2.10.12: In the latest installment of Ask The Expert, producer Ben Pomeroy visited with Emily Landsburg, CEO of Black Gold Biofuels to learn about the infrastructure scourge and energy potential of used cooking oil’s less glamorous cousin, restaurant grease trap waste. Unlike yellow grease from cooking oil, grease trap waste had no practical applications until Landsburg and her company created one that’s now adding value for towns and cities.

10.28.11: Last year the Gowanus Canal was designated a Super Fund site by the Environmental Protection Agency in order to remove the chemicals, heavy metals and volatile organics from what that agency called, “one of the most extensively contaminated waterways in the nation”.

Producer Ben Pomeroy visited the Gowanus and the surrounding neighborhood to learn some of it’s history and the people who live and work around it’s banks.

He discovered that behind it’s somewhat mistaken reputation as a fetid body dump- is a Revolutionary War battle site, a tree from China, a third generation family company and a foster home for the set pieces of the next blockbuster movie.

1.27.12: NNR’s Ben Pomeroy talks in depth with energy policy blogger and NNR contributor Andrew Schenkel about the election-friendly energy agenda laid down by the President in the State of the Union.

1.18.12: Film director Larry Fessenden (pictured above) boasts a prolific career scaring people. Of all the horrors he been part of, Larry may be most frightened by what’s happening in real life on planet earth. Many of his films find their terror from present day ecological and resource crises, like climate change or water shortages.

When he’s not grave robbing on the screen, Larry runs the website Running Out of Road to give voice to the environmental issues and personalities that motivate (read enrage) him.

Producer Ben Pomeroy talks with Larry about horror movies as cautionary tales and how a good Hollywood scare flick can help carve some edginess into the green movement.

12.28.11: From the debates on federal oil subsidies, the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant to the fight over fracking in New York State, environmental news in 2011 mirrored the contentions and unknowns also found in the economy and the world of politics.

In our year end retrospective we bring you the varied voices from some of our stories that were the news of 2011: political insiders in DC, ethanol growers in Iowa, dishwashers at Occupy Wall Street and a fisherman in Louisiana one year after the BP oil spill.

12.16.11: Climate negotiators from around the world gathered in Durban, South Africa last week to discuss how the international community might beat back global warming. Though the United Nations Framework on Climate Change summit yielded a consensus to renew the Kyoto Protocol and fund mitigation and adaptation measures in developing nations, heavy hitters like India, China and the U.S are still resistant to the policy framework. To make matters worse, Canada, one of the world’s top ten polluters, dropped out of the Protocol entirely after the conference concluded.

Brad Johnson, editor of the Think Progress Green Blog at the Center for American Progress, talks us through the existential state of affairs over the world’s only climate summit.

12.2.11: Hundreds of people crowded an auditorium in Lower Manhattan this past Wednesday to voice their  opinions on a plan to use hydraulic fracturing in order to extract natural gas in New York State.

An overwhelmingly anti-fracking crowd, that was at times raucous and rowdy, spoke urgently before the Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Conservation, in the fourth and final public hearing before the DEP’s report on hydraulic fracturing goes to the Governor’s office for review.

Producer Ben Pomeroy visited the hearing to gather some of the perspectives and stories from the front line of the fracking battle.

The public comment period through writing continues until January 11th.

11.20.11: The adage that “no good deed goes unpunished” does not apply to the students at The Alain A. Locke  Magnet School for Environmental Stewardship (P.S. 208).

The Harlem school teaches and rewards students for being responsible, respectful and thoughtful, virtues that Principal Susan Green believes are essential to being a conscientious citizen of the earth. Whether writing persuasive paragraphs on air pollution or sending old sneakers to Nike to be rendered into playground mats, students P.S. 208 think and talk about the world differently than other elementary students.

Producers Sarah Bacon and Makeba Seargeant visited P.S. 208 to meet the students and their fearless leader, Principal Green, and understand how this school found its purpose.

When Susana De Anda played outside during recess as a child she believed that the mist which fell from the sky was fairy dust. It was in fact pesticides, sprayed from crop dusting planes. As an adult, Susana works to make sure that the stuff of magic children experience today lacks insecticides.

She and co-founder Laurel Firestone lead Community Water Center, a non-profit organization that advocates for clean and potable water in the farming communities of the San Joaquin Valley. A large portion of residents, mostly immigrant farm workers,are unable to drink their tap water due to high levels of nitrates and other agricultural contaminants that drift into the water table.

Susana is featured in the new book Hearts on Fire, a collection of profiles of young social change agents. Producer Makeba Seargeant spoke with Susana about her life’s work.

This show is from our archives.

This show is from our archives:

When you hear the term “green collar job”, you most likely think solar panel installer, energy efficiency expert, Tesla car dealer.

Today we introduce a new segment that covers companies that on the surface are not branded with the mark of “Green”, but at the core of how they do business or what they hope to achieve, are environmentally progressive.

Producer Makeba Seargeant speaks with Ron Williams, the CEO and Co-Founder of Snap Goods, the peer to peer startup that let’s you use or test out a product, tool or piece of gear for short period of time at a low cost. Think the power drill you need to hang a framed painting or the 15 martini glasses for next Saturday night.

It’s a service that falls under the emerging trends of collaborative consumption and what Ron calls the “access economy” – communities and networks opening up to share resources.