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A Matter of Degrees

Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson

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Give up your climate guilt. Sharpen your curiosity. Join Dr. Leah Stokes and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson as they tell stories about the powerful forces behind climate change — and the tools we have to fix it. This show makes sense of big climate questions and critical topics. Our episodes are filled with stories of bold climate leadership, groundbreaking campaigns, and people doing their best to be part of the solution. A Matter of Degrees is produced in partnership with FRQNCY Media, The 2035 I ...
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In this live episode of A Matter of Degrees, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson joined Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson for a conversation on Ayana’s new book, What If We Get It Right, Visions of Climate Futures. The need to build community and the imperative to imagine the futures we want are now more important than ever. These topics are at the heart of this dis…
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The election is over, but climate progress doesn’t have to be. How can we continue to push for equitable climate policies and defend current investments in clean energy? What are the state and local avenues for addressing the climate crisis? In this live episode of A Matter of Degrees, Dr. Leah Stokes is joined by Adrian Deveny, the Former Director…
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On this episode of A Matter of Degrees, we tell the story of how a powerful grassroots movement, ambitious lawmakers, and Governor Tim Walz turned Minnesota into a climate leader. Then, we talk about using the Minnesota blueprint to make change everywhere else. It’s election season, but the federal government isn’t the only venue for climate action…
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Project 2025 has been all over the news lately. But what exactly is this conservative playbook for the Federal government? And what does it mean for climate policy? This week, A Matter of Degrees dives into the Heritage Foundation's plan for the next conservative presidential administration. Just weeks away from a pivotal election, we lay out what …
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Welcome back for a special bonus episode of A Matter of Degrees! In this episode, we are taking a look back at our live conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Since we are once again at a pivotal moment for the climate, we wanted to kick off our new season by looking back at this incredible climate leader who has played a key role in getti…
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Welcome back for a bonus episode of A Matter of Degrees! We were lucky enough to sit down with Rebecca Solnit — author, historian, and climate activist — to talk about her newest climate anthology, Not Too Late. Leah and Nikayla Jefferson both wrote essays for the book and joined Rebecca onstage for this live episode. Not Too Late gets at the tough…
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In our season three finale, we’re transporting listeners to the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world and a vital carbon sink: the Tongass. Katharine and Leah investigate the impact of decades of industrial logging in Southeast Alaska and political debates pitting ecology against economy. We learn from the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian p…
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In his early days in office, President Biden took executive action to deliver environmental justice. Are those policies delivering justice in practice? This episode, we talk to EJ activists and federal policymakers about Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which directs 40% of the overall benefits of climate investments toward disadvantaged communities. …
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Electric utilities are falling short on climate action. To explain why, we’re bringing back our season one finale. This episode features former utilities regulator Kris Mayes, who recently won a nail-biting election to become the second woman and first openly LGBTQ attorney general of Arizona. Go, Kris! Since season one, Leah has been busy investig…
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In this episode, we explore the growing impact of heat on people and the planet. We talk to scientists and “climate detectives” trying to hold the perpetrators of this unprecedented global temperature increase accountable. Leah and Katharine speak with Neza Xiuhtecutli, executive director of the Farmworker Association of Florida; Kate Marvel, clima…
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At the start of 2023, we’re reflecting on past progress and setting climate intentions, both small and large, for the year ahead. And we want to hear from you! Has A Matter of Degrees shifted your perspective or moved you to action? Do you have climate goals for 2023? Share your story with us. To inspire and ground us for the new year, we share a p…
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The fossil fuel industry is banking its future on petrochemicals — the toxic precursor to plastics. In this episode, Katharine and Leah speak with activists who are fighting back against petrochemicals in “sacrifice zones” across America, from the Ohio River Valley to the Gulf Coast. Learn where petrochemicals come from, how they harm people, place…
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In this episode, we investigate corporate climate commitments and how to make them stronger. We get to the root of zero-emissions pledges and greenwashing — specifically in the oil and gas industry. Dr. Paasha Mahdavi, associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, joins us to report this story. Paasha talk…
