Reverse Course: Solutions for the climate crisis

0:00This message comes from Mint Mobile. If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from$15 a month. Shop plans today at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for a 3-month 5-gigabyte plan required. New customer offer for first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. WBUR Podcasts, Boston Are we going to solve the problem? I don't think so. I think we're going to have a vastly different climate for a very long time, and humanity is going to look very different.

0:40But I think we're going to adapt and struggle a lot along the way.

0:46Chris Bentley:No one is coming to save us from the climate crisis but ourselves.

1:05Chris Bentley:This is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:13Chris Bentley:I recently got a chance to talk in front of a live audience at WBUR's City Space in Boston about something I think about a lot, climate change. Specifically, Peter O'Dowd and I hosted a panel at the WBUR Festival about climate solutions.

1:32Chris Bentley:If you've been following Here and Now anytime, you've probably heard our environmental series, Reverse Course. For the past three years now, Peter and I have been traveling across North America, learning how people and governments and companies are trying to move the dial on climate change, or reverse course, as we say. We've seen shipping vessels in Costa Rica reverting to wind-powered shipping, scientists saving moose from increasingly warm winters in the north woods of Minnesota. We've canoed the Mississippi to learn about flooding, slept in an Earth ship in New Mexico, rode along in hydrogen-powered and electric big-rigged trucks.

2:11Chris Bentley:You can find all those stories and a lot more from reverse course at hereandnow.org. And we were joined on stage in Boston by two guests who've also been thinking a lot about solutions to the climate crisis, Leah Bamberger and Teak Root. Leah is global sustainability leader at Textron. Before that, she launched Northeastern University's sustainability office and was director of sustainability for the city of Providence, Rhode Island. Teak Root covers climate solutions and Economics for Grist, the nonprofit newsroom. So on this special bonus episode of the podcast, I hope you enjoy this excerpt of our discussion at the 2026 WBUR Festival.

2:52Chris Bentley:I just want to start with a big question to you, Teak, since this is your full-time beat covering climate solutions. What is a climate solution? It could be cutting emissions, it could be adapting, it could be a personal change, it could be a policy. How do you approach this big question of solutions for such a giant problem? That is a really good question. I actually personally hate the term climate solution. All right, we better change the panel. Yeah. I mean, I really, I actually, I don't have a stand in yet, but I do like reverse course. But I think solutions is a little bit too positive. Like for ages, the recycling and plastic industry called recycling a guilty racer.

3:36And I don't want the term solutions to become sort of a guilty racer for people because there's a lot of big, important work that needs to be done. I think of it in sort of the decarbonization camp, right? Like, how do we get greenhouse gases out of, for example, my life or whoever wants to get rid of greenhouse gases? How do you go about doing that? And then the second part, how do you adapt or survive in a warming world? And from there, I sort of look at who is accelerating progress and who might be impeding progress on either of those goals. But I really do need to come up with a better word if I'm going to slag solutions.

4:17Chris Bentley:Leo, how do you feel about the word solutions? Oh, it's interesting. I like your perspective on that. My role right now, which I've been in for less than a year, you know, Textron is a global manufacturing, industrial organization company, and we make planes and helicopters and golf carts and a whole bunch of stuff that's very resource-intensive, and it's challenging. And in the many cases, these are things that are driving innovation and advancing livelihood, but how do we actually think about solutions that are going to align that with our planetary boundaries? and I find that very interesting to work on.

4:57Chris Bentley:Right, I mean the three of us are journalists. You're in the business of actually implementing these solutions. So when you sit down to think about whether it's in the private sector as you are now or you spent a lot of time in the public sector as well, where do you start? Is it where you think it's going to make the biggest impact or what is available right now? How do you get started? I think always you have to start with getting to know people and the people who are going to help you, the people who might get in your way, really learning about the problems and identifying where the opportunities are.

5:32How do you build alliances? How do you build political capital within a city or university or a corporation to be effective in managing change in a way that will ultimately be impactful?

5:44Chris Bentley:Yeah, we're going to talk about your experience in the private sector and also in cities. One of the things I've noticed covering climate solutions, you mentioned guilt, Teak. I think it's really hard to work in climate solutions without sort of thinking about your own role. You know, we're traveling to do this and we're burning a tremendous amount of carbon. How do you handle that? Do you think about that? And were there times in your career here covering climate solutions that you thought, well, I need to address this in my own life? About a year ago, I tried to decarbonize my own house. I live in Burlington, Vermont and it was way more complicated than I ever expected and I'm still a year and a half in I have a gas dryer connection that I cannot seem to get rid of for a whole bunch of reasons but we can delve into it more but yeah, I think it's something that I've really tried to think about personally, not just for myself but that's how other people might think about it too like if I have this question about how to upgrade my electric panel, someone else might have that question, or getting an EV, or does the math make sense?

