Zero Net Fifty Jennifer Delony

To realize the goals of the Paris Agreement, it’s estimated the US needs to transition 20% of vehicles to clean technologies by the end of this decade. That’s about 55 million cars based on the number of cars in the US as of 2018. As of 2019, 1.4 million electric vehicles had been sold in the US, and the US has about 84,000 public chargers. 
Understanding how many new EVs the US might have on the road by the end of the decade, how and where those vehicles might charge in order to estimate what the public charging network should look like, and identifying how much it would cost to build that public charging network are all things we should already know today in order to achieve them in 9 years.
In this episode, we take a look at climate-related activities in the early moments of the Biden Administration and discuss the backdrop for President Biden’s plans to expand electric vehicle adoption in the US and build the infrastructure necessary to support that growth.

If you’ve been following the ongoing struggle between California and the Trump administration, then you likely took note of GM’s announcement before Thanksgiving that the automaker is backing away from the support it gave Trump in the legal battle over California’s right to set fuel efficiency standards different from federal standards. But were you left wondering what the bigger meaning of that announcement is for the transportation sector, and what the future of those standards will be in the U.S. Listen to Joel Stronberg’s take on the GM announcement and the EV market, and how they fit into the plans of President-elect Joe Biden. Plus, get insight into more plans from the coming Biden administration and what the administration’s immediate challenges will be as it executes the plan to bring the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement.

With the Nov. 7 news that Joe Biden became President-elect fresh on our minds, we paused to consider our initial reactions to the results and what those results mean for the ongoing effort to protect our environment. Biden’s win is a victory, to be sure, but there are so many other factors that matter on the forward path. What will Biden’s administration face when the dust settles over Georgia’s Senate seats? A Republican majority or a 50-50 split? What will be Biden’s plan for his first 100 days? There are also questions to consider about what Democrats want now, and whether there will be a deepening divide there. We look at these issues and more in this first look at the outcome of the 2020 elections.

Vermont’s new Global Warming Solutions Act became law without Republican Governor Phil Scott’s approval. In the Green Mountain State, Republicans and Democrats generally agree that climate change is real and that it’s important to do something about it. But they don’t generally agree on the approach — arguing mostly about how goals can be achieved at a reasonable cost. Those disagreements, however, are just the backdrop to what matters most—to all states—about the Global Warming Solutions Act. Joel Stronberg explains why everyone should be paying attention to what’s going on in Vermont and what it means in the fight for a healthy environment.

Why are we concerned about the balance of the political leanings of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States? And do the justices always stick to a conservative or liberal stance when deciding cases? How should we look at the path of climate change in our society with a conservative Supreme Court? Joel Stronberg answers these questions and more in this special episode, as we pause to consider the big picture following the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In this short-format edition of Zero Net Fifty we discuss how the deaths of men and women of color at the hands of White police officers has triggered a racial justice reckoning the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1960s. Racial justice has, in many ways, become a metonym for all the socio-economic and political inequities that have been ailing America for decades.  
Racial and economic injustice and inequality are found in many forms throughout the clean energy and environmental sectors—in its institutions, the siting of polluting industries, and access to technology.  
Racism has long plagued the environmental movement. John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club was an overtly avowed racist. For its initially higher costs and the race of its early adopters, solar has long been considered a technology for wealthy White folks. However, times are changing.  
Listen to this 20-minute episode as we discuss what some of these changes are.