The Green Elephant in the Room: Solutions To Restoring the Health of People and the Living Planet

Rico Verde
  • 4.9 (15)
  • NEWS COMMENTARY
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

We all know about the doom and gloom associated with environmental issues. We need to tell ourselves a new story. Instead let's talk about energy independence, green jobs, livable cities, clean water, clean air, and healthy children. This is where politics, perceptions, and life-style meet the catastrophe that is unfolding in front of our eyes. Here's a suggestion — subscribe, tune-in, and stop doom-scrolling.

  1. FEB 19

    Beyond Spectacle: Building Power That Lasts (Part 2 of 2)

    SHOW NOTES Beyond Spectacle: Building Power That Lasts Now that we understand why we're losing, let's talk about how we win. This episode provides the blueprint—not theory, but proven models already succeeding across America. We start with Obama's revolutionary 2008 franchise model that empowered local volunteers to lead, not just follow orders. While Democrats abandoned this approach, Republicans studied it, copied it, and turned it into Faith & Freedom Coalition—3.1 million members organizing year-round in communities most of us have never heard of. Real organizing looks nothing like the billion-dollar spectacles dominating elections. We explore three groups—Down Home North Carolina, ISAIAH Minnesota, and Mormon Women for Ethical Government—that prove the power of local focus, economic common ground, and refusing purity tests. They're winning races, passing legislation, and building coalitions that cross party lines because they organize around shared concerns, not ideological conformity. The pattern is consistent: small groups meeting regularly, distributed leadership, and infrastructure that outlasts any single campaign. For climate specifically, success means meeting demand with better alternatives, not suppressing it. Clean energy displaced coal because it became cheaper—not because of protests. The movement's task is enabling clean development at scale: supporting solar farms, backing transmission lines, championing nuclear and geothermal projects. This episode provides the practical path forward for both democracy and climate organizing, complete with specific strategies, inspiring examples, and the tools you need to build power in your own community.  A CALL TO ACT Full Index TRUMPING TRUMP Resource Guide ACTIVISM AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT     Community Engagement: Step-up Participation in Climate Action     Community-led Climate Action Planning      Tools for Eco-Organizers

    32 min

  2. FEB 11

    Beyond Spectacle: Why Big Marches Don't Work for the Left – (Part 1)

    SHOW NOTES We keep losing. Not because we don't care enough or try hard enough—but because we're organizing all wrong. This episode unpacks the brutal truth about why massive protests accomplish almost nothing, while quiet, local organizing builds real power. We examine two movements that launched in the 1980s—DARE and MADD—and reveal why one fizzled into irrelevance while the other changed America. The difference? Structure over spectacle. Climate organizing faces the same trap. Decades of fighting what people want has put us at war with human nature itself. Meanwhile, the evidence is clear: people respond to solutions that are cheaper, cleaner, and better—not moral lectures about sacrifice. We explore what happened when clean energy became the economically smart choice, and why the movement must shift from preventing development to enabling clean development. Finally, we confront the purity test problem. The Women's March mobilized millions, then collapsed under ideological litmus tests. Meanwhile, conservatives quietly built the most powerful grassroots network in America by welcoming everyone who'd support their candidates—no other requirements. Big tents win. Small circles lose. The research is unambiguous. This episode reveals what actually works, backed by data, stories, and unflinching honesty about where progressive organizing has gone wrong. A CALL TO ACT Full Index TRUMPING TRUMP Resource Guide ACTIVISM AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT     Community Engagement: Step-up Participation in Climate Action    Community-led Climate Action Planning     Tools for Eco-Organizers

    32 min

  3. FEB 4

    THE BIG STUPID: Trump’s Devastatingly Effective War on Knowledge (Part 3 of 3)