6:54When I'm 400 rows into a spreadsheet thinking about it for myself, I'm like, oh, well, maybe somebody else is here too.

7:01Chris Bentley:Well, Leah, didn't you also try to get off natural gas? I did, yeah, buy a home, and then we ended up buying a new home moments later, seemingly, so now I get to do it again. But for me, it's actually, I think it brings a great sense of joy to be able to do things at the scale of my own home, because it's changed that I can, I have a lot more control over than when you're working in a large organization, and there's, you know, I just have to get my husband on board, not a CEO or a provost or whatnot. So, and I think it does translate, right? It's a sort of petri dish of sorts, where you get to experiment and get to know and have some actual firsthand experience and then you can bring that into your organization.

7:48Chris Bentley:Teek, tell me a little more about trying to kick natural gas at home because you've written extensively about it and I gather it's not as easy as you'd like it to be. No, it started off with, we knew that our biggest source of natural gas use was our heater. So we knew we were going to have to do that. We also knew that we had our gas stove and we actually really, really liked our gas stove. It's nice. But I don't know if anyone from Boston might remember two or three years ago when the wildfire smoke came down from Quebec. We bought an air filter and we set it up in our kitchen just because it was central to our house.

8:27And we started using it during the wildfires. And then the wildfires went away, but we forgot to turn off the air filter. And we noticed that every time we turned on the gas stove, the air filter would turn red. And we were expecting a baby at the time. And we were like, whoa, this is definitely not what we expected. And so then the stove moved up the list. And then we found out we had a dryer that we needed to get rid of. And so it just sort of cascaded. And then someone told us our electric bills are going to go through the roof, so maybe we'll get solar. And we tried to get solar, but we weren't facing the right direction.

9:05We have these really, really cool 100-foot trees in our backyard. and they basically told us you have to choose between the trees or solar. And so it just became this series of decisions that honestly we're still working through now. Yeah, and actually this was a question I had for Leah. It was like when you were in Providence, how much are you hearing from people, residents of the city about how to do this stuff? Yeah, we would definitely get a lot of that. We would try to create conversations where those questions could be answered and demonstrations and EV showcase events and kind of create that forum.

9:48But also, as the city, we're never able to recommend a contractor or a particular product or process. but I think that's a powerful role that a local government who is engaging in sustainability can do is to help even just connect neighbors to each other you know like solar at the time we were doing some like solar ambassador programs you know you trust a recommendation from your neighbor really more certainly more than from the city.

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11:26Chris Bentley:How much do smaller solutions matter when there's big corporate interest and money in not combating the climate crisis? Sure. So as I mentioned, I've been in the corporate sustainability world for less than a year. But, you know, and I took the role out of mainly driven by curiosity. I think corporations have a tremendous role to play and have a tremendous influence on the challenge of climate change, for better or for worse. and I wanted to learn more and wanted to get on the inside. That's sort of my whole career has been kind of getting on the inside of these systems and organizations and trying to tinker from within.

12:06It has been, it's been eye-opening. I say Textron, I'm very fortunate it takes the matter very seriously, even though they're an aerospace and defense company and we have a lot of government contracts. It is about efficiency and it's also in many cases, it's our customers. So we have some in our industrial segment, we make some auto parts. We're a tier one supplier for many auto manufacturers around the world. And the customers are demanding that our facilities be run on renewable energy and that we're looking at reducing the carbon footprint of our products because that goes into their vehicles.

12:42And now they're responsible in what's called their scope three emissions.

12:46Chris Bentley:If I could interrupt you for a second. When you're sitting in a meeting with the bigwigs, I don't know if you sit down with the CEO, are they talking about this? Is this something that the leadership of the company is committed to? Yes. So we had a new CEO start. I joined in August. We had a new CEO start in January, January 2nd. And I met with her, I think, her second week on the job to talk about our new sustainability goals because we had closed on our 2025 goals. We exceeded all of our goals on waste reduction, water, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions. And we were in the process of setting those new goals.

13:24And she asked great questions, and we're moving forward.

13:27Chris Bentley:You mentioned scope three, and that's important to define that because that's like companies are not just responsible for emissions that they create directly, but for their supply chains. Am I understanding that correctly? Why is that so difficult? Because I've noticed there are a lot of companies that have revised their goals, their climate goals, maybe set five, six years ago. And it's usually related to something down the supply chain. It's difficult because it's not in your control. As much as your supply chain usually is out of your boundaries, it's out of your company. So it's a lot of sort of negotiating with your suppliers.

14:07and there's a lot of supply chain challenges at present. And so it just kind of adds a layer to it. Part of my job is going to be to calculate our scope three emissions in the coming years. So we're getting started on that and it's driving change. We see that, yeah, it's quite powerful.