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This episode delves into the murky world of cryptocurrency and its impact on our planet. Join Katharine and Leah as they discover how digital currencies are breathing new life into previously shuttered coal plants across the United States. This episode features Alex de Vries, data scientist and founder of Digiconimist, an online platform that track…
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This episode is all about feelings. You’ve heard the phrase “climate grief,” right? But how do we deal with what it does to our hearts, minds, and bodies? And how might it impact the climate action we take? This episode features Dr. Britt Wray, a Stanford-based author and researcher on climate and mental health; somatic coach and climate grief work…
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"We must understand that we are in a very specific moment in time, and this window is going to shut on us. But it doesn’t have to shut on us, if we act.” — Vice President Kamala Harris on A Matter of Degrees Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, we had the honor of joining Vice President Harris live in San Francisco for a conversation about climate …
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The third and final installment of our miniseries considers the question “What can I do?” from a political perspective. Our expert guests share stories of nailbiter elections for local office and the victorious legislative campaign to ban gas in new buildings in New York City. We lay out a four-step guide to getting pro-climate candidates elected, …
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In this episode, we continue to unpack the question “What can I do?” The second installment of our miniseries zeroes in on our professional lives — ways to approach climate action within the workplace. We learn that almost any job can be a climate job. And, if need be, we can pursue “career divestment.” This episode features Amanda Suter Gallardo, …
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As climate people, we hear this question again and again: “What can I do?” Many of us are trying to figure out how to help address the climate crisis. So, we’re taking on that critical question in a three-part miniseries. The first episode is all about The Personal — key ways we can act on climate in our own lives and create meaningful, durable cha…
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Welcome back, climate-curious friends — it’s time for Season 3 of A Matter of Degrees. This season we’ll tackle some critical topics and big questions, starting with one we’re all asking when it comes to the climate crisis: “What can I do?” Season 3 kicks off (September 15!) with a three-part miniseries to answer that question. We’ll talk with some…
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Welcome back to A Matter of Degrees! While we’ve been hard at work producing season three of the show, the climate movement has been going through a lot of twists and turns. Most recently, after announcing he would not support climate investments in a budget reconciliation deal, Senator Joe Manchin abruptly made a historic climate deal with Senate …
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This episode is a collaboration between A Matter Of Degrees and the Gimlet podcast How To Save A Planet. Take a look at many of the spaces where climate-related decisions are being made — from government to business to media — and you'll notice a numbers problem. Despite being roughly half the people on the planet, women rarely have equal represent…
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In the jungles of the Brazilian Amazon, groups of farmers and their families get by on what they can grow with the land beneath their feet. They're known in Brazil as “landless workers,” a social movement with the goal of increasing land access and ownership for the country’s rural poor. These landless workers -- sometimes called land guardians or …
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This episode is a collaboration between A Matter Of Degrees and the Gimlet podcast How To Save A Planet. Coal-fired power plants are closing at record rates. But many are still scheduled to remain operational for the foreseeable future -- despite losing lots of money every year. How do we shut these uneconomic coal plants down faster? One answer: c…
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Since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015, banks and large investors have dumped $3.8 trillion into fossil fuels. It's a staggering number. This is why writer and activist Bill McKibben calls money the "oxygen" that fuels the fire of global warming. While the wildfires burning around the world are getting worse each year, it’s like the w…
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Advocates are turning their attention to a new front in the climate war: the fossil-gas hookups in our homes that fuel burners, boilers, and other household appliances. If we want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to electrify the hundreds of millions of machines inside our homes and buildings as fast as possible. But the gas industr…
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When Hurricanes Maria and Irma hit Puerto Rico in 2017, they destroyed the island’s fragile food system. Farms of all sizes were battered, with around 80 percent of the island's crop value wiped out. But a group of Puerto Rican farmers practicing an old way of farming, called agroecology, saw their operations bounce back much faster than convention…
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President Biden’s American Jobs Plan promises big investments in the clean-energy economy, including clean energy workforce and education programs. Economic progress and clean climate action are inextricably linked. But how can we make sure that those dollars go to communities of color who have already been most impacted by climate change and consi…
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Abuse of soil, the atmosphere, and communities of color have gone hand in hand. Through reclaiming ancestral connection to the soil, Black farmers are healing the entangled harms of colonization, capitalism, and White supremacy and moving agricultural climate solutions forward in the process. In this episode, we feature an audio essay that wrestles…