    SHOW NOTES We're witnessing civilization-scale destruction in real time. A single leader is systematically dismantling America's knowledge infrastructure—firing thousands of scientists, defunding research institutions, attacking universities, purging cultural repositories, and creating a permission structure where ignorance becomes a point of pride. This isn't chaos—it's strategy. And the damage will compound across generations, reshaping how we solve problems, govern ourselves, and address planetary crises. By the end of this episode, you'll understand how stupidity was transformed from a bug in the system into a feature of political control. You'll see how the attention economy made us vulnerable, how Trump weaponized that vulnerability, and how his assault on knowledge ensures the destruction can never be fully documented or reversed.  More importantly, you'll learn what you can do about it. Because while the forces of technological, economic, and political stupidity assume we'll scroll our way to extinction, resistance is still possible. The fight to preserve human intelligence is the defining battle of our century—and it requires knowing who's fighting and how to join them. Two "LET'S TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PLANET" Databases: A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions.               The most effective climate action happens in communities. A Call to Act helps you find local environmental groups, climate action meetups, and volunteer opportunities that create real change in your backyard and beyond. Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.

    36 min

  4. JAN 28

    THE BIG STUPID: The $7 Trillion War on Human Attention (Part 2 of 3)

    SHOW NOTES What if the greatest threat to solving climate breakdown isn't denial or inaction—it's that we've been systematically engineered to be incapable of understanding it? This episode reveals how a $7 trillion industry has transformed your attention into a resource to be extracted, leaving you with a cognitive capacity optimized for scrolling instead of thinking. We're not just distracted; we're being rewired at a neurological level, and the consequences extend far beyond personal productivity into the survival of democracy, the future of scientific innovation, and our ability to address existential threats. From the mechanical lie that attention can be measured in clicks and screen time, to the research proving that mind-wandering is where breakthrough thinking happens, this episode connects dots you've sensed but couldn't quite articulate:  Why did political engagement collapse when entertainment got "too good"? Why can't we sustain focus long enough to grasp climate science? Why is your brain choosing pain over boredom? The attention economy is counting on you being too distracted to fight back. This episode gives you the framework to understand what's being stolen from you—and why reclaiming your capacity for deep thought might be the most radical act of resistance available. Two "LET'S TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PLANET" Guides: A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions.               The most effective climate action happens in communities. A Call to Act helps you find local environmental groups, climate action meetups, and volunteer opportunities that create real change in your backyard and beyond. Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.

    37 min

  5. JAN 21

    THE BIG STUPID - Why We're Getting Dumber When We Need to Be Smarter (Part 1 of 3)

    SHOW-NOTES For the first time in recorded history, human intelligence is declining. IQ scores that rose steadily for a century have reversed course across the developed world. Pattern recognition, abstract reasoning, and problem-solving abilities are dropping fastest among young adults. This isn't about genetics - it's about environment. We've built a world that no longer demands we think hard, and our brains are responding accordingly. The timing couldn't be worse. Climate change requires exactly the cognitive abilities we're losing - understanding complex systems, thinking abstractly, planning long-term, and making difficult trade-offs. Meanwhile, rising temperatures, air pollution, and elevated CO2 levels are themselves damaging our brains, creating a vicious cycle. We need to be smarter to solve the climate crisis, but the crisis is making us dumber. This episode exposes the stakes and asks: do we still have enough mental capacity left to choose a different path? Two "LET'S TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PLANET" Guides: A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions.               The most effective climate action happens in communities. A Call to Act helps you find local environmental groups, climate action meetups, and volunteer opportunities that create real change in your backyard and beyond. Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.

    34 min

  6. JAN 16

    Apocalypse Autopsy: Transformation Stories (Part 2 of 2)

    SHOW NOTES The word apocalypse doesn't mean ending - it means revelation, transformation. History shows that human apocalypses don't destroy everything, they fundamentally change society.  The Black Death killed half of Europe but broke the feudal system when labor scarcity gave peasants bargaining power for the first time. Mexico City earthquake survivors didn't scatter in panic - they ran toward collapsed buildings to help, forming rescue groups that still exist today. Research shows you only need 25 percent of any community committed to change to flip entire social norms, and this tipping point explains sudden shifts like smoking bans and marriage equality. We're already past several positive tipping points. Solar and wind energy are now the cheapest electricity in most places, not from subsidies but simple economics. Each success makes the next easier, creating momentum. But colonial history warns us that recovery requires agency - when Spanish colonizers destroyed Aztec water systems and imposed their own approach, they created problems Mexico City still faces 500 years later. Unlike every previous generation facing apocalypse, we can see climate change coming. We have time, knowledge, and choice. The question isn't whether systems will transform, but whether we choose adaptation while we still have agency or wait for collapse to force it on us. Two "LET'S TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PLANET" Guides: A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions.                The most effective climate action happens in communities. A Call to Act helps you find local environmental groups, climate action meetups, and volunteer opportunities that create real change in your backyard and beyond. Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.