14:25Chris Bentley:Yeah. This next question, it's perfect for Leah. Leah, this is gonna give you a chance to talk about what you did in the city of Providence. Tell us about a community that has figured out a way to limit the use of plastics? How have they been able to do this? When I started with the city, they were updating their sustainability plan, and I was hearing a lot from community members who kind of felt disenfranchised from that process originally, and these were communities that were adjacent to the port, low-income communities of color, and the plan previously, the work of the sustainability in the city, didn't really speak to the issues around air pollution, lead in their soils, in their home, these legacy issues from industry.

15:14So we spent a lot of time working with them and building a relationship and co-created a climate justice plan for the city that became the sort of update to that original sustainability plan. And then I had a city council member, not really even directly come to me but announced that she was going to do a plastic bag ban and the community members that I had worked really hard to build a relationship with were concerned about the plastic bag ban because I was going to have a fee for for bags and they just saw it as as another sort of thing

15:46Chris Bentley:that was happening to them like a regressive tax or something yeah yeah so navigating that was very interesting but you know the bill did ultimately pass fun sort of side story my now mother-in-law was pro-plastic bag ban. And so I also had to navigate that dimension, which is just the fun of working in a somewhat small city. But I do think it is important. I think that it's a visibility thing. It's a reminder. It's a cultural indicator kind of signal that I think actually is pretty powerful. And in leading behavior change, we like to mimic each other. If we think we're in a place where people really care about the environment, then we're more likely to make sure we put the waste in the right bin or whatnot.

16:32So in that regard, I do think it is important. And now again, to bring it to my current role, Canada has created a plastic registry law. Anything that comes into their markets, they want documentation of everything that is plastic, the type of plastic, the quantity of plastic. So that's another fun task. I'll have to help Textron figure out how to report on that.

16:56Chris Bentley:And there's another example of another country's regulations affecting you directly as an American, U.S.-based company, but your global supply chain. What do you think about solutions aimed at achieving net negative emissions? So not just net zero, but net negative. I actually haven't come across too much of that in my work. I mean there's there's carbon removal technologies, but they're usually aimed at They're not placed within a system where the end goal is net negative You guys might have more experience with it, but it's it's rare to me to see that As a goal and it's usually something I'm Relatively skeptical of when people are trying to do that, but I just see it so rarely Are you skeptical of net zero too because you know I sometimes think I'm like, well, that net is doing a lot of work.

17:49Chris Bentley:Like you're emitting a lot and potentially a lot more, but eventually it's going to be netted out. Yeah. I mean, the net is usually a clear sign that I need to dig in and find out where they're buying their carbon credits or where they're, you know, where they're planting trees, where they don't shouldn't be planting trees or, you know, the whole debacle with the UAE and carbon credits. And, you know, there's just there's so much behind that word net. Yeah, trading credits, I believe. Is that what was happening? Yeah, they were trading credits, and then they just, they were credits to nowhere, basically.

18:23Chris Bentley:Like a shell game where you're moving around the emissions credits. Plenty more skepticism of supposed climate solutions, as well as some reasons for hope, after one more short break.

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19:34Chris Bentley:So I'm glad we're talking about skepticism, and I think we'll probably have enough time to end with skepticism as well. Around 2020, this was like so many companies were talking about this, making these pledges. And then just look at what's going on with the automotive industry right now. I mean, they're just backtracking. Only in the US. Right. So I guess I think when people hear about climate solutions, especially when they're driven by corporations, this is kind of a tough question for you, but I'm going to ask it anyway. I'm so excited for this. Should we trust it? should we trust industries that got us into this crisis in the first place, that they could be a part of the solution?

20:15I am not going to tell you who you should trust, but I'm glad we are beyond that era of everyone making pledges and commitments. I don't think it was sustainable. I think it was grounded in a desire to appease a consumer, and there wasn't much often behind it. We're seeing some backtracking from corporations on their targets. A lot of that's driven by AI and data centers. And look, we are a resource-intensive company, and that comes with a lot of challenges when we talk about our corporate responsibility and what that means. It also creates opportunities, and that's, again, some of the appeal for me is the ability to have such an impact, and we can make even small changes that can have a tremendous impact in reducing our emissions, which we've cut by over 30 % in the last five years.

21:13I mean, that's a lot of carbon that is no longer going into the atmosphere, and we're going to continue and reduce that even further. The point I'm trying to get to is that by being realistic and pragmatic, I think is way more important and valuable than making broad claims that perhaps don't have a backing in it. It is one thing that I do really appreciate. When I worked for the city of Providence, one of the first things I did, I got the mayor to sign a commitment to become a carbon-neutral city by 2050, and it was so great. We did a press event, and it was a very feel-good moment. But there was no funding.