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Baked into the American Jobs Plan is an ambitious proposal to set a federally-mandated Clean Electricity Standard of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035. It would put the US on track to get emissions under control and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. That is, if it gets through Congress. In this episode, Co-host Leah Stokes speaks with a…
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Fossil fuel companies are tapping into America’s “best and brightest” at top banks, public relations and advertising firms, law firms, and strategy consulting firms. These organizations supply critical services to keep the fossil fuel industry humming: creative work, strategy, legal representation, financing. They’re services that oil and gas compa…
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We're back with another live edition of the show! So much is happening in the Biden era. We didn't want to wait until our second season to unpack all the activity. This week, we feature a conversation with Julian Brave NoiseCat that we recorded at the Crosscut Festival. Julian is a writer, activist, and policy expert with a deep understanding of Wa…
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As we work on season 2, we're sharing a live episode of the show that we just recorded at the Bloomberg Green Summit. The conversation is all about where things stand in the lead-up to global climate talks in the fall. We were fortunate to get Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland, to talk about this topic with us. Mary served as the Presi…
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In 2013, a series of attack ads blitzed television sets across Arizona. They warned of a dire threat to senior citizens. Who was the villain? Solar energy. These ads came from front groups funded by Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility. It was part of a years-long fight against rooftop solar that turned ugly. “I mean, for Star Wars f…
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We're pleased to introduce an episode of "How to Save a Planet," produced by our friends at Gimlet and Spotify. The show is co-hosted by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg. "How to Save a Planet" has a lot of similarities to our own, so we think our listeners will like the stories they tell. In this week's episode: a story about the Black Li…
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This week, we have a special episode featuring activist and researcher Nikayla Jefferson. Most of us are in the first stage of climate grief: denial. But what does it feel like to enter the stage of grief? And how is that grief different for black people? Even if you’ve seen the impacts of climate change up close, even if you’ve felt the tropical w…
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This week, we have a special episode about the long and winding energy transition in an often overlooked place: the Navajo Nation—the largest Indian reservation in the United States. Journalist and climate policy expert Julian Brave NoiseCat is our guide. Ten percent of Navajos lack access to electricity. Some spend up to $700 per month on fuels to…
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We’ve made a carbon mess. How do we clean it up? Imagine the atmosphere as an overflowing bathtub. The water keeps gushing from the tap. Clearly, we need to turn it off. We have to bring emissions of heat-trapping gases down to zero, stat. But even after we do that, we still have a mess on our hands. So, we need to open the drain, let some water ou…
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It’s official. Joe Biden will be the next president. And he ran on a platform that put climate at the top of the agenda. There’s still a lot of tension. What will happen to the balance of power in Congress? Can we make progress on climate, even with Democrats losing down-ballot races? Even with so much uncertainty, there's actually a lot of good ne…
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In July, the FBI charged Larry Householder, Ohio’s Republican Speaker of the House, with a conspiracy to pass a $1.5 billion bailout in return for $61 million in dark money. The racketeering was allegedly orchestrated by Householder and the utility FirstEnergy to kill Ohio’s renewable energy law and prop up aging coal and nuclear power plants. What…
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When talking about climate change, we often get deep into the weeds quickly and throw a lot of numbers around. And these numbers can feel really disconnected from our lives: Two degrees, 415 parts per million, 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide. In this episode, we've got one number we really want to focus on: 2035. It’s a date that carries a lot of…
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Climate change is no longer a far-off scenario. It’s happening now. It’s getting more intense every year. And young people are seeing a scary future play out right in front of them. In recent years, the youth climate movement has gained unprecedented strength. Borrowing from the civil rights movement and early environmental activists, young leaders…
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The biggest climate stories blame “all of us,” or cast solutions as “impossible.” These narratives leave people feeling hopeless and confused about what we actually can do. In our first episode: individual actions versus structural change. What’s the right way to think about the role they each have in addressing the climate crisis? We’ll explore th…
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People don’t often hear the real story about climate change: it’s happening now; fossil fuel companies with money on the line have lied about it; and it doesn’t have to be this way. This show is for the people who know climate change is a problem, but are still trying to figure out how we tackle it.By Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
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