    38 min

  7. JAN 7

    Apocalypse Autopsy: Are we the Asteroid or the Dinosaurs? (Part 1 of 2)

    SHOW NOTES Earth has nearly died five times. Not from asteroids - Earth did it to itself. Over the past 445 million years, massive volcanic eruptions pumped catastrophic amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, triggering cascading disasters: superheated oceans, toxic atmospheres, and the extinction of up to 95% of all species. These weren't slow declines. Some happened faster than the span of recorded human history. Here's the uncomfortable truth: we're running the same experiment again. By burning hundreds of millions of years' worth of buried carbon in just a few centuries, we're replicating the conditions that caused Earth's worst mass extinctions. The geochemistry is simple and uncontested – rapid increases in atmospheric CO2 have never ended well.  But there's a crucial difference: ancient organisms couldn't stop volcanic eruptions. We can stop digging up and burning fossil fuels. We have something they didn't - knowledge of the pattern, and the power to change our trajectory. The question isn't whether Earth will survive. It will. The question is whether we'll use what we know to ensure humanity is part of the planet's future, or just another thin layer in the rocks. Two "LET'S TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND OUR PLANET" Guides: A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions.                Hundreds of Eco-Organizations, Eco-Activities, and Eco-Actions you can take today. Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.

    29 min

  8. 12/30/2025

    Beyond Doom: Navigating the Poly-Crisis (Part 2 of 2)

    SHOW NOTES Why Everything Feels Like It's Falling Apart at Once—and What That Actually Means When wildfires, pandemics, refugee crises, and wars all seem to strike simultaneously, it's not just bad luck. This episode introduces "polycrisis"—the framework that explains why climate change creates droughts that destroy crops, driving migration that destabilizes governments, bringing climate deniers to power who worsen the original problem. These aren't separate disasters. They're interconnected feedback loops amplifying each other through the systems we've built. But here's the breakthrough: the same connections that multiply problems can multiply solutions. Scientists have identified social tipping points where small interventions trigger cascading change across entire systems. When 25% of a population shifts behavior, cultural transformation becomes inevitable. When renewable energy delivers higher returns than fossil fuels, entire power systems transform within a generation. The UK went from 90% coal to under 2% in just decades. Norway hit 50% electric vehicle sales. Europe accelerated its renewable transition because the Ukraine war exposed fossil fuel vulnerability. The polycrisis is real and overwhelming—but understanding how crises connect reveals where strategic action creates exponential impact. From deep geothermal energy to education that combats disinformation, from the 3.5% movement threshold to both/and thinking that transcends false choices, this episode maps the leverage points where your action matters most. The pens are in our hands. The story isn't written yet. Two "Let's Take Back our Country and our Planet" Guides: A Call to Act: The World's Most Comprehensive Database of Eco-Solutions.                Hundreds of Eco-Organizations, Eco-Activities, and Eco-Actions you can take today. Trumping Trump: A new survival guide for maintaining focus and sanity while avoiding outrage fatigue. TT is a database of 300+ strong organizations, many with local chapters in your area, united together to fight against the insanity spewing out of 'The Whiter House' that is going to be with us for years.

    39 min
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We all know about the doom and gloom associated with environmental issues. We need to tell ourselves a new story. Instead let's talk about energy independence, green jobs, livable cities, clean water, clean air, and healthy children. This is where politics, perceptions, and life-style meet the catastrophe that is unfolding in front of our eyes. Here's a suggestion — subscribe, tune-in, and stop doom-scrolling.

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