and Ikimashoo Aoi.

Our theme Music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

The Olive and the Pine

Planting a tree often becomes almost a shorthand for doing a good deed. But such an act is not always neutral. In some places, certain trees can become windows into history, tools of erasure, or symbols of resistance.

Featuring Liat Berdugo, Irus Braverman, Jonathan Kuttab, Noga Kadman, Iyad Hadad, Raja Shehadeh, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Miri Maoz-Ovadia, Nidal Waleed Rabie, and his granddaughter Samera.

Bibliography

Berdugo, Liat. “A Situation: A Tree in Palestine.” Places Journal. January 2020.
Braverman, Irus. Planted Flags: Trees, Land, and Law in Israel Palestine. Cambridge University Press: 2009.
Kadman, Noga. Erased from Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948. Indiana University Press: 2015.
Long, Joanna. “(En)planting Israel: Jewish national fund forestry and the naturalisation of Zionism.” University of British Columbia: 2005.
”Our History.” Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael Jewish National Fund. Accessed 8 October 2020.
Pappe, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. One World Oxford: 2006.
Shehadeh, Raja. Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape. Scribner: 2007.
Tal, Alon. Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel. University of California Press: 2002.

Credits

Outside/In was produced this week by Justine Paradis with Taylor Quimby and Sam Evans-Brown.

Erika Janik is our executive producer.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Special thanks to Yehoshua Shkedy, Amit Gilutz, Eliana Passentin, and Vered Ben Saadon.

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

Rice is Food and Other Stories

Listeners submit their cases for the best fruit ever, and we explore the intersections of fruit, food, and colonialism.

Featuring Alicia Kennedy, Coral Lee, Lauren Baker, Grant Bosse, and Hallie Casey.

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Links

“On Luxury” by Alicia Kennedy

“C is for Colonialism’s Effect on How and What We Eat” by Coral Lee

Here’s the 2013 Scientific American article Taylor mentioned on America’s corn system.

Outside/In is free to listen to… but it isn’t free to make. Make a donation to support Outside/In today!

Credits

Outside/In was produced this week by Taylor Quimby and Justine Paradis.

Erika Janik is our executive producer.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.

The Lithium Gold Rush

In one version of a sustainable, carbon-neutral future, the world’s cars will transition from fossil fuels to electricity. Right now that vision absolutely depends on lithium, a primary component of the lithium-ion battery.

But there is no “Lithium Central Planning Committee” balancing supply and demand or making sure that lithium is mined in environmentally and socially responsible ways. In fact, there is almost no lithium mining in the United States at all. So where does it all come from? And who is being affected?

Read More

The Darién Gap

There are places on the map where roads end.

The Darién Gap, or el Tapon del Darién, is one of them. It’s a stretch of rainforest in southern Panama, right on the edge of Central and South America. From a globetrotter’s perspective, the Darién Gap might seem to exist mostly as an obstacle to tourists dreaming of a truly epic road trip from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego.

But, while a road is one way for movement, it’s not the only way to get somewhere. What happens, or does not happen, in a place without roads?

Featuring Jorge Ahumada, Roland Kays, Hector Huertas, Ustin Pascal Dubuisson, and Alicia Korten.

Credits

Outside/In was produced this week by Sam Evans-Brown with Justine Paradis and Taylor Quimby.

Erika Janik is our executive producer.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions.

For additional reading about the history of Pan-American highway and how it came to be that it is still incomplete, check out The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas by Eric Rutkow.

Special thanks to Nick Capodice, Pedro Mendez of the University of Panama, and Ross Irwin of Humanizando la Deportacion.

Title image by Alex Torrenegra via Flickr.

If you’ve got a question for our Ask Sam hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down into. